Web Design Trends You Need to Know About: 2022 Edition

Trust us. We understand that web design can be tricky sometimes, and keeping up with trending styles can sometimes feel overwhelming. We expect to see truly engaging changes in the web design industry this year and we are going to fill you in on what's new.
 
The latest web design trends of 2022 will certainly create an immersive and modern experience for users. Here is a little guide we made for you to stay ahead of the competition! Let's get started!


 
Templates That Are Proven to Work: Keep It Simple 
There is absolutely nothing wrong with trying a technique that has been confirmed to be successful in the past! As a matter of fact, thanks to the revival of 90's pop culture, it has actually become common to rejuvenate the retro style for your site design. Here's a useful list of a few templates the professionals have been using lately!
 
You Can Always Go With Aesthetic Minimalism
You can't have a template list without mentioning the sleek experience of minimalist design. Aesthetic minimalism is a new web design trend that accentuates the significance of the website's visual quality. An uncluttered and neat design is proven to expand the user’s satisfaction, making every element of each page as simple as possible, yet still appealing to the eye.


 
Complicated or busy designs can mask the slightest errors and shortcomings, but minimalist sites offer the best coverage. Without the distractions of an overly-dynamic design, you will be able to catch the small mistakes that fall through the cracks a lot easier.

Note: All the examples shown within this blog post are quick plays on our existing website design. They are only meant to give you a visual reference to the style we are describing. While these were fun to create, most of them would never get used as an actual website design. Though they may make you think out of the box a bit and open you up to trying something different.
 
The Unique Experience of Memphis Design
Now we have the other end of the design spectrum, Memphis design. It is one of the defining aesthetics of the past and an iconic style dating back to the 1980s. In the industry, it is periodically said to be a gaudy style by critics. This is due to the use of several disorderly patterns and shapes together.


 
Back when the internet was still young, the implementation of Memphis design was basically the refusal of minimalism, making web design more colorful and adventurous than it has ever been in history. And this still rings true today in modern web design. Minimalistic techniques when designing, although very sleek and convenient, have led to an over-saturated market of websites that (while proven to be intuitive) are becoming uniform and almost too mainstream at this point.
 
Ultimately, this is why many web designers have turned to a unique Memphis design. It is a layout that encapsulates a breath of fresh air and a colorful experience that your competition won't see coming.
 
The Retro Revolution
As the birth of the shared internet begins to become what seems to be a distant memory, the web designers of today are gathering inspiration from those early Wild West days of the web. But why go with a layout that is so dated?
 
Well, that's exactly why retro design can be advantageous. It's dated.


 
The internet users of today, and especially tomorrow (generation alpha), don't even remember the days of the so-called Web 1.0; luminous background colors, visible table designs, and robotic typefaces like the Courier or System font. This was a time when the rules had not even been written yet, back when what's known as a “web designer” wasn’t even a profession. Therefore, using retro design techniques can actually be a fresh and entertaining thing for the younger demographic.
 
Also, keep in mind that although this template throughout history had some hilarious and frankly tragic results, web designers of today are reviving this trend because of around 35 years of collective design experience. You can find so many different tutorials and communities to assist you with retro design, making the learning curve anything but steep.
 
 
Neo-Brutalism and Brutalist Typography
The idea of Neo-brutalism comes from the traditional roots of Brutalism, which is an architectural movement on the rise between the 1950s and 70s that highlighted exposed materials like concrete and wood grain. Brutalist style made its debut on the internet, gaining traction since its digital revival in 2014. It is characterized by what appears to be barebones and unstyled HTML with plain backgrounds, default fonts, asymmetrical layouts, and unprocessed photos.
 
This year you can expect to see this style morph into a less drastic version, which technically would be defined as Neo-brutalism. This trendy template essentially employs the bareness of brutalism with the sleek and user-friendly tidbits of minimalism.
 
Typographic Hero Image
A hero image is a term used to describe the oversized banner image at the top of some websites being designed today. Also known as a “hero header”, it acts as a user's very first glimpse of your brand because of the hero sections' eminent placement towards the top of the webpage. That being said, the first component of a website that visitors will see in this case, is the hero image and it has to leave a great first impression. Contemporary web designers of 2022 are bringing that idea to heart with typography-led hero images.


 
Practically, this will decrease or eradicate imagery altogether, allowing the true message of the text to carry the weight itself. Furthermore, the usage of unusual-sized typography is a new and attractive design trend, making it a great way to add engaging and attention-grabbing visuals without increasing the website’s load time. This is wonderful because increasing your website's load time is not only great for user needs and experience, but it will help increase your SEO rankings!
 
More Website Design Secrets: Crafting Your Digital World 
It's no secret that every successful website has excellent search engine optimization and a clean sitemap, which is basically a table of contents for googles spiders to crawl. But, there's a little bit more to web design than search engines and monitoring traffic; the actual design itself! This is one of the most interesting things about website design. Almost as if crafting a landscape or writing feature films, it’s a virtual playground to create anything you want.
 
Visible Borders
The purpose of elegant web design is to create a feeling of magic, the illusion that the content is neatly organized by some kind of invisible internet hand, floating completely freeform in a digital realm or space. But the reality, of course, is that websites are constructed on a strict grid and pieced together with code. Bootstrap for instance uses a 12 wide grid as shown on the sample below. Leaving the grid show as I've done here, makes an almost "Wheel of Fortune" look out of it.

 
 
A helpful benefit of using visible borders is you can clearly distinguish one section or the page from the other. This makes your web pages easier to skim through while allowing for more content without the page feeling crowded, and giving that “magic” feeling. Simple borders also bring back the retro touch of the 90s-adjoining trends we mentioned above.
 
Motion Design and 3D Animations in the Coming Years
Motion design has grown from its humble beginnings thanks to bleeding-edge software and technology. When used suitably, motion design in websites can draw the user's attention to content all in one place rather than driving your site's visitors to keep scrolling. This trend is only anticipated to resume maturing as unexplored technologies become public.
 
Cinemagraphs and GIFs: Videos That Loop
Cinemagraphs are an excellent way to add motion to fixed pages and you can certainly make your webpage distinctive yet attractive by incorporating a full-screen loop. Many website designers have employed bizarre structures when integrating motion into their pages, which surprisingly has become popular among top brands. While this trend may appear a bit out of place compared to conventional website design, it is sure to continue to grow immensely within the next year.
 
3D Graphics
The wireframing of 3D graphics and 3D design is an incredible form of art and has been a growing industry since its birth in the late 1970s. But how can you use 3D graphics to make your site stand out? Here's how:
 

• Giving your site visitors the option to create their own avatar for their account is a fantastic way to begin adding 3D graphics to your website. Viewers can explore other account avatars, interact virtually, and you can even give the user the ability to purchase add-ons for their avatars like; clothes, hats, mounts, extra hairstyles, pets, and accessories, etc.

• Remember the paperclip character named Clippit from Microsoft Word before the early 2000s? He's would guide you on how to use Word, almost like a smart assistant but for word processing. Now, imagine a website that presents a 3d character or object exactly like the short-lived, and frankly polarizing, paperclip we all know and love. A feature like that would be sure to bring a ton of visitors to your website and the growth of artificial intelligence in recent years will help you create an assistant that blows the enjoyment of our paperclip friend out of the water.

• Animated 3D graphics alone, literally just in general, are a terrific way to complement your website’s design and enhance the user experience. Let's face it. We live in a time where you are seeing 3D art almost everywhere you go, digitally and physically. Most users honestly find it engaging and familiar due to the fact that it is such an integral part of art, design, and the entertainment industry.

• Creative scrolling experiences where blocks of content jump out at you from different directions of the screen are a common and useful design trend that will make your site visitors feel right at home with a modern user experience.

 
Moving Text
The use of animation is of course nothing new when designing websites, but it is more commonly used for illustrations, interactive UI elements, and simple page transitions. Accordingly, moving typography can really grab the user's attention due to being as fresh and unexpected.
 
This technique when designing has been around for quite some time. Think of the "ticker tape" that goes across the bottom of the screen when watching the news or getting an emergency broadcast.
 
 
It's captivating. It's eye-opening. And it works.
 
Even when the animations are simple like circular rotations and side-scrolling text, these small touches permit the typography to take center stage without overwhelming the reader.
 
Don't Forget About Dark Mode
Almost everyone knows what dark mode is by now! It is a useful and innovative feature that allows you to turn your webpage into a dark, yet high-contrast version of itself. It has a black background with white text and sometimes bold colors, which is intended to reduce eye strain caused by blue light exposure. Here’s a little more info on dark mode:



 

• Dark mode is also proven to help draw focus on certain thumbnails or content blocks on a page or application. Take Spotify or Netflix for example. They use a black background with bright album art and tv/movie trailers. 

• Dark mode also saves your device's battery power significantly. A Purdue University study found that switching from light mode to dark mode at 100% brightness saves an average of 39%-47% battery power.
   
• And it looks pretty sleek too! The all-black screen will almost remind technology nerds of a command prompt, creating a large-scale sense of sci-fi, sophistication, luxury, charisma, or even mystery for the user.

 
 
Micro-Interactions
Micro-interactions are little elements used on websites to supply interactive feedback to the user and decrease frustration and errors from a lack of communication. They provide visual interactions, such as loading bars, completion messages, status banners, and an easy-to-navigate site environment. The purpose is to let users know when the page is in the process of completing a task or finished with a task.
 
Here are a few trendy types of micro-interactions that are commonly used today:
 

• Tap effects
   
• Rollover effects
   
• Swipe effects
   
• Tap and hold effects
   
• Scroll-into-view
   
• Pull-to-refresh
   
• Progress bar
   
• Errors messages
   
• Sound effects
   

 
These technologies are only becoming more innovative by the month and this year is sure to see a lot of fun micro-interactions on the web. Keep an eye out for different ways to implement these because they make your website smart, more appealing to the eye, and exciting to use.
 
Web Design Trends From the Pros
After following these pro web design trends in this guide, your website will surely gain the traffic it deserves, thanks to a trendy design with a modern user experience. But, if you really want your website to gain traffic the fastest way possible, it would be wise to hire a professional for your website design services and local SEO services for you!
 
Ready to see if BANG! is a good fit for you? We are willing to take on most projects, no matter how big or small! Schedule a 30-minute consult here, or give us a call today!