A website is a storefront of your business. To make sure it resonates with your audience, it should be user-friendly, eye-catching, and modern. However, the quality of being ‘modern’ is fleeting, and something that was all the rage yesterday becomes irreversibly outdated today. In this post, we collected the hottest web design trends for 2023 to help you build a digital platform that meets current expectations.
New Minimalism
Minimalism is one of the most enduring trends, especially when it comes to websites representing the high-tech sector. You can easily recognize such websites by refined interfaces, ample free space, as well as contrasting design elements.
One of the benefits of minimalistic design is that it helps focus user attention on the main thing – content (text and images). From the perspective of users, these websites are convenient and easy to navigate. On the other hand, brands have a chance to create a digital product or platform that looks aesthetically pleasing and upscale.
Oftentimes, minimalistic web designs take advantage of hidden navigation meaning that links hide behind icons or buttons. Users have to click on them to see the menu and other structural elements. When implementing hidden navigation, it is vital to make the interface intuitive. Otherwise, you may accidentally impair user experience.
Minimalism is likely to continue to be the dominant trend in the upcoming years due to its compatibility with mobile web designs.
Brutalism in Web Design
One of the hottest web design trends for 2023 is brutalism and neo-brutalism. Even industry experts are not quite sure what the difference is between the two styles, but it is common to believe that neo-brutalism is somewhat neater. Plus, it tends to display certain elements of minimalism and flat design.
Websites showcasing brutalism are made deliberately crude and rugged. Here, functionality and meaning are the main priorities while aesthetics is just a secondary consideration. Brutalism has similar features to minimalism but it is bolder, heavier, and less precise.
Unlike minimalism, brutalism often overlooks the importance of colours, fonts, and the proportionality of design elements. We can even notice an inclination to oversimplification when designers rely on the most standard fronts (such as Arial), buttons, and other web elements.
Retro Web Designs
The trend, which took the web design community by storm in 2022, isn’t going to lose momentum in 2023. It stemmed from the general nostalgia for the past, when everything was simpler and clearer, including the Internet space. Increasingly, we can come upon websites that take us back to the past thanks to their stylistic choices. When it comes to visual impact, this trend offers a couple of curious options:
- Memphis design is the 1980s aesthetics that makes use of pop art, geometric patterns, bold pastel and neon colours, etc.
- Y2K aesthetics is a comeback of styles popular at the beginning of the new millennium – text layouts, small or low-resolution images, pixel art, simple fonts, a burst of mismatched colours, etc.
Retro designs cannot boast versatility. They lend themselves well to barbershops, fashion brands, creative businesses, and promo pages wishing to create a wow effect. However, if your goal is a website for an average user who, rather than being impressed, wants to find information and make a conversion, it’s best to choose something more traditional.
Interactive Animation
Interactive animation implies user interaction with a website and its components. The most prominent examples of this trend are animated menus and other clickable elements, texts with a fade-in effect, smooth scrolling, etc. Here are a few on-trend solutions to make your website livelier:
- Parallax scrolling uses different speeds for moving foreground and background to engage a user. Scrolling activates animation and the gradual emergence of text and images.
- Video backdrops are a great solution to grab user attention in no time. As users interact with your website, dynamic backgrounds are able to highlight the most important message your brand wants to send.
- Micro-animation is triggered when a user performs a certain action. For example, after clicking a button, it shifts or changes its size. Other manifestations of micro-animation are the appearance of text, prompts, or headings in response to user actions.
Visualized interactivity allows creating a sense of volume and depth. It is your best bet if you want to immerse users in the unique atmosphere of your brand. Along with that, dynamic content and animated elements command more attention and contribute to increased conversion.
Custom Illustrations
Stock images are gradually becoming relics of the past. A new trend is coming to replace them – illustrations carefully created specifically for a particular brand or purpose. The most peculiar thing about this trend is deliberate hand-made or craftcore aesthetics.
It is more and more common to see graphics assembled from scribbles, handwritten texts, stickers, and collages. Some designers even draw a picture on a piece of paper, scan it, and incorporate it into a website. Such an approach gives users a feeling of affinity and sincerity as if they were flipping through someone’s carefully crafted album or scrapbook.
3D Elements
Device performance is on the rise and web designers are no longer limited to simple texts or lightweight images for the sake of fast loading. Now, they are looking closely at 3D graphics. Static and animated, these elements add depth to the site, make it more dynamic and memorable, and most importantly, engage attention.
Some designers even go one step further and offer immersive scrolling that takes a user on a journey through the digital space. A website itself becomes a 3D world with its own atmosphere and soundtrack, and a user is prompted to explore it.
Such designs are a challenge to traditional layouts revolving around texts and call-to-actions. They are a breath of fresh air, a display of brand’s individuality, and a sure-fire way to make a lasting impression.
Of course, not every brand can benefit from 3D aesthetics due to its high cost and complexity. However, if you’re looking for a wow-effect, especially for the short term, an immersive 3D design will suit you down to the ground.
Typography Revolution
Some web design trends are the opposite of multimedia and animation. Instead of packing webpages to the brim with images and graphics, they suggest going back to the roots and opting for text-based layouts. This results in an aesthetic of printed publications, which harmoniously coexists with the minimalist trend. That being said, the typography we see on the pages of these digital ‘publications’ is far from traditional.
One of the most popular ways to make users take notice is the combination of two different fonts in the same sentence. Besides an auxiliary typeface, it is not uncommon to meet stretched, compressed, or distorted characters.
Along with it, designers no longer place text strictly horizontally. Instead, they experiment with angling and mirroring, as well as use styles that make individual letters float above or fall below a line.
Creative typography is not a go-to solution for an average website. Rather, it will come in handy for projects and concepts wishing to stand out.
Web Design Trends for 2023: Final Thoughts
As you can see, web design trends for 2023 have opposite directions. On the one hand, we see a predominance of clean designs where white space helps focus attention on your message. On the other hand, minimalism competes with daring designs inspired by the past (such as Y2K aesthetics) or vice versa, the future (3D immersion). Which approach to choose is up to you. The main thing is that you consider the personality of your brand and the needs of your audience.
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