Design

Web Design Trends We’re Watching for 2021

hey reliable - Brian Checkovich by Brian Checkovich
December 16, 2020
Web Design Trends We’re Watching for 2021

Trends are different from fads. Pet rocks were a fad that quickly faded in the 1970s. While trends can be tricky to spot, as they often are hidden in data, their patterns are not yet clearly visible. But finding them early can often lead to intellectual (and monetary) riches. Here’s what we’re looking out for in the world of web design as 2021 dawns.

Darkness at the Edge of Town

We are living in dark times.

Or so it seems in the world of web design. But this design trend doesn’t spell gloom and doom but instead reflects how designers are using black or dark backgrounds to convey a minimalist aesthetic that puts emphasis on the page content. As the singer Johnny Cash knew long ago, black is elegant and sophisticated and this background allows for visual elements to stand out.

But just as yin can’t exist without yang, dark needs light. Here web designers are pursuing a Taoist solution, to have pages that can load in either a dark or light mode. Just as cell phones now can respond to the ambient environment, so too are designers offering two versions of a website. For example,[estudioink](https://estudionk.com/en) includes a switch on the side that allows you to toggle between a light and dark version.

Font and Center

Two trends in the world of fonts deserve special notice. One has to do with space and the other with time, so physicists should rejoice.

The space issue involves designers deploying large oversize type of premium fonts. This shift in perspective grabs a user’s attention because it is visually jarring and not at all predictable. The brain gets used to patterns and this alteration of scale shows how versatile something as elemental as font size can become in establishing a feel or vibe.

Throwbacks are popular at sporting venues (remember those?) and on social media, but designers more and more seem to be drawn to fonts that come from the land of disco and polyester, the 1970s, a decade known for its disaster movies. Nothing has been a disaster like 2020, and so this throwback makes sense. But the 1970s actually was a time of tremendous artistic innovation and an update of this sensibility blends into today’s polyglot culture. MailChimp begat the trend, and its Means typeface has distinctive rounded corners straight from 1975.

Hurry Up and Load

The best websites deliver valuable information to users so that they stay on the page, thereby reducing the bounce rate. The emergence of Smart Content and Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) shows how this bounce-rate arms race continues to evolve at a staggering pace. The thinking makes sense: why devote precious load time to displaying content that a user isn’t interested in? What if you could customize your landing page to fit the needs of users, instead of offering a one-size-fits-all experience?

That’s the premise of Smart Content. It tailors your content to conform to a user’s profile, and if a user keeps scrolling down, more content will load as the user gets closer to it. In a world where milliseconds count, this advantage can provide a significant reduction in bounce rate. And with younger users becoming reliant on voice search on mobile devices, speed will be more important than ever.

Tip the Scale

Images on a screen have never been more defined and better delineated than with the next-gen devices currently on the market. Ultra High Definition carries a resolution of 3840 x 2160, which can render images more lifelike than life itself. One trend that has cropped up is the increasing use of Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) instead of PNGs or JPEGs.

The reason? Those 4K screens with more pixelation than ever. When digital photography arrived, static images needed to be compressed so that they could be efficiently loaded on a website. But to take full advantage of high-resolution screens, SVG has proven to be the go-to platform. Not only can it render logos and icons with incredible precision and crispness, but it can also be coded for animation. Illustrations are becoming must-haves for websites, and thus SVG will only grow in importance as designers meet this demand.

Accessibility

In Canada, as of January 1, 2021, all private or non-profit organizations with more than 50 employees must make their website compliant with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0. While no such overt legislation exists in the U.S., the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) has led to litigation involving the rights of the disabled to web content.

While accessibility might seem like an intractable problem, the fixes for access equity do exist, as long as designers account for them in the process. This might entail reframing perceptions about UI and UX, not to mention creating a more inclusive workplace environment. There is no technological reason why the differently-abled can’t enjoy the vast riches of the web or work in the industry. Because of the new law in Canada, this push will take on a new urgency.

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