We are about to embark on a new year and it is always fun to look in the crystal ball to see what will be big in the coming year based on the trends this year and where we’ve been seeing the design trend going. These are our predictions of what 2016 will hold for web design.
Dominating Material Design
Material design, as popularized and formalized by Google, is already pretty mainstream. As we go further into 2016, we are bound to see even more sites, themes and products adopt material design as their primary User Interface design principle.
Background Videos Will Be Everywhere
Internet speeds are (in most of the world) getting much better, even on mobile. Many sites already cleverly use background videos for example in their hero sections. In the coming year, background videos are going to increase and be used even more as a clever and neat technique of explaining more in less space.
Even Greater Focus On Typography
Only a few years ago we didn’t have a lot of typography options on the web. Now we have an abundance of fonts to choose from as designers, and the amount of fonts are only increasing. Next year we will be seeing an even greater focus on getting the typography right, with the really successful sites nailing the age-old principles of typography and bringing it all online.
Card Based UIs Go Mainstream
Microsoft has been using a card-based UI now for a while and really pushed it mainstream with Windows 10. Pinterest was also a pioneer in this design. We have been seeing the growth in card based user interfaces now for a while, but in 2016 we are sure to see this everywhere.
Storytelling Everywhere
The most powerful way to write effective content is by using storytelling. Over the past year we have been seeing primarily some newspapers experiment with “long read” platforms with gorgeous articles laid out and designed along with the content to fully employ the storytelling technique. In 2016, this won’t just be used for long reads by newspapers but continue to make its way into companies and personal websites alike.
