So far the year 2012 has brought upon some amazing changes in design and Internet technology. Web development has become a much smoother subject to jump into learning, not to mention the countless open source libraries useful in streamlining the process. And yet it seems the global design community is far from throwing in the towel.
I want to introduce what have been grown very rapidly over the past year. These trends encompass web and graphics design techniques which will likely play a big role moving into 2012. You have probably seen a few of these represented throughout many of your favorite sites online.
Responsive Interface Design
The average user’s experience is possibly the most important aspect to consider when designing a website. You want page elements to respond quickly to keyboard/mouse input and behave as expected. Some examples may include side fly-out menus, drop-down boxes, and popup windows.
Including famous JavaScript libraries such as MooTools and jQuery, it has become much easier to animate these features and even more. Most modern-day browsers support this code and even gracefully degrade when the scripts aren’t available. Ultimately you want to make the user feel comfortable when interacting with anywhere in the design.
Touchscreen Devices
The popularity of iPhone and iPad devices along with Android-powered phones means you will have visitors fully interacting with your pages through touch commands. This has to become a realistic consideration with every design mockup. Trends in mobile web design have shown that building an entirely separate mobile theme often provides the best results. In this way you can keep all the dynamic content in place on your main layout while serving up a slimmed version of the site to mobile users.
Tons Of Freebies!
Who can say they honestly don’t enjoy free downloads? Web designers have been sharing their content online for years, but only recently has this become a very popular trend among digital artists. There have been a few communities built specifically around offering free downloads for web and graphic designers.
Google is great tool to find freebies online,Two of my personal favorites are Download PSD and Designmoo, both of which get updated frequently by top-quality members. Additionally the Hongkiat Freebies archive has plenty of sweet goodies to check out. In any era before it has literally never been this easy to download free web interfaces, layouts, logos, banners, and practically any other type of PSD/AI file!
HTML5 & CSS3 Standards
I can only see good things for the future of HTML5/CSS3 web development. Front-end designers are often overlooked in today’s field, yet they serve such a great importance to the entire composition process. Try not to squeeze yourself into any set ‘label’ based on the techniques you know and practice daily. We offer a beginner’s how-to guide for HTML5/CSS3 coding if you feel the need to catch up.
Online Magazines
Speaking about WordPress themes we should also bring up the quickly-adopted success of online magazines. These websites are not so different from any generic WordPress blog aside from the general structure and page layout. You can spot these larger images by the sheer presentation of their home page, and collection of authors writing for the site.
As magazines begin moving online they will become a source of income for many writers. Granted a topic such as ‘web design’ targets a smaller niche than, say, gaming or economics. But the fact that we’re seeing more design magazines online than print goes to show where the world may be heading in the years to come.
Dynamic Typography
Fonts are a big part of the sphere encompassing web design tradition. The most notable fonts including Arial, Helvetica, Georgia, and Trebuchet MS have been around for years now. Although they continue to serve a deep purpose in web standards, there are plenty of alternate options for advanced webpage typography.
Oversized Icons
This unique trend semi-originates from the popularity of Mac OS X icon designs. As programmers began to launch websites for their Mac applications we all too frequently have seen the enormous sizes represented in branding. Accordingly this trend has also been picked up through iOS developers and now comfortably rests within modern design culture.
These ideas are only some of the more popular trends I have noticed gaining precedence throughout 2012. Hope 2013 will bring some new innovations and trends in web designing.
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