Design Trends

Like any industry, there are fashions and trends within the web design industry and the glossy style of web page design has been dominant over the past 12 to 18 months. It seemed that every site created during this period had glossy elements to it and the style became synonymous with Web 2.0 and was commonly referred to as the “Web 2.0 look” and you couldn’t go anywhere on the net without visiting these glossy sites. The positive aspect of these sites is that a lot of them were very clean designs, often with a white background and that clean style is something that I like and have used in the past.

However it appears that a more artistic style of website is becoming fashionable with sites such as ma.tt and rawkes as well as others embracing this style. For more examples of this style, see the post on Web Designer Wall which lists some of the finest examples of this style. I think it was a change that was coming due to the large number of sites that looked the same as the last, and it was only a matter of time before a different style became the fashion.

I must admit I tried to aim for the more artistic and textured style when designing this site by aiming for this “desktop” idea of design, although I am not 100% happy with it yet as I feel it could be improved yet. Although like any design process, there were a couple of other designs that were dreamt up and dismissed before this design became the favoured one.

I think the glossy style has gone and will this artistic style will become more widespread over the next 12 months or so, and it will be certainly a style that I incorporate into projects in the future.