Design Digest 10 May - Web Design Trends

[Chisa]

Not sure if Silver wants us posting these as well, but I thought this was worth sharing ^_^

The Web Design Trend Obituary & Death Clock

Interesting article going through a couple of past trends in web design, and a few that they predict will go out of fashion within the next year or so. I have to admit that I fell for a lot of these trends, and still try to cling to some of them.

PingMag is an interesting design site that seems to cover everything from product design to illustration with a bunch of Japanese culture thrown in.  

[Catani]

i'd add one more trend - which i'd like to stay for a some time longer:
- old style wallpaper backgrounds (real wallpapers) - like those from XIX/XX century  

[GhoSt-X]

OMG ... i remember my UBER obstructive frames ... with the cool word ART!  

[Chisa]

Catani

i'd add one more trend - which i'd like to stay for a some time longer:
- old style wallpaper backgrounds (real wallpapers) - like those from XIX/XX century

I know what you mean, tried searching for an example but couldn't find one off the top of my head xd At first I thought you meant using a desktop background as the background for a website, and was thinking 'why the hell would you want that to stay?'.

I'll also add bevels, drop shadows and vector silhouettes on colourful background (like the iPod ads and the trendy 'tree silhoutte on gradient background' wallpapers that seem to be all over the place, including my website xd ). I get told to use those a lot ('it looks too plain, put some dropshadows and bevels on it to sex it up a bit!'), and I'd say they're overused to the point that they'll become seriously dated soon.

What about Century Gothic? I think its a great font, but I'm seeing it so often in signage lately that I'm afraid its going to go badly out of fashion and I won't be able to use it without it looking very 2005 anymore sad

Does anyone think about these things as they're designing? I have to admit I've been going with whatever is popular at the time without really considering what will happen when a particular trend I've followed becomes dated - probably the biggest effect would be on logos, since they can be difficult to change and update later...  

[Chisa]

GhoSt-X

OMG ... i remember my UBER obstructive frames ... with the cool word ART!

OMG IFRAMES!!!!! Sooo 1990's xd All my early sites had iframes. Then moved to tables, then to divs. A little part of me dies now when I see badly used frames on a site =_=  

[Catani]

Chisa

Catani

i'd add one more trend - which i'd like to stay for a some time longer:
- old style wallpaper backgrounds (real wallpapers) - like those from XIX/XX century

I know what you mean, tried searching for an example but couldn't find one off the top of my head xd At first I thought you meant using a desktop background as the background for a website, and was thinking 'why the hell would you want that to stay?'.

i recalled one http://www.zloteczasy.pl/ - polish SportingBet.com advert site but done quite nicely...
or even better: Drag Experiment something like this
one more: geekextreme by kwaku

Chisa

I'll also add bevels, drop shadows and vector silhouettes on colourful background (like the iPod ads and the trendy 'tree silhoutte on gradient background' wallpapers that seem to be all over the place, including my website xd ). I get told to use those a lot ('it looks too plain, put some dropshadows and bevels on it to sex it up a bit!'), and I'd say they're overused to the point that they'll become seriously dated soon.

i think the ipod style will date quite soon 3-4 months. beavels? dunno about them didn't encounter them much so it maybe just a start. but the drop shadows are gonna stay for very long in my opinion. maybe not staright forward ones but the slight ones that give a whole design some "depth'

Chisa

What about Century Gothic? I think its a great font, but I'm seeing it so often in signage lately that I'm afraid its going to go badly out of fashion and I won't be able to use it without it looking very 2005 anymore sad

umm... i wouldn't worry about the font looking not "cool": 1. it's only a part of the design, if the design is good it won't stop being good, maybe not "trendy" but still good; 2. unless you use flash you're still limited to system available fonts - untill there will ba a sensible way to implement difrent font's on-site

Chisa

Does anyone think about these things as they're designing? I have to admit I've been going with whatever is popular at the time without really considering what will happen when a particular trend I've followed becomes dated - probably the biggest effect would be on logos, since they can be difficult to change and update later...

i think the effect fades with the scale of the project. for example when talking about portfolios it's good for it to be changed from time to time so it can be cool for a short time and then changed. but when doing design for a big company the design doesn't need to be snazzy but clear and simple.
logos? that might be a problem but still the impact on actual logo designs isn't that much as on the web pages, and a logo can have variation/s that'd fit the web page (just look at apple - at least 3 actual versions i can think of)

never much liked the frames  

[SilverVixen]

Wow!!! Thank you for posting here too!! I had been looking and looking last week and I just couldn't find anything to post. Bleh.

Great choice for an article to post.

Thanks again.  

[GhoSt-X]

i dont mind seeing badly used frames now n then ... it reminds me of how bad my sites used to be ~_~ good for a laugh  

[miigiro]

Wow, that was pretty interesting stuff. I hate supermarket signs! I mean, I see it so much that I don't really like it anymore. And I really don't like the links where you have to spend minutes chasing around just to click on it. *sigh* I enjoyed reading this article. biggrin  

[rogue_designer]

*sigh*

I still have been known to use iframes... most notably on my personal website.

They *can* be used well. But still. I guess It's a good thing I'm a print designer for my bread and butter.  

[Chisa]

I think that visually they can be done well... but you'd be better off using divs with overflow. With iframes you get issues like search engines not getting much info from your main page or linking to a page that goes in a frame, and looks strange on its own. There's also the annoying problem when you want to bookmark a certain page, but have to either bookmark the framed page or the site as a whole. And I don't know how screenreaders deal with it, but I don't think it would be good xp