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Saturday, January 23, 2016

Top Web Design Trends for 2016




Top Web Design Trends for 2016

Top Web Design Trends for 2016

Web design is a fast-paced industry and being able to predict top trends ahead of time will give your designs the extra edge that sets them apart. We’ve taken the time to gather up our predictions for the top web design trends of 2016 so let’s dive right in.

What Drives Change in Web Design?

Before we give our predictions, it's important to understand the powerful forces that can change in web design:
Technology: advancements in the available technology and tools, both to access and build websites, largely determines what designers and developers can do.
Users: the prevalent ways web visitors, designers and developers use the available technology, shape the web design landscape and push its boundaries in a forward-looking direction.

Other creative fields:
 what’s trending in other creative fields like graphic design and fashion, eventually finds its way into web design and vice versa. Creativity survives on mixing and matching ideas to convey emotions and propose solutions.
Most of us nowadays are multi-device users and expect a website to just work and look gorgeous, no matter the device we use.
Responsive Web Design (RWD), serving the same HTML code to all devices and using CSS to alter the appearance of the page on the device, is the prevalent technique and what Google recommends to build mobile-friendly websites. Therefore, some of the trends in my list illustrate approaches to web design that are most suited to RWD.
Taking the drivers above as guiding principles, here’s our list of 2016 web design trends.

Minimalism and Flat Design 2.0

Minimalism has boomed in 2015 and will continue to go strong in 2016. It’s the perfect style for RWD: no clutter, focus on what’s important, clever use of generous white space. In other words: Less is more.
A popular web design approach that goes very well together with the minimalist philosophy is flat design, or its latest incarnation Flat 2.0.
Google Material Design well represents Flat 2.0 principles: the metaphor of the material world with the clever play of shadows, light and movement, gives users visual clues of their interaction with a website.
Fundamental components of print-based design like gridsnegative spacebright,vibrant colors and stunning imagery, convey meaning and hierarchy while creating engaging experiences.

While flat design has so far ruthlessly eliminated any hint of rounded corners, drop shadows or color gradients, Flat 2.0 will start experimenting with minimal texturesand subtle gradients.

Nerdy Vintage Style from the ‘80s

The colorful era of bulky computers and massive cell phones of the early ‘80s and ‘90s is the main source of inspiration for the latest flavor of the vintage trend on the web. Pixelated icons and text, galactic backgrounds and interactive moving stars and planets will be around a lot in 2016 web design.


Interactive Immersive Experiences

As humans, we’re storytellers and lovers of good stories by nature. Thanks to themagic of HTML5 canvasCSS3 transitions and animations, state of the art JavaScript APIs like WebGL and Greensock, as well as the power of hardware acceleration, storytelling on the web will be even more immersive and interactive.
Browsing the web on mobile devices has made users more accustomed to long scrolls. Website designs that are capable of telling a great story keep users engaged with the content and entice them to keep scrolling to the bottom of the page.

Vibrant Custom Illustrations and Iconography

High pixel density monitors have revealed how standard image formats don't always work as expected on the modern web. Using .jpg and .png files can result in a pixelated look on retina displays, which spoils the aesthetics of a website.
Today, wider browser support for Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) and easily implemented icon fonts are a fantastic answer to this problem. As a consequence, we’ll see more web designs showcasing colorful custom illustrations, as well as stylish hand-drawn icon fonts and SVG icons that remain crisp and beautiful at any screen resolution.

Typography that Makes a Statement

Typography is a central component of great design and branding, the more so on the Internet, where consuming information is the main goal visitors have as they land on your page.
Thanks to services like Google Fonts and Typekit, which make custom fonts readily available and easy to use on the web, gone are the days when web designers were limited to a few system fonts.
Flat design and minimalism already harness the power of big, dramatic typefaces to make a strong statement. The forthcoming year will see more adventurous use of artistic fonts and creative type treatments on websites.

HD Visual Assets

Increased bandwidth, wide browser support of HTML5 video, and ways to serve high resolution graphical assets selectively to devices with retina screens, all add to the popularity of gorgeous HD background images and videos on websites growing even stronger in 2016.


Wider browser support for CSS3 background blending can very well lead to the application of dramatic artistic effects on images, which are created directly in the browser with a few lines of CSS code.

Cinemagraphs are also enjoying widespread favor. These are still images with a selected animated portion, usually a subtle detail that aptly draws the attention of website visitors. They’re not new, but the success of “live photos” on the latest iPhones, which look quite close to cinemagraphs, and robust browser support for HTML5 canvas, play a key role in cinemagraphs being listed as a design trend of 2016.



Less Rigid Grids
Grid-based layouts, especially Pinterest-like cards layouts, are still very popular today. Minimalism, flat design and popular frontend frameworks like Bootstrap, which make applying grids a breeze, have all contributed to the success of structured, grid-based web layouts.
2016 will see more playful web layouts that deviate from a rigid grid design. Certainly, storytelling and high interactivity encourage this kind of soft rebellion against the classic grid.


With CSS3 Shapes gaining better support in the near future, it’s my strong wish that you’ll see more designs and web components breaking out of the standard rectangle box shape. Soft edges and rounded contours would enhance the composition of elements and their inter-relation on the web page. A great web design demo like Alice in Wonderland made by Adobe and the French agencyultranoir could become a real production website in 2016.
These web design trends are not self-contained, sealed compartments. Dramatic typography works great on top of HD photos and videos. Immersive storytelling goes beautifully well together with custom typographic elements and colorful illustrations.
As the latest web standards keep gaining browser support, variety and uniqueness in design will be more noticeable on the web and only your creativity is the limit to what you can do in the browser.

10 Graphic and Web Design Tools That Will Explode in 2016

10 Graphic and Web Design Tools That Will Explode in 2016

10 Graphic and Web Design Tools That Will Explode in 2016

If you’re a designer, it’s no longer enough to just know Photoshop. Thanks to the explosion of the web and mobile, there’s a whole range of new apps and tools that can help you do your job. But this is a good thing. It’s no longer a case of one size fits all. Every day there are new options you can add to your toolkit that can help you get the job done. We’ve compiled a list of 10 of the best graphic and web design tools that will be on the rise in 2016. Get ahead of the curve and get familiar with them today.

1. The Astropad Graphics Tablet

If you don’t have a Wacom, this is the next best thing. The Astropad lets you turn your iPad into a graphic tablet. It even features palm rejection, which means you can rest your hand on it while you draw.
Turn your iPhone/iPad into a professional graphics tablet. Use your iPhone/iPad to draw directly into Photoshop

2. Adobe Color CC

In addition to the usual suspects like Photoshop and Illustrator, the Adobe suite these days includes a wide range of mobile apps and handy widgets. One such must-have is Adobe Color CC. Formerly known as Kuler, Adobe Color CC lets you create and store color palettes and use them across your designs, even in the cloud.
ColorCC

3. Adobe Comp CC

At the beginning of the design process, it helps sometimes to be able to put together a few simple, freeform sketches that sum up your idea. At these times, opening up Photoshop is probably overkill. That’s when you need Adobe Comp CC. It’s an iPad app that lets you trace out a few ideas with just a swipe and a pinch, and have them turn into neat comps.
AdobeComps

4. FontBook

The built-in tools for managing fonts on a Mac or PC aren’t all that crash hot. What’s missing is a comprehensive suite that lets you see all the fonts on your system, as well as browse for new ones on the market. That’s exactly whatFontBook lets you do.
Fontbook

5. Adobe Illustrator Draw

Adobe Illustrator Draw takes the capability of Illustrator and combines it with the functionality of a tablet. The app lets you draw to your heart’s content, with no mouse or graphic pen needed.
IllustratorDraw

6. Paper

One of the most beautiful apps on the iPad, Paper by FiftyThree is another tool that lets you create beautiful designs. The app is built around on screen sketchbooks, allowing you to group your sketches by category. An optional stylus is available.
Paper

7. Canva

If you haven’t heard of Canva yet, there’s a good chance you will in 2016. Canva is an online graphic design platform that aims to empower ordinary folks in creating their own designs. No longer should graphic design be the sole dominion of those with a black turtleneck or a degree in fine arts, Canva wants anyone and everyone to be able to design their own graphics.
Canva

8. Sketch

Already one of the most commonly used new design apps, Sketch will no doubt grow in popularity in 2016. Sketch is a favorite amongst app designers and offers a number of capabilities that make it a strong Photoshop alternative for some use cases.
Sketch

9. Noun Project

Noun Project started off as a website, but has since grown to include an Adobe widget that lets users use a wide range of symbols and shapes from designers around the world.
NounProject

10. Slack

Slack has exploded in popularity in the past few years and shows no signs of slowing in 2016. It’s a handy team communication tool that allows everyone in your project to stay on the right page. And it’s even fun to use.
Slack

Anything you'd like to add?

There you have it. 10 awesome web and graphic design tools that should be on the top of your shopping list in 2016 if you want to get productive. What tools do you use? Let us know in the comments.
References
http://www.digitalartsonline.co.uk/features/creative-software/12-best-ipad-apps-for-designers/

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