Website Design Blog. Evoart

After reading Paul Boag’s brief article about emerging design trends, I felt inspired to write something. Being a designer, I think its interesting to see how design trends change over time. Certainly in the short space of time Ive been involved in design things have progressed, and In five years time things will have no doubt changed even further, but for now its all about big footers, focus on content, and sexy typography!

5. F*ck the Fold!

Although many people still hark on about having your most important content above the fold (that mythical line before you have to ’scroll down’ the page), its seemingly less important these days. Obviously key elements like navigation should always be above the fold. Its no good hiding your nav away in some obscure place, or positioning it right at the bottom of your site, as know one will bother to look for it, they’ll just go elsewhere.

Visitors to sites now days tend to expect to scroll down to find content, so its not quite as important as it might have been a few years ago to cram the top portion of your site with every last bit of your main content. AOL even did a small study on one of their sites which showed the most popular link was actually in the footer area at the bottom of their 15,000 pixel high page! Thats AOL for you ;). The fact that ‘the fold’ is becoming less important gives us as web designers a little more leeway in the way we in which we structure our sites, which can’t be a bad thing.

Personally I don’t fully agree with completely abandoning the rule of the fold. I still think that people on the web tend to scan over websites, so having your main areas/products visible as soon as a visitor lands on the site, means they’re more likely to catch there eye. People hate to spend time looking for things online - they want the information straight away as its so readily available on the internet. However, on the flip side, if your content is compelling enough, and the design intriguing, people will stick around, scroll down and read the whole of your site. Its a tough one to decide on an answer. I think we shouldn’t let it limit our creativeness. Let me know your opinions in the comments.

If your interested in learning more about this debate, then I highly recommend this article over at Boxes and Arrows.

4. Big, Sexy Fonts.

Having recently just written about using type effectively on the web, you will have guessed that Im greatly in favour of using typography well online. For too long we’ve been complaining about the limiting default fonts. But now with a splash of CSS we can change all that - hell, we can even makes Times look sexy! After all making your typography look great isn’t just about the font itself, its about the spacing, leading and the colour.

These days typography on the web tends to be getting much larger. Lets face it, no one wants to be squinting at their monitor trying to read your content, so designers have capitalised, and realised that big bold fonts can be effective too.

Another example of stylish type online

Rikcat Industries

3. More Functional Footers.

One of my favourite design trends of late is functional footers. Websites of the past just used footers as a place to dump all the things that didn’t belong, or wouldn’t fit anywhere else on the website. A lot of the time content was so unimportant that designers styled the text in footers to be extreme light grey so it was almost totally unreadable. Now days, however, a footer can make or break a site, and nine times out of ten they’re quite extravagant. Footers are definitely considered a much more important design element, with some really elaborate ones being designed that even contain some of the sites most valuable content. You can see a few quick examples of well designed footers over at Tutorial-Blog.

2. Textures & Patterns.

If you browse any design showcase like CSS Remix for 10 minutes, your almost guaranteed to come across a site that makes use of textures or patterns. The use of textures and patterns as background images to give depth to websites is huge right now. Obviously not all designs suit rusted or wooden style backgrounds, but if used correctly they can make your site stand out and give it a really distinctive look and feel. Check out SquidFingers for awesome free patterns, and DeviantArt for some textures. Always remember to read the terms of use though!

More examples of Patterns and Textures

Invite Share
Rob Good Latte
Workbench Music

1. Focus on Content & Clear Area Divisions.

With blogging becoming increasingly popular, and the fact that the majority of websites purpose is to communicate a message or sell a product, the focus for most websites tends to be content. The way in which designers structure they’re sites seems to be changing, with more three column layouts and simple interfaces springing up all over the place. I think a great example is Chris Shiflett’s blog where the design is simple, but extremely elegant and well thought out. Everything is easy to find, and exceptionally easy to read with each area of focus clearly divided into specific areas.

Examples of Divisions and focus on Content

Alignment Nashville
Cool Boom
Score Reviews
HTML Life
Le Moulin de Sauvage

What do you thinks popular right now?

I hope you’ve enjoyed my quick sum-up of what I believe to be popular design trends of 2007. What I’d really like to know are your opinions though, and exactly what you think the trends of 2007 so far are. One of the reasons I wrote this was so that in a years time, or even longer I could look back and see how things have changed in the design world. I wonder what will be all the rage then - hmmm, interesting stuff!