Current Trends in Web Design

When I resurrected proppe.org a few months ago I decided to focus on the content of the site and not worry too much about the visual style (although I still chuckle at the bored man watching the clock on the front page that leads to this blog). Having been out of the web design loop for a long while, I decided to take a look at what was out there to get an overview of current trends. Here is a small catalog of the patterns that seem to be prevalent today.

Background Pattern:

I first noticed this a couple of years ago and it took the form of the single-pixel 45 degree angled stripes.

Now it seems that Victorian wallpaper patterns have become the rage. Often, the pattern is dithered, as if it’s been converted to 1 bit and then colorized.

The stripes are still there, they’ve just gotten thicker.

The “Lickable” Web:

Glossy is in. For a while it was the full hard candy translucent effect (no doubt borrowed from Mac OS X), but now it’s slightly more subtle. There’s that hard-lined reflection indicating a gloss on elements, and the fading reflection beneath elements to suggest that it’s sitting on a glossy surface. Now that Vista (Microsoft’s upcoming revision to Windows) is going with this look it’s only going to become more ubiquitous.

Spindly Vegetative Tendrils:

I have no idea where I saw this first, or who originated it, but it’s everywhere now. In fact it’s the first idea that came to my mind when I was thinking about designing my site.

Subtle Shading:

The offset drop shadow hasn’t gone away, it’s just much less obvious. Same with gradient shading.

Stamped Font:

Fonts that look like they’ve been stamped with not enough ink (there must be a graphic design term for this) are all over the place now.

Radial Stripes:

In all kinds of colors. Broad, radial stripes adorn many a header.

The Return of Wood Grain:

I guess if you’re sick of gloss, you turn to other textures.

Smart, Cute Vector Graphics:

I have a soft spot for great character design and elegant iconography in general.

The Jumble:

The first one of these that hit me was the new package design for Ableton Live, a music performance and composition package. Now I’ve noticed jumble of flat graphic elements in enough places that it seems to be an emerging trend. It’s actually a sort of retro look but I can’t place the era.

Abandonment of Image:

A List Apart seems to have decided that they are about content, and content only. They’ve got their wheat wreath logo (can’t get more classical than that; no one’s going to accuse them of being trendy), and the issue number starburst stamp (reminiscent of the Mac Mail app’s number of unread messages stamp on its icon), but beyond that there’s just a two-tone color scheme and textual navigation. Tasteful, although it borders on timid. Similarly, McSweeneys, Dave Eggers’ literary journal, seems to not want to distract the eye from the prime focus; glorious text.

Conclusions

The interesting thing to me is that I didn’t expect to find such defined trends. Now I’m seeing a lot of these elements in print and TV ads as well. I don’t mean to put down the individual designers of these sites: to the contrary, I think these sites are all quite beautiful and very well executed. To a certain extent these patterns are like a visual slang; the vocabulary which makes up larger sentences in a style. I’m torn about whether to deliberately avoid these elements or to incorporate them and combine them in new ways. According to this article what I’m talking about here is “style” rather than “design.” I think the best designs are the ones that are seamlessly intertwined with style, and vice versa. I’m inspired to learn more about the theory and history of design to know why these patterns work so well, and maybe to try to come up with something new for my site.