What trends to follow when it comes to this year’s web design and print? 2022 offers a vast variety of different styles and we collected some of the best, that can serve as an inspiration for your next design: things from the past and the future, playful and minimalistic, perfect alignment or rulebreaking – there is something for everyone. Let’s jump into it!
1. Minimalism:
Minimalism continues to be a leading trend in the design world. It’s simply something that will always work for everyone and on all devices.
So what are the key aspects of a minimalistic approach? Simple – less is more. Make sure there is whitespace, and a lot of it. Don’t listen to your clients when they tell you it looks empty, because there is too much space – there isn’t. Scrolling doesn’t hurt the user as much as does a website clustered with textblocks that tell you about the history of mankind before giving away whatever you were looking for.
The cool thing about minimalism is that you can focus on your design and easily combine it with other trends (for example bright neon colours with dark backgrounds).
And it can look very aestheticly pleasing when done right. But the truth is: making something that is simple and at the same time fulfills the wishes of both the client and the user is one of the hardest challenges for a designer.
2. Darkmode:
Once you get used to having options on all the pages and apps you love, you start expecting it from other sources too.
Opting for dark mode wherever possible is a trend amongst internet users. Keep that in mind when you design your next app or e-commerce site. It might not be the most important feature, but it is something that can be very convenient for the user (and even helps the environment by using less power).
3. Big & bold fonts:
Bold typography becomes more and more appealing to designers, as it is very compelling. The use of serifs is declining and handwriting as a secondary or even as primary font is on the rise. With a vast variety of bold clean and handwritten fonts it is easy to create great header sections that instantly catch the users’ attention.
4. Gradients and / or liquid forms:
Why are gradients so popular?
Well first of all, they provide a lot of creative space for the designer. Also the user is ambiguous. Minimalism is great, but the user who sees just two colors might find the design dull and boring. You often hear things like: “They did not try hard enough to make it beautiful and interesting”.
Gradients create a sense of movement without being animated. A bonus is that you have much higher chances to appeal to more people’s taste using more colors, instead of just one.
A gradient can be easily combined with a fluid shape. Drops and waves seem very organic to the eye and give a feeling of recognizing. This is noticeable not only in graphic design – phones, cars, shampoo bottles – everything around us is rounded. People just love curves.
5. Retro, Cyberpunk & Synthwave:
Something that already started as a trend few years ago, but has now rightfully become mainstream, is the use of colors and styles that derive from retro graphics. Especially with the rise of the Synthwave and Cyberpunk music, series like Stranger Things and retro computer games, the 80’s and 90’s color schemes made a prominent comeback.
Low polygons, bright gradients and neon colours can be seen everywhere again. We get it, who wouldn’t want to travel back to the 80’s?
6. Anti-design:
Anti-Design has been a thing since last year and it continues to trend.
The goal of Anti-Design is to break standard design rules and create something that sticks out. Hard-to-read fonts on bright backgrounds, seemingly at random placed objects or websites that look like they come from the early internet times are some examples you can see here.
Be aware that the usability and accessibility will suffer. But it’s still an interesting alternative to all the boring & similar looking websites nowadays.
7. Depth:
A step further from the material design trend is the illusion of depth by overlapping different layers, adding shadows or making some objects 3D.
With the use of depth, an overcrowded page can be arranged better and turned into an undisturbed viewing experience.
It can however make content perception a bit more difficult. Nevertheless, this approach captures the users’ attention and can be used to put more prominence to certain objects.
8. 2D + 3d combinations
Following up to the utilization of depth is also the trend of increased 3D usage.
In the recent years with the evolvement of technology, all kinds of devices are getting more and more CPU & GPU power. This in turn allows for a better usage of 3D Elements. While this is great, it’s important to note, that creating 3D objects or dedicated websites is still much more costly than one dimensional designs.
9. Nature-inspired colors and designs
What does “nature-inspired” mean?
It means using colors you see in the nature – for example on fruits or plants, which leads to a very pastel-like matte color palettes. Also adding organic shapes and natural objects as illustrations or pictures can create a very warm and familiar style. Very good for anything related to food and drinks, but not limited to it.
10. Parametric patterns and thin lines
Patterns are one of the basic blocks in graphic design. They are a great way to give complexity and aesthethics to backgrounds or objects. With thin flowing lines, parametric and geometric patterns are seen more and more in 2022 designs.
What else?
Certain trends have been around for some time already like Hero Section videos or hand-drawn illustrations, typography and animations and will probably continue to do so. But like everything, design trends come and go.
What we always recommend is to keep the focus on usability and accessibility. Take a step back, put yourself in the customer’s shoes and think “do I understand what this site is about?”, then go and spin your design around that. Oh and cut out half of your texts, while you are at it. 🙂
