Web design trends update summer 2019

At the start of the year, we published a blog on five of the best web design trends for 2019. The article included trends such as broken grid layouts, brutalism and retro.

As with all forms of fashion, though, since then, a few more styles have fallen into favour with web designers.

In this article, we’ll look at seven emerging trends and reveal some examples of best practice when it comes to each one.

Whether you’re the sort of web designer who embraces fashions or one who prefers to rebel against them, you should find a little inspiration to action in the below.

Liquidity

Web designers and SEO experts have always put the flow of a website on a pedestal in the respect that readers stay on a page longer if there’s a natural flow to the layout and content of pages. In summer 2019, another kind of flow has gained its own gravity in the world of web design. That’s the sort of flow that’s linked to liquids. More and more designers are using elements like bubbles, waves and water to inspire the animation and ambience of their web pages.

A prime example can be found on the website This Is Sleep, where the matt grey homepage features a wave graphic that gently moves around the right-hand side of the page, revealing a photograph underneath. Then there’s the website of Studio Gusto, a playlist sharing site, that features images of each playlist curator/DJ inside an ebbing bubble.

Big screen video

It goes without saying that video has become an increasingly important part of web design in recent years. In summer 2019, designers are taking the inclusion of video up to the next level.

Designers for brands like Samsung are treating their webpages like movie theatre screens. Footage with Hollywood-worthy storylines and Spielberg-standard camera angles now occupies entire homepages. Users have to click on a tucked away icon to reveal menu options that will take them to the nitty gritty of the product information.

Another great example of a website that harnesses these big screen effects is that of leather product producer Couro Azul. Close-ups of the seamless stitching on leather products such as car seats and steering wheels fill the homepage alongside slow-motion footage from inside the brand’s factories. After multiple cinematic shots, the screen splits into two with the video continuing on the right-hand side and a more matt, colour-black, effect taking over the left side of the screen.

Interaction

Web designers are becoming more and more like museum curators in their thinking about their work. Just as museum curators are making their attractions more compelling by adding hands-on elements to them, web designers are making their webpages more interactive, too.

The designers at Make Me Pulse have hit a home run with their interactive website. Visitors to this website can do everything from growing their own animated flowers out of the homepage to controlling the wings of a flying bird to make it speed up over the ocean.

Make Me Pulse is a marketing application company and the website above was designed to show off just what can be achieved with the latest interactive website effects. The company admits that some of these effects won’t work with all clients. For example, you can’t imagine customers being particularly open to growing flowers on the HM Revenue and Customs website when all they want to do is pay their tax return fees. However, it’s certainly food for thought for designers wanting to make their web pages more immersive.

Cursor effects

Cursor effects bring a number of benefits to web pages. They can help with navigation and add a quirky quality to pages.

The website for clothing retailer Femme & Fierce is a great example of the power of cursor effects. In one effect, the user scrolls over an outfit and a number of animated eyes – wide with wonder – explode from the product and remain there blinking their eyelashes while the user continues to look at the product.

Kaleidoscope graphics

Kaleidoscopes come with many connotations. First and foremost, they’re nostalgic – bringing back hopefully happy childhood memories. Secondly, they’re connected to fun. Then there’s the symmetry element. Countless scientific and psychological research studies show that humans are attracted to symmetry and seek it out where possible. This goes some way to explaining why designers are increasingly using kaleidoscopic graphics, animations and designs in their work.

A great example of the use of kaleidoscopic design to enhance the content of web pages can be found on the website for OranjeBitter Festival in Rotterdam.

Back to black

A decade ago, it was one of the commandments of web design that you should never use black as a background. Today, that rule has been well and truly ripped up. In fact, in summer 2019, one in 10 of the websites most hotly rated by juries of web designers go big on the colour black.

Examples include Zero Studio’s birthday site, French digital agency Ultra Noir and website Ibiza Music Artists.

Tate-worthy artwork

While many designers are turning to the big screen style videos, mentioned above, to make their web pages increasingly memorable, others are opting to use contemporary artworks that wouldn’t be out of place on the Turner Prize shortlist.

Take the website for Kikk Festival. The homepage features the image of an island that turns into the head and shoulders of a gorilla beneath the waterline. It’s as surreal as a Salvador Dali painting and extremely hard to forget.