20 Web Design Trends 2014 by Vitaly Kirkpatrick – Utah Web Design & Development

It’s time to turn our eyes to 20 Web Design Trends 2014. The trends are dictated by the development of modern mobile technologies, communication channels and all kinds of software. In particular this applies to adaptive or responsive website design. These trends are the most fashionable preference, the combination of which allows designers to create unique and extraordinary on the web.

1 Adaptive Web Design

Technical boom of various mobile devices not only firmly encourages web designers to make sites, adapted to all kinds of resolution, regardless if it is a small screen handheld smartphone, the average size of a tablet or a huge diagonal modern monitor.

2 Flat design

Flat design (Flat UI) – is an ultra minimalist approach to content when absolutely get rid of excess from everything (volume, noise, gradients, and other decorations), leaving only flat colors and intuitive visual elements. In general, only the essence and nothing more.

3 Vertical Scrolling

This trend again gave rise to particular technical devices when optimally scroll content movement from the bottom up on the screen. A variation of a paged vertical scrolling looks very stylish and modern.

4 Jolly Typography

Typography is firmly established among the latest trends of web design. The earlier emphasis on the beauty and variety of fine fonts, now added experiment with geometry, where the text or the word fit into the design space and directly interact with the other elements.

5 Modular design

is very successful and interesting solution when content is presented in the form of clearly localized and tightly arranged modular designs or cards with uniform design.

6. CSS3 effects

CSS3 technologies allow web designers to work miracles, only a limited scope of their imagination. All kinds of movement, appearance, content transformation, complex rebuilding – all this makes the site interesting and unique.

7 Parallax Scrolling

interaction of different elements of the site, moving at different speeds in the vertical scrolling, creates a very interesting effect, which is called parallax scrolling.

8 one-page site

One-page sites have a distinct advantage in that there is no need to move to the next page. All manipulations are carried out within a single page. By the choice of contents the user enters either through soft scrolling, or modal windows, or using dynamically loaded content.

9 Fixed navigation

essence of this trend is that when you scroll through the page from top to rigidly fixed top navigation menu. This is done, again, in favor of mobile devices. I also saw designs with a fixed bottom menu.

10 Widescreen Design

Now the whole modern design tends to ensure that the most comprehensive and widely cover all the area of the screen. So, with designs content in the middle of the screen fades.

11 larger image on the backgrounds

A beautiful big picture on the backgrounds has already become a well-established trend of the past years. It always looks catchy, impressive and presentable, as well as a very active influence on the viewer.

12 Variable geometry

CSS3 technologies allow web designers to use non-standard forms and unconventional geometry at registration sites. These and various blocks of regular and irregular shapes, as well as various broken lines at different angles of inclination.

13 Video backgrounds

a great background video – another new-fangled trend. The emotional impact of full-screen video in getting acquainted with the site can be a major deciding factor and make it a memorable one, as it has a strong effect of the presentation.

14 Live animated pictures

Such images are called Cinematograph images. This picture, on which there are minor repetitive motion. In Cinematography, which are usually presented in gif format, the viewer creates the illusion of watching the video. Typically they are prepared by creating a series of photographs or videos, followed by editing in a graphics editor.

15 loadable content

Almost all social networks are already using loadable content. It is especially true for the mobile versions of sites.

16 Interactive infographics

Infographics as a trend powerfully asserted itself in the last year. Today, it has become possible to use the online interactive typography. When, for example,  you hover over the year you want to change or relevant information in a visual block is displayed.

17 Side-folding menu

for the folded side menu we have already seen a corresponding recognizable icon in the form of three parallel horizontal bars. In the mobile version of this icon is fixed at the top of the screen by clicking on the menu that becomes available.

18 Simple color schemes

This trend involves the use of the design of one, two or three pure simple monochrome colors combined with classic black or white for the rest of the design elements. A kind of color variation of minimalism.

19 Less text, more video

text slightly losing ground, giving way to a short video. These videos are not only very easy to share in social networks, but it is also a modern way of impact on the user.

20 The long shadow

In the past year it has become fashionable to use of the long shadows of the object, creating a three-dimensional effect and a top view. Basically, it refers to the logos and icons. 

Conclusion

Exploring new trends helps us to continue to develop as web designers. When we master the skills of aesthetic web design, we need to keep moving forward.

This list is not much different from what was popular in 2013. It was a trend that is distributed in web design in 2014 and will help to achieve the best results during the website design & development phases.