Web Design in 2019
The experts have weighed in on website design trends for 2019 and we’ve compiled our list of the ones we feel will be most relevant for our clients below. If you’re planning a new design project, please consider some of these ideas.
1. Vibrant Saturated Color Schemes
Vibrant saturated color schemes are capable of seeking user’s attention, with a high-end visual appeal. The vibrant color schemes and electric hues that defined the 80s and 90s continue to make a bold comeback in web design. Designers are abandoning the color safety nets of the past and taking risks with contrasting colors to create memorable visual experiences.
2. Negative Space
We are all used to full-width responsive websites crammed full of text and images and call-to-actions. More and more, white (or content-negative) spaces are taking over the field of view. It’s like an anti-space domination phenomenon. What we are seeing are text & images surrounded by lots of space, whether it be white, black, and all of the colors in between. This allows for these minimal texts and bold graphics to pop off the page. There is digitally nothing else to look at. It also produces a calming effect, allowing the viewer to easily digest the information on the screen right in front of them. The urge to scroll down becomes less so, and the idea of time suddenly feels like it might be on your side.
3. Big Bold Typography
Bigger is better — at least when it comes to header font sizes. Jumbo sized fonts are replacing images as a creative way to get your attention. Web designers are opting for super large header fonts as a succinct way to get their message across. Font styles already carry so many meanings, whether it be classic or modern or silly or romantic. And when they are amplified into mega huge characters, and layered on a negative space with nothing but space to make your eyes look at it — well, no wonder this is a good idea.
4. Lightweight Moving Backgrounds
Over the last few years we have seen an explosion of video backgrounds in web design. The problem this has can cause slow down in a site’s load time. And because it takes only a few seconds for you to lose 40% of your traffic (3.8 seconds, to be precise), this has become a real big problem. Particle backgrounds are great alternative. With animations in javascript, the movement is created as a natural part of the background, making it lightweight and fast. Light as a feather (or as a particle, as it were).
5. Micro-interactions
Micro-interactions are events with one purpose: to surprise the user and create an event that is inviting and human. Every time you take a small action on a website or app and there is a specific response to it, this is a micro-interaction. When you refresh a Twitter page and hear a beep, this is a micro-interaction. Or when you check Facebook, the red icon displaying your message count is—you guessed it— a micro-interaction.
These have been the most common uses of them, but in 2019, web pages will heavily feature their more interactive incarnations. Hover and scrolling animations, chimes, and much more. All in all, this is a way to involve your audience in your website, to subtly transmit information to the users about their actions and usage, and make web pages feel a little smarter.
6. More Video content
We’ve been talking about the value of adding video to your website over the past couple of years now. Video not only diversifies the page but caters to an on-the-go audience who don’t have the time to scan through a lot of text. What is new is the move Google has made toward mixed search page results, featuring video content above standard web pages. This has led websites to prioritize video production in order to make themselves easily searchable and offer content in the most efficient, shareable way.
7. Minimalism
Perhaps one of the most classic and timeless web design trends, minimalism is often the go-to aesthetic of choice. The fewer elements and content on a website, the less your audience will have to think. If a website is designed in the right way, it will show the user exactly what she is looking for. Minimalism will continue to dominate the digital landscape in 2019. Animations and fade-in effects that make scrolling more engaging will give web pages freedom to space out their content and thus result in more whitespace, contrast and clear typography without too many distracting elements.
8. Thumb Friendly Navigation
With mobile browsing having firmly overtaken desktop, design overall is becoming increasingly thumb-friendly. More and more now, users will encounter navigation tailored to the thumb, such as the hamburger menu.
9. 3D
3D has proved itself as a quite stable and persistent trend for the last few years, so we are definitely going to see a lot of it in 2019. Luckily for all of us, technologies are evolving quite quickly allowing graphic designers to create amazing 3D masterpieces which make the viewer the almost immerse into the design. Typography will be definitely not bypassed by any of the graphic trends 2019 including 3D. Often created as the main visual element of the design, 3D typography gives designers freedom to improvise. Even by using 3D typography alone, graphic designers in 2019 will be able to make us immerse into a whole new world.
10. Good Writing
As the saying goes, Content is King. With a more technology-aware modern day user, the user experience (UX) is largely driven by the content. Gone are the days when UX and content worked differently. To provide the user with the right kind of desired experience, the influx of Content and UX is very important. This has led to the content centered UX, where a UX has more to do with what content is the website catering to the end user.
We think 2019 will be the year of great writing. The year of great storytelling and narratives. Strip away the colors, animations, grids, and illustrations from a website and what you are left with is mostly words. Words are what really matter in a website.