What’s Trending For Web Design In 2018?

Chad Faith
Chad Faith

Director of Content

What's Trending For Web Design In 2018?

Web design may be maturing over the years, but it is still subject to whims, fashions, and fads. From text-heavy to image-focused to spatial awareness, we have indeed come a long way. Let’s see what kind of trends are likely to define web design in 2018:

CSS Grids

CSS grids are designed for the 2D layout of items on a web application or page and are the first real layout system for the web. It allows website designers and developers to create and redefine layouts that can be adapted to various contexts. Being able to organize and design content into rows and columns is certainly like gaining God-like control of the screens before you.

Variable Fonts

Variable fonts refer to a single font file that has the ability to behave like multiple fonts. Today’s web abounds with a wide variety of gorgeous typefaces, and that’s why there is a growing interest in typeface design, typography, and more. With the upcoming release of variable fonts – thanks to Adobe, Microsoft, Google, and Apple – the project will enable a whole new form of typeface design. Type designers will be able to interpolate a font’s glyph set to over 60,000 axes of variation.

<Video>

As there are limitations to how much a still image, of a UI, can tell designers and developers, the industry is entering the <video> element. When it comes to conveying complex information in a visual format, this element can slip seamlessly into the design, without the need to embed a Vimeo or YouTube video. <video> allows details of one’s copy to loop while the images remain in sync. What’s more, it can be repeated for those who need to view it again.

Floating Navigation Menus

Conversion-focused fixed navigation menus have become a mainstay of sites. Yes, they simplify the experience of a site by constantly keeping navigational controls at the visitor’s fingertips. Today, designers have taken the idea a step further. They have visually detached the navigation from the site’s main design. This means that they have made the navigation menu a global object that’s not necessarily a part of any one page. Adding a drop shadow to the navbar surely makes a huge difference. Try it!

Maximalism

Maximalism usually possesses significant emotional quality because one is drawing upon things he or she loves. Maximalism web design is easily recognizable because of the use of large background images, which cover almost the entire visible web design page. You may start to see more sites that feature parallax effects, in which at least two images overlap each other and may move at different speeds when scrolled up or down.

Animated Page Transitions

The web is designed to house eye-catching animations that inform us clearly that something is not the same as before, on a certain page. It will feel slightly odd if the experience of shifting from one page to another feels pretty much the same. The web design and development world are starting to see a greater number of sites making changes in state something beautiful to behold. When a UI-change animation sweeps a user away from one page, another animation will greet you on the new page, with nothing necessarily linking them together.