2020 days are almost ending! Do you know what that means?
Means we’re at the verge of finishing this decade!
The internet has seen drastic changes in the last ten years. It has grown in a huge deal, unlike any other decade.
Not only the internet, but technology in whole has also grown a huge deal in this decade. We’ve observed the reign of mobile devices, the introduction of VR, AMP, AR AI, and so many other acronyms.
But where we can really see and feel these changes on the internet is in web design trends.
And the change has always been unpredictable.
It has pushed towards rampant creativity in some years – vibrant illustrations with abandoning grids and stock photos, bold color schemes and so.
Whereas, in other years, the websites have become smarter following the lead of technological advancements – machine learning and subtle interaction.
However, we predict that 2020 web design trends will see these both sides of the coin together – aesthetic and technology.
And here are some illustration of how they might look like –
Table of Contents
1. Serifs on the Screen
Which web designer is not familiar with the rule that sans-serifs are for screen and serifs are only for print. But design trends are meant to do one obvious thing – giving the convention a little shaking up.
Now sans has the clean readability and it’s still the go-to font option for longer bouts of website articles. But more and more brands are now preferring serifs to highlight the other aspects like the headers or callouts.
But why so?
The reason being, serifs were designed to be decorative which makes them perfect for highlighting and emphasizing.
Now serifs, even though being quite associated with past, have quite plenty of character and they’re more adaptable than you think.
Take Mailchimp’s rounded serifs for cheerful branding.
Also, the bold strokes and wedge serifs that give Medium a modern look.
2. Black-and-white Palettes
Color certainly is one of the key elements in websites. It can set a mood, unify a brand and create visual landmarks to guide users through an interface.
But for 2020, we’re already seeing less use of vibrant colorful colors for those purposes, rather black-and-white color scheme making significant statements.
That’s because, the world got significantly faster, but some things need to be slowed down to be observed better. And nothing slows down stuff better than the absence of color.
Black by itself is strong and assertive while white is clean and reserved. Combinedly, these two brings a striking look.
However, while focusing more on the black-and-white theme, you don’t need to get lost in the sea of monochrome always.
Rather, adding an accent color could help making points of interest, calls-to-action to leap out and break up the sea of monochrome.
3. Natural & Organic Shapes
Web pages, typically being set up for systematic grids, are seeing natural shapes and smooth lines these days.
2020 web design trends are a lot about the feeling of comfort and accessibility.
That’s why organic shapes are getting more priority over geometric structures such as triangles, rectangles, and squares – which, with their sharp corners, creates a sense of stability rather.
Organic shapes, being naturally asymmetrical and imperfect, provides depth to a web design which helps page elements to stand out.
Also, these shapes are based on nature (take the curving forms of hills and trees) which provides a sense of comfort and spontaneity. This helps to achieve the goal here – to feel alive and human through the illusion of movement.
4. Minimalism
Minimalism is often the go-to aesthetic of choice – being one of the most timeless and classic web design trends.
This approach is the best style to give your users a stress-free surfing experience. The lesser elements there is on a webpage, the easier it’ll be for your users to find out what they were looking for.
They do not have to think much, which allows them to have a stress free experience – which is something we all desire – as less stress possible (in our hectic life)
That is why, I believe this approach of designing a website will continue its domination in 2020 and beyond. The more we advance in time – the more stress floods towards us – and the desire of cutting down stress gets more and more stronger.
There’ll be more animations and fade-in effects which make scrolling more engaging.
And the freedom web pages get from that (further demand for engagement items), will allow them to space out their content, resulting in more breathing room, means more whitespace.
I personally like this approach very much, and I have an article written separately on minimalist web design approach itself, which you may check out.
Smartphones have brought about a revolution in the number visits a website get through mobile devices. Some statistics show that the number of total visits websites get combinedly, is more from mobile devices, and less from desktops.
That is why website owners had no other choice but to make their website mobile friendly. Thus, they have concentrated more on designing their website in a thumb-friendly way.
Josh Clark, in his book Designing for Touch, has investigated people’s pattern of holding a smartphone and the movements of their fingers, especially of the thumb, as that is the most prominent tool of browsing and scrolling from a smartphone.
Studying the pattern, he has shown how websites should be designed for smartphones in a thumb-friendly way.
As a result of that, users often encounter websites where navigation is more tailored to the thumb – like the hamburger menu moving to the bottom of mobile screens.
As mobile devices are likely to hold this dominance over the internet in the coming days, this web design trend is likely to stay for long in discussion.
6. More & More Video Content
The increasing dominance of video content over text content is something you don’t need a lens to see. YouTube has seen tremendous growth over the recent period for people desire for video content.
Web designers have not been fool enough to not understand this, and that’s why you’ll see a lot of video content on a regular website too.
Video content is a great option to diversify the content on a webpage, and also to help the on-the-go audience, who don’t have the time to scan through a lot of text, by providing the gist of the information
You see Google also has made changes to themselves complementing this approach. You’ll see many of the searches bring results that feature video content above standard web pages.
So web designers had to prioritize producing more video content to help their users and also t0 stay on top of the search engine.
This priority does not seem to go down any soon with video content getting more shares than text content, so webmasters are likely to add more and more video content to their website.
7. Diversity
Do you know what ‘www’ behind any website URL stands for? World Wide Web.
That makes the point that internet is for connecting billions of people across the world from different cultures, ages, gender identities, abilities. Everyone loves to see themselves reflected in their content, instead of grinning stock photo models only.
Now, it’s not that web designers are the first one to consider this aspect in the digital world. Apple took this into consideration and started with varying skin tones for emojis in iPhones.
Now it’s time that web designers of different brands are taking this aspect into consideration to make people of all walks of life feel more welcome in that brand’s digital space.
This trend is likely to go on in 2020 as web designers will make even bigger leaps towards inclusiveness.
Designers want to prove from their side using their craft that the web is supposed to be about diversified people making real connections.
End Note
There you have it – the 2020 web design trends! However, it all has not happened yet. There is a lot to come in 2020 which might bring new surprises for us to wait and see.
After all, it’s about very own creativity and thought pattern of different designers, so we can predict it all, can we?
However, if you want to keep up with the trend and design your website accordingly, we have a smart and expert team of designers to help you out with that. Consider giving us a buzz.
Cheers.
