Website Design Trends You’ll be Seeing Plenty of in 2020 – Part 1: Hero Areas

What is important to remember though before we dive into some of the 2020 trends, is that trends can differ by industry. It’s rare for many overall trends to impact everybody on the web and let’s face it if we all followed suit, the internet would be a dull experience wouldn’t it? 

New Use for Hero Areas

Hero areas, if you haven’t been made aware of this phrase before, are essentially the big first to load and view areas of a page or website. Usually they are dead centre above the fold but either below or alongside the main navigation. These areas have been in fashion for a while as we abandoned clutter and made a change to impact design. The trends that change are how we are using them and what we’re filling this space with. 

From 2018, one of the biggest uses for the hero area has been big background imagery. Usually this takes the form of one maximum size hero image with some limited copy over the top. Take a look at this example from fitness wear giants, Gym Shark.

 

While we are going to continue to see this style and with less and less overlaying copy, the new emerging trend is even more minimalist. We’re starting to see text only hero areas. Big bold statements in cleverly chosen, eye catching typography with little to no supporting imagery. 

This is part of our ongoing acceptance and comfort with allowing white (empty) space on our website designs. Taking over from our prior trend of getting as much vital information displayed above the fold as possible. This is in turn is part of our desire to be more focussed with where we want our visitor’s attention to go. What we want to do here is draw eyes to bold statements, products and call to actions rather than presenting a screen which looks overcrowded and messy. 

Expect to see a much smoother and subtle merger between design and leading the visitor’s journey and narrative through websites in 2020.