2014 was a huge year for web design. There has been a shift in how content is being presented visually on websites, and now simple, user-friendly designs are now on top.

All of these trends are predicted to stick around and expand in 2015:

1. Flat Design

Flat design is a minimalistic design approach that emphasizes usability. It features clean, open space, crisp edges, bright colours and two-dimensional/flat illustrations.”

Said to be started from a mixture of Apple’s branding and Google’s design guidelines, flat design styles have pretty much taken over both physical and digital worlds. On the design end, the minimalist style is both quick and easy to convey. On the user’s end, ideas are easily understood without having to spend a lot of time trying to decipher them.

Using basic shape icons and simple illustrations, flat design reverts back to one basic, but important, fundamental of good design: functionality. Flat design is simple, nice to look at, and user-friendly.

2. Minimal Design

Going hand in hand with flat design, minimal design has a focus on simplicity. More common in recent years, minimal design highlights the most important aspects of the content being presented, and beautifully projects it across open spaces in bold, easily readable layouts. Minimal design takes out the unnecessary pieces without sacrificing the user’s attention.

A good example of a company using minimal design in their marketing and branding is Apple.

3. Full Width Design

With the strong presence of minimal design throughout the web, something needs to be added to sites to make them stand out. This is usually achieved by using full width images and videos. Content is no longer contained to a box, rather it’s stretched out beyond the limits of our screens.

The easiest way to achieve this is through larger, full-screen background images and videos, full width page sliders, and multi-layered header images.

4. Responsive Design

Responsive design isn’t anything new to web designers, and it has become not only a cool feature, but rather a necessity when designing anything for the web. You can no longer be sure where, when, or on what device a user will be looking at your website on. With that, responsive design is the way to go.

Responsive design has solidified its spot as a standard for designing websites, and with newer technology always coming out, it’s most likely not going anywhere. Content platforms such as WordPress have been extra receptive to it, and now most websites come fully responsive as a standard.

5. Typography

My personal favorite way to stand out from others is more use of creative typography. This cleaner design incorporates more visually appealing fonts and font sizes for users, emphasizing the important information through varying font weights, sizes, and colors.

Google Fonts is always growing to include more and more font kits for designers to be more creative in how they present content. It all goes back to making sites more user-friendly and making people want to actually read what you have to say.

6. Parallax Scrolling

Parallax scrolling, or infinite scrolling, is somewhat new to web design, and in my opinion, one of the coolest features yet. Parallax scrolling is basically a narrative-driven, interactive way for users to navigate a site with ease. Sections of a site remain static (for example, the navigation bar) while others are scrollable using your mouse, or if on a mobile device, your finger. Some great examples can be seen here.

The point of parallax scrolling is to keep users engaged with the content by having them interact with the content they are reading and breaking it up into sections. It also reduces the amount of times users need to click, which leads to more intuitive and quicker page navigation. Platforms such as WordPress make this style easily available to use.

If you would like to learn more about any of these trends and how they could help your website, contact the web design team at PCG!

About the Author

Marielle Lorentz is a passionate graphic designer who loves learning new things and having the freedom to get creative. Out of the office she loves art, live music, and exploring the outdoors.