Top 5 Web De­sign Trends To Watch Out For 2014

A more sim­pli­fied Ya­hoo! Logo, web­sites with Hel­vetica and hip­ster-in­­spired themes – these were the top web de­sign trends for the past year.

Now that 2014 is on a roll, what are the hottest web de­sign trends to watch out for?

That is ex­actly what we will find more about here.

Top 5 Web De­sign Trends for 2014

When you browse through tech blogs and other web­sites, you will see traces of the in­flu­ence of the 2013 trends for web design.

Let’s take the case of the up­dated Ya­hoo! Logo as an ex­am­ple. Most peo­ple ex­pected the logo to be more com­plex than its pre­de­ces­sor, but it ac­tu­ally was not. When you look through the logo blue­print, the ma­jor el­e­ments were Sans Serif, a vari­able base­line, a tilted ex­cla­ma­tion point, vari­able size let­ters and all up­per­case. For a logo that hasn’t been up­dated for 18 years, the change is a wel­come one and it turned out to be a success.

Will the same sim­pli­fi­ca­tion of lo­gos and de­signs be an emerg­ing trend for 2014? Let’s see.

Here are the top five web de­sign trends to watch out for this year.

Sim­plic­ity

Whether you’re up­dat­ing your logo like Ya­hoo! or if you are giv­ing your web­site an over­haul in terms of looks, sim­plic­ity is a trend that you’d def­i­nitely want to follow.

This is es­pe­cially true if you would like to op­ti­mize your site for the search en­gines. The more com­plex your site’s de­sign is, the more con­fus­ing its lay­out would be. This does not bode well for the on­line users who like to eas­ily nav­i­gate through your site. One of the trends in sim­plic­ity is to use menus with one or two lev­els max. Gone are the times of 3 or 4 lev­els deep drop down menus.

So keep your de­sign as ba­sic and as sim­ple as possible.

Flat De­sign

The op­po­site of a flat de­sign is a 3D or Skeu­mor­phic de­sign which emerged as a trend in the years up to 2013.

Dur­ing the lat­ter part of last year, flat de­sign slowly be­came pop­u­lar and its use is bound to con­tinue for this year.

Big­wig com­pa­nies like Ap­ple and Taco Bell have re­cently ditched their Skeu­mor­phic de­sign in fa­vor of flat.

Most promi­nent ex­am­ple is prob­a­bly the look of Ap­ple’s op­er­at­ing sys­tem iOS 7.

This al­lows users of both mo­bile and desk­top com­put­ers to have a more ac­ces­si­ble brows­ing experience.

Im­proved Scrolling

Par­al­lax scrolling was a huge trend not just for 2013 but for the past few years. Un­for­tu­nately some sites were over­do­ing it and added the ef­fect for the ef­fec­t’s sake.

For 2014, this de­sign trend would con­tinue but in a more re­strained, im­proved way for a bet­ter user experience.

Shorter Video Storytelling

In­stead of cre­at­ing a 3 or 5-minute video to de­liver your mar­ket­ing mes­sage, the trend is to cut videos to as short as 5 to 7 sec­onds. On­line users are get­ting more and more im­pa­tient and if you want your videos to get clicked, keep them short.

While Youtube re­mains the world’s largest video site, the 2 im­mensely pop­u­lar video shar­ing ser­vices Vine and In­sta­gram re­strict videos to a length of 6 sec­onds / 15 seconds.

Real Mod­els over Ex­ces­sive Retouching

Fi­nally, all the brouhaha about ex­ces­sive use of Pho­to­shop and other photo re­touch­ing tools might come to an end with the use of real mod­els. At least, this is ap­plic­a­ble for brands who would like to reach out to a broader au­di­ence spectrum.

Hav­ing un-re­­touched pho­tos of real peo­ple make brands more re­lat­able, so this is a trend that might just emerge for 2014.

Out of all these web de­sign trends, which ones are you most look­ing for­ward to see­ing on your fa­vorite website?