As 2017 goes on its merry way, a designer’ mind has an unanswered question: how will design be defined in 2017. Keeping this particular query in my mind I asked Webflow’s designers about which trends are going to lead the digital designing world in 2017. Let’s move on to these trends without wasting any time.
Catchy content layout:-
Design element within a structure arranged in a way that gives the reader convenience to easily focus on the message, that too without slowing the pace of reading.
In the last few years, a big change has been noticed in how people have started to view the role of design in business. The designing process has changed its position, it was considered to be used late in the piece where designers used it as mystical fairy dust to gain a high advantage.The change has been really fascinating.One significant component of the change is the shifting of attention toward the content. Designers all around the globe have understood that site browsers visit sites just for the content. It doesn’t matter whether it is uncontrolled and intense content, tweetstorms, latest meme generated by the user or long thought full reads, the ultimate role of the design is to make the content intuitive, attractive, catchy, and efficient in a delightful way.This is one of the reasons for shifting towards the “flatter” and more minimalist designs from skeuomorphic. These designs are seen on all web sources and especially on Google’s material aesthetic.
Collaboration between developers and designers:-
More attention is being paid to the designers collaborating with other designers and developers due to the reason that designing has played a more influential role in shaping and reshaping businesses.
Due to the mobile apps being built nowadays and considering the vastness of the web, emphasis on the collaboration of designers has increased. Leaders of the market like Google, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn need large designing teams to work on separate and same portions of the platform and also create space for the designers to be on the same page which means better communication and collaboration between the two.All tools have been developed to make the collaboration easy from dashboards to templates. 2017 is all set to fulfil dual purpose of not only bringing improvement to old platforms but also introducing new options.A lot of attention has been put in the transferring of designing to developing stage. Designers are now sharing dynamic visualizations instead of large packages of static specs and images which they used to send earlier. According to Carson Miller, “the ultimate future of front end development is the designing”.It can be seen that after some time design and prototyping tools are going to replace front end development by producing a harmonious and high in quality front end code to meet your choice.
Improvement in designing to dev workflows:-
Designing and prototyping tools are gaining maturity and are getting sophisticated, the deliverable conventional transferring has changed from the above mentioned static specs and images to dynamic visualizations. These visualizations and dynamic images range between fully functional websites to keynote files. As they reduce the feedback loop which results in improving the design and development team’s agility by lowering their frustration.
These visualizations also help to communicate better with the clients. For users of Webflow, client meetings have turned into working sessions for them. In these live working sessions, designers come up with quick ideas and bring them to life so that everyone can visualize them at the same time.
The bigger the beautiful:-
Now that the designing world has agreed that the to turn our focus to the content, almost all the websites are resonating their formation on the same lines by letting the content big and bold like just the size of the statement. You must have noticed that the big and bold text doesn’t always mean that it is important or emphasis is put on that specific portion rather the purpose is to focus on a simple and may be a single statement about the service or the product. To a change, these statements look very clear and pinpoint accurate, free of empty claims we’ve been seeing all over the web.
Layouts rooted in graphic designing:-
In visual terms, predicting the evolution of web design is directly proportional to the evolution of graphic designing.
Web design layout has been controlled by the limitations of CSS but with the arrival of new tools like flexbox and CSS (set to hit the markets on March 2017) has allowed the web design to be expressed more on the web. Now the main challenge is to understand how these web layout procedures perform in a world of responsive designing.Some examples of what we expect are the browsers that support CSS grid, like Firefox Nightly, Safari Technical Preview, and Chrome Canary.
SVGs:-
Web designers and developers gain a lot of benefits through SVG or scalable vector graphics as compared to conventional formats like JPG, PNG, and GIF.
The main benefits of SVGs are visible from its name: scalable and vector. SVGs are vector based (mathematical description of an object and its shape) instead of being pixel or raster based. The reason for SVGs to look great on any screen and device is that they are resolution independent.This is not all SVGs also top the list because they don’t need HTTP requests at all. If you run a page speed test of your website then you will see that HTTP requests slow down the speed of the site but not with SVGs. Another advantage of these is that you can animate them too.
Tools based on constraint:-
The approach of how we used to browse and built for the web is completely changed by the responsive design. But it hasn’t really transformed the working of design tools. Popular designing tools need you to build the same screen over and over again according to changing resolutions of screens.
This usage of time on mere re doing processes just can t be afforded in an industry where everything needs to be done rapidly at a pace. So new design tools that use constraints for their working and lower the amount of work for designers which they had to do again and again for constructing layouts for different devices are becoming famous.
Bright colors:-
In 2017 designers are and will infuse more aesthetics into the designed work. In most of the cases being color full is the only answer. See for yourself Asana’s layout and Instagram’s colour enriched representation.
But it is not all about the enthusiastic and bright mixing of colors, gradients have also re-entered and gave the conventional styles blending and enrichment which was missing earlier. With the rebirth of bold gradients and ever bright hues, I look forward to this new trend to prosper more in the future.
Animation is here to stay:-
Animation has always been a key player in the digital surfaces for the past few years and it will continue to progress even more in 2017. We expect the animations to become more refined and prominent as designers are working with more visual tools than ever before to innovate more attractive, engaging and smile initiating animations.
In 2016 Val Head a guru of animation expressed that designers should keep their brand voice in their minds while creating animations as this makes sure they are enhancing the frequency which content creators have aimed for. This makes the animations more meaningful, enhancing the brand functions instead of creating headaches for the people.
Uniqueness in Layouts:-
In the last few years especially in 2016, we heard and read the debate that web design has lost its charm and is just like a body without a soul. Web design has fallen over may be an exaggerated argument but any creator looking for more enthusiastic ways to present its content to the people cannot be blamed also. One luring method for that has changed or broke the trend of box-centric layouts; responsive design is to be blamed for the broken grid.
This ongoing trend of boxy layouts which we are seeing for quite a while now with a lot of variety and visually jarring techniques needs a break or should be put on hold.
Go for flexbox:-
If you haven’t tried the new flexbox up till now, go for it immediately. The new CSS layout module has got excellent responsive affability in its functioning and it also is very effective in making sense to visual designers who manipulate objects on the canvas by using the tools which align and distribute for the likes of illustrator and sketch.
Now all the modern day browsers except IE11 support the flexbox fully. So there is no point in stopping yourself from using flexbox.Flexbox may take some time in getting used to it if you feel ease in using other layout modules. If ever you need help to create new layouts don’t forget to try the flexbox.
CSS Grid layouts:-
According to Chris House, who created “A Complete Guide to Grid” says that the first module which is designed especially for solving layout problems is the Grid CSS. The problem is that we all have hacked our way since we are making websites.
Although flexbox does help us in solving very irritating and long-held problems of web design like vertical centring, surely flexbox was not made to be used for full page layouts (although flexbox posses the capability of it).On the other hand, Grid was specially intended to be used for full page layouts. Grid just like flexbox allows the rearranging of content easily to suit different media queries.If you wanna start CSS grid right away, here is how you can do itGo to chrome://flags and enable "experimental web platform features ( in Google Chrome)Go to opera://flags and enable "experimental web platform features” (In Opera browser)Enable the layout.CSS Grid-enabled or install Firefox Nightly (in firefox)
Content delivery and personalization:-
Content personalization has always been “in” in the content circles for quite a long time now, but it seems that no has perfected the art yet. The basic purpose is to serve the content which is based on these characteristics
Demographics:
Who the visitors are and from where they are coming? (personally and/or professionally)
Behavior:
What is the activity of the visitor? What was their activity in the past on your site?
Context:
Which device and browser are being used by the visitor? How did they come to the site? Are they logged out or logged in?
Fubiz uses “Creativity Finder,” to specialize in personalization, which is in a conversational-style to allow you to select from a variety of predetermined options about your location, what are you looking for and especially you. It may be low tech it offers convenience and ease which may not be available from other platforms.
More concentration on natural conversation and bots:-
2016 was a year of the bot, whether the bots triumphs have just started or it was just a casual launch, the debate is going to go long. 2017 may see lots of bots appearing on your screens if their volume launches on Google,s deep amalgamation of assistant into android.
Bots are more persuasive idea because of their specific instantiation, the conversation is an interface. We may see this idea to influence the design work in 2017.Possible impacts of it includeMore interest in human language which is great news for content strategists.Content strategists can now act as both developers and UX designersMore investment expected in creative communities and user-generated contentIn 2017 it is expected that more natural languages might just shift the pattern from form to the conversation.
Design and content to see more peek:-
In 2016 a lot of blogs were created by design teams to provide insights and into the process and to a certain extent tried to humanize the brand. But before this kind of content was used to focus mainly on recruitment which attracted new service providers by sending a sense of how to design, engineer, or write within a specific firm.
Over the course of 2016, a number of design teams created and popularized their own blogs as a way to offer insights into the process and, perhaps, humanize the brand to a certain extent.The focus shifted in 3 directions in 2016
- Brand
- Humanization
- Helpfulness
These three things may be hard to separate as the most popular design blogs do all these three points with flamboyance. These three seem to have a specific focus that separates them more than Brand X’s design team blog. But it may not be obvious.
As this design as succeeded and with that the content, wait for many more like these in 2017.
Creation of codes in new ways:-
According to Carson Miller “coding may start to look very different in the days to come. It may also happen that the difference between development and design may also be no longer visible”.
Austin Knight writes “a lot of developers and designers I know like to work visually but also want to in codes where necessary”.Behind this upcoming trend and reality, there are many motives like the need for fast and iterative development of the product users are looking for the balance between the outputs and inputs like a lot of painters don’t like to paint with code.
Virtual Reality is a reality:-
We already believe and developed a tendency that the web is an alternate reality, but this may be only the starting. But no one can also deny that virtual reality is going to make waves in the year 2017 even if the browsers don’t readily support it. If you want to try it go and try the virtual reality site.
