The digital space is evolving every day. And with it evolves the creative landscape as well, so it’s important to always keep abreast of newer technologies, techniques and trends. Shown below are seven creative trends that pave the way to a better user experience in the digital space.
Monday: Greater Interactivity
Flash vs HTML5 (Adobe vs Apple)... The debate continues to rage on and regardless of the reasons, there is one thing that has come out of this. And that's a definitive push towards newer, better web technologies. Where traditionally only Flash allowed for engaging interactive websites, now HTML5 and CSS3 (with the help of JavaScript) have opened the doors for brilliantly interactive websites to now become more mainstream. Expect this trend to continue to grow in leaps and bounds over the coming year.
Tuesday: Clean & Simple
This one is a given. In an era of information overload where every day we are being bombarded with more and more messages, feeds, tweets and annoying status updates, it will be incredibly important to design websites that are clean, simple and void of any unnecessary clutter. This extends through to writing content that is simple yet relevant and current while also providing very clear and prominent call to actions.
Wednesday: Large Imagery
If you've got it, flaunt it! As with the previous topic, users want simplicity and big part of that comes down to imagery. If your business revolves around selling products, then put these first and foremost before anything else. That means big, bold, often full screen product shots and lots of it. Descriptions, specifications and washing instructions can come second, users need to be engaged with the visual first.
Thursday: Typography
A picture may tell a thousand words, however, great typography brings it all together! The stepping away from traditional 'web safe' fonts has been taking place for a while now and expect this to continue over the coming year. The amount of fonts available through dynamic font replacement services (@font-face) are growing more and more every day. Take webfonts.fonts.com for example which now has over 10,000 fonts available! And these include premium fonts such as Helvetica, Frutiger, Univers and many more.
Friday: Magazine Style Layouts
The introduction and incredible popularity of the iPad has really lifted the browsing experience expected by users. As a result, magazine style layouts are finding their way back into website designs. Expect more and more blogs, product listings, even photo galleries to start being displayed in a slightly chaotic, yet highly engaging magazine style layout.
Saturday: Social Media Integration
Social media elements have been creeping into websites for a while now, however, expect this to grow significantly as Facebook continues to forge it's path towards world domination. The now infamous 'Like' button will be accompanied by elements that integrate with geolocation services, social profiles and more.
Sunday: Single Page Sites
Single page websites, or microsites have been around for a while, but expect a surge in this trend. This is primarily due to two factors. The first being clever technology allowing just as much content and interaction in single pages, as you would normally expect in full multi-page websites. The second, again, due to the user behaviour as seen on tablet devices (such as the iPad), where scrolling is the preferred choice over clicking (or touching).
So whether it’s a short campaign microsite or a full featured e-Commerce website, the trends outlined above help to improve the overall user experience which ultimately leads to better conversion rates, brand sentiment or a more successful campaign.