The new web design trends of 2018

With the first quarter of 2018 well underway, there’s never been a better time to give your site a refresh. 2017 saw the development of numerous new website features and design concepts but this year, designers will be taking things even further. If you’re planning to set up a new website and give your company a new online presence, here are some trends to consider to help your brand stand out. Shadows and layering The use of shadowing in web design and logo design has been popular for quite a few years, however, this year we will start to see more creative variations. Floating menus and tabs will create a sense of depth on web pages while maximising focus on content and featured imagery. Parallax layouts, which have become increasingly popular for bloggers and e-commerce websites, can be combined with shadowing effects to create sleek and immersive designs. Vibrancy and saturation In recent years, the common trend amongst web designers has been to use desaturated, neutral tones with sharp accent colours but 2018 will be the year of colour. Bold and bright are the keywords this year as more companies aim to stand out and create striking imagery. Popular brands such as Spotify have already begun to replace their two-tone colour palettes with more vibrant alternatives. Animation and particle backgrounds More websites are now beginning to experiment with the idea of live backgrounds on landing pages. Video backgrounds have been used by a number of high-profile media websites however these can often prompt performance issues and make it difficult for consumers to load pages. Particle backgrounds will provide an elegant solution to this problem in 2018. Simple and non-intensive animations will be seen more and more on the homepages of websites. More focus on mobile Last year, we saw mobile overtake desktop as more people around the world made purchases and carried out searches from their smart devices. This means that as we enter 2018, more effort will be made by companies and web designers to create sleek and eye-catching designs for mobile web pages. Be prepared to see a lot of experiments with design features that utilise the simplicity of mobile browsing. Illustrations and 3D graphics Research has shown that visual content is much better for captivating web browsers and increasing session time for web pages. More websites will begin to use custom illustrations and graphics to explain their services and reduce the need for text. This will become particularly popular amongst tertiary businesses that are looking to help consumers visualise their aims.