The year 2007 is coming to an end and a new year is coming. Everyone is starting to reflect on the past and begin planning for the future like we always do at the end of each year. Lucky for us (web designers) we are in an industry that evolves from the reflection of the past.
Just take what good ol' Picasso once said, "Good artists copy, great artist steal." With the coming of the end of the year 2007, I want to reflect on the design trends that have had the most impact on my very own work
Design trends come, design trends go, and then design trends come back. Just because something went out of style last month doesn't mean you can't use it. Just be sure to include current design trends, integrate the two. For example, back three or four years ago solid strokes with high contrast were the 'thing'...even though it went out of style who says you can't implement it into today's designs as long as you modernize it a little by paying attention to whitespace and what is popular today. So, with that being said let me begin my list of trends that impacted my own work in some way.
Subtle Colors
I have designed quite a few sites within the past months and every design I start with my base colors and stick with the. The only changes I make is when I use a toned down or shaded down version of that same color. For example if I were to use a dark yellow as a base color I would use a light-to-dark shade of yellow somewhere else on the website. Subtle colors add so much smoothness to your designs, they help make things flow.
Glance-Able
When you start to get deep into what web design is really all about, you learn that it's not about how many graphics you can load on your site, but it's more about giving the user a great experience...an easy experience. That is where making your site glance-able comes into play. Allowing users to glance at your site and know exactly what is 'happening' is a key ingredient to a successful user experience.
Key techniques I've seen throughout the web that helped make sites glance-able were: lots of whitespace, headings, brilliant use of color contrast, and the use of a good grid layout (But not always!). Replacing larges chunks of text with graphics or headlines helps make your site more glance-able and less overwhelming to the user.
Dropdowns (The smart way)
I don't use dropdowns very often but if I were ever to start I would take lessons from Yahoo, AOL, Wired, Amazon, NBC, and CNN, whom all use brilliantly planned and designed dropdowns. On the design end, the dropdowns are used in a way that makes them not so overwhelming for the end-user when they are on the hover state.
Every dropdown has a very good contrast between the actual page and menu itself so it's easy to glance at where the edges start and stop (see: glance-able). The placement and data contained in each dropdown shows you how brilliantly and well planned they are; they contain links/data that was specifically meant for it only...the data wouldn't have as big of an impact if placed outside of the dropdown somewhere.
Icons
One of the most popular web trends for 2007/2008 is the use of small icons, specifically FAMFAMFAM's public domain icons. Icons are almost overused...however the power these small icons hold make them almost near impossible not to use. Like the other similarities listed, icons help make things glance-able, they add style to your site, and help add some sort of playfulness to it. You can never go wrong with icons.
Fixed Width
With advances in technology the average width for a 'fixed width' layout has been raised to 950px wide. There is a lot of controversy regarding which layout positioning is better to use (fixed or liquid). There is a time to use liquid and a time not to, it's important to know the difference and why (but that goes beyond this article). One reason why the majority of websites use a fixed width instead of a liquid width is because as screen resolutions get higher, it becomes harder to control the placement of elements in your website.
Typography also becomes a mess, which leads to the point that reading experts suggest the best width for text blocks on a website is around 60 characters long, therefore as your website becomes wider on wide screen monitors, your text becomes harder to read.
Until next time, follow me on twitter, @michaeldick