Extreme Website Makeover: Is It Runway Ready?
We all hear about how we should keep up with fashion trends and cannot be caught dead wearing last year’s style in public. The same goes for website design. It might be a concept that you haven’t thought about before but, it is definitely worth going through your site to check that everything is as up-to-date as possible. Having a tracker, wall-to-wall text, or animated GIFS may cause your audience to avert their eyes to a competitor website that follows the design trends, just like your friends’ gaze if you wear white after Labor Day. We are going to highlight the trends of the past two decades to what is popular now, and how you can give your website the fashion makeover it needs.
Early 90s Trends
HTML was rising in popularity in the 90s. Website design had a fairly simple layout with a lot of text, very little graphics, and usually just a single column running a million miles down the page. Design eventually became extremely heavy with cringe worthy visuals and media, such as neon text, animated GIFs, and MIDI background music. Along with dark backgrounds, sometimes you had the twinkling stars or a small picture that was tiled throughout the background which made the design extremely busy. Hit counters were a trendy way for visitors to see how popular a website was, and for owners to track basic demographics.
Website builders, like Geocities and Angelfire, gave anyone the ability to design websites easily and affordably. These gave you a free url, usually containing the name of the builder site in it, but was extremely limited in aesthetically pleasing design options.
2000 Trends
Web design started to become more sophisticated around this time. The basic design got simpler and more user-friendly. The navigation bar was now a great place to save room on the homepage, so visitors were not scrolling to infinity and beyond to find what they wanted. Instead of using text to link a page, website owners were now using images to link them. This was also the start of social media websites, like MySpace.
Current Trends
We have come a long way in regards to website design in such a short period of time. Trends today are focused on simplicity and a clean look. There are also mobile functions for those accessing the website by smartphones or tablets. Businesses are now getting more creative with custom photography and graphic design. Images, typography, and colors are edging towards a vintage feel.
Gradation in colors are becoming a trend also in 2017. This technique is great for making a boring photo more interesting. This is also used for not only single photos but as a base template design for an entire website. Utilizing parallax is incredibly popular right now. This is where as you scroll, boxes with text pass by the underlying image or images in the background. Navigation bars are also getting a makeover with placement, design, and focus.
There are just so many exciting design features today that you really can get creative, and have an amazingly simple website with impeccable design that your audience will love to use.
