Late 2017 Web Design Trends

As the year is drawing to a close and the summer insanity is giving its place to the melancholy of a pumpkin-spiced autumn, let’s see what the workhorses of the web design industry introduced to the world.

The idea of “broken” layouts is certainly not fresh, but it hasn’t been explored widely yet, that’s why this trend is considered to be one of the most significant ones, as it gives designers a creative freedom to roam around and make their brand stand out. What’s cool about asymmetric layouts is the fact, that they can be broken in a variety of ways depending on a designer’s vision, their knowledge of user perception, typography integration ideas, and content distribution.

As history infinitely spirals its way to the future, we never expect it to bring forth the forsaken tendencies in their original way. The deeply-rooted origins of web design lie in physical things, thus, skeuomorphism. However, the eclecticism of styles, metaphoric art, and imagination have withdrawn web design to a different landscape.

We’ve forsaken skeuomorphism in favor of material and flat design, only to witness the reincarnation of it in tactile design. The reality, however, never left us. It was angled, transformed, distorted, and augmented but truth is, every design element has to have a clear representation of the real world objects.

The tactile design principles are flamboyantly showcasing the reality almost in a way that you can reach out and touch things. It’s a challenge that, if faced right can step your game up in terms of uniqueness and user appreciation.

The broken layout trend reverberates strongly in the typography realm. Big, bold, and reach lettering, often times hand-crafted and custom, add to the effect of asymmetric layouts. Oversized letters apart from conveying information can serve as visual cues and dingbats. Putting together typographic collages consisting of different font families and even contrasting typefaces is what we can expect to be a keystone in web lettering design.

All this is possible due to the growing compatibility of web fonts. The sans serif fonts dominating interfaces are getting diluted with unusual and exclusive typefaces which once again contribute to the immersive experience of a digital product.

Custom typography can’t be associated with stock photography. A fully authentic experience can only be created by such a powerful visual tool as photography. Custom images convey the brand’s message in its own unique way, free from the influence of a third-party vision. In this case, the interpretation of imagery, as well as the company identity spread across it becomes an influence tool, rather than just a generic plug.

The temptation to choose images from the millions available is pretty high, but this is how we tend to make a compromise with what we can find instead of creating an entirely original photograph, assigned uniquely to your brand.

This achievement has a number of reasons, all of them combined making Sketch aS Swiss army tool for UI/UX web/mobile designers. Generally, Sketch has the stuff but not the fluff. It’s an interaction design tool to the core with no irrelevant 3D features, photo filters, retouch tools, etc. Instead, it’s a modular multi-plugin application focused solely on mitigating the hassle in UI design. In a nutshell, 2017’s Sketch is:

Abstract is a version control system tool for Sketch exclusively. It’s clean and simple UI hides a powerful and unprecedented potential for a team of designers to work on the same project and not get entangled in revisions and timelines. Abstract has offline support for branching, editing files, committing, and merging.

Even though Abstract is facing multiple challenges being new to the market, it has nothing but bright future perspectives ahead. First of the kind, it’s an obligation for any diverse design team of today to try it out.

Traditionally, main UX vehicles have always been graphics and visual interface elements. Textual content was considered secondary and explanatory. It’s obvious that visual elements trigger comprehension on the surface level, however, a deeper understanding required a different approach. The rise of AI capabilities, conversational design, and interaction-heavy UIs discovered a gap between how the slick UX practices work and how these can be transmitted through words.

Word design is a fairly new trend but it is here to stay as more and more companies start getting the competitive edge and take their products to the next level of appreciation. It is only a matter of time that chatbots, taught with UX in mind will take over. A lot of them are capable of cracking you up already while being sharp and goal-oriented. All these strategies require deep knowledge of psychology, keen understanding of people, and language brilliance. I am extremely excited about what’s coming in the field of UX writing.

Visuals get dated but words never lose their power. As Bel Kaufman once famously said: “To the young, cliches seem freshly minted.”

These are just some of the trends we could think of as most significant and interesting ones. In an ever changing industry of web design, where we constantly search for new ways to astound everybody including ourselves, trends are translucent and perception is the key.

The general shift towards ubiquity even at the expense of a safe place seems to be the main characteristic feature, as more technologies entwine everyday life. Fulfilling tasks is no longer the sole objective. The experience of human-machine interaction along the way has to be meaningful, engaging, and delightful; and this is the path that UI/UX designers seem to have roughcasted for the next year or so.

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