Simplicity: The Present and Future Trend of Design
Way back in March, we talked about the “Current Design Trends to Use in Your Next Website Redesign.” We explained a whole bunch of different design trends, things like rich content, strong typography, big, bold imagery…and so on. But, there’s one overall design trend that we didn’t explicitly mention in that post: Simplicity.
Websites are getting simpler. They’re getting easier to ready, easier to digest, easier for your eye to take in. And, with the way things are going, we can only expect this simplicity in current website trends to continue. Simplicity – it’s the present and future trend of design. Here’s why.
Simplicity: The Present and Future Trend of Design
Swiping is the new scrolling
How often do you take your mouse (when you’re on a Desktop) and click the “down” scroll button as the bottom right of your screen? Hardly, if ever, is our guess. No, you simply scroll down using the wheel of your mouse, or maybe your down arrow keys.
And that’s if you’re on a Desktop.
If you’re on mobile, what do you do? You swipe. Swipe your thumb up to make the page scroll down. Swipe your thumb down to make the page scroll up. Even swipe your thumb left to right to go back a page.
Because there’s so much swiping, modern Waukesha web design – and all other design – is built to reflect that. Designs have less items to click and more scrolling. And with more scrolling comes…
The death of the fold
Remember how important it used to be to get all the vital information at the top of the “fold?” You could basically throw away information that wasn’t above the fold. But now, the fold is irrelevant. Users are going to just swipe, swipe, swipe their way to the bottom of the page – or to the point where they lose interest.
Because of the death of the fold, imagery is big, bold and beautiful. How many sites have you seen that start out with an image like this one to the right? That’s because the imagery is appealing to the eye and easy to swipe through.
Let’s sum up: Because users are comfortable swiping their way through a website, current web design has the opportunity to build long, long pages. These pages take up a lot of space vertically and feature big, beautiful imagery.
The domination of mobile
Lastly, the domination of mobile as the chief tool for accessing the Internet. Because of the power of mobile, web designers are starting to design with mobile in mind – if not first, then in line with desktop.
Users have a limited attention span, especially on mobile. Thus, simpler sites reach target audiences better. Simple sites get to the point. They are easy to get to, easy to swipe, easy to click. Enough with cluttered, content-heavy websites. Enough with websites that are difficult to scan and slow to load. On with simplicity in Waukesha web design!
Simplicity – it’s the present and future trend of design.
