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Web Design Trends You'll Want to Avoid
Everyone has their own personal style and aesthetics that they lean toward. However, the difference with brand design is you have to tailor it to not only what you find appealing but also what your target market will find appealing. With this in mind, there are some trends that you’ll want to avoid when thinking of how you want your brand to be designed.
Pop-Ups
There is nothing more frustrating to a user than being unable to see the content of yours that they are looking for because they are getting bombarded with pop-ups. If you must use pop-ups (though not recommended) keep it to a minimum of 1. If a user has to click off your pop-ups multiple times on your site, they may get frustrated and leave the page as a whole.
Overused Stock Photos
Free, high-quality photos that are accessible online are a blessing to many designers and social media managers alike. However, it’s easy to see the same image across multiple platforms. To avoid making your viewer see yet another of the same businessman laughing here is what you can do. If you are on a site looking at free images, never take an image from the first 2 or 3 pages only take photos from beyond that point and you will have eliminated about half of the photos other people will use.
Basic Fonts
A personal rule of thumb I have with viewing designs is that if I can see a font and immediately know the name of that font from seeing it in Google Docs or Microsoft word so often, I will immediately like the design less. Fonts such as Comic Sans, Arial, and Times New Roman have been in front of us for so long now, that it takes away from the design. There are too many font options available to use to stick to the same basic fonts for an entire website/brand theme.
Being Overly Creative
Being a devil’s advocate to the previous point, there is also a line in being overly creative. What I mean by overly creative is not sticking to your brand theme. Using an excessive amount of various fonts, different colors, and images that don’t remain true to the theme of your brand can look cluttered and overwhelming. Variety is important in a brand if you are aiming to have a style that is more creative and less minimalistic. But once you decide on the variety of colors (typically 5-6 in a brand palette) and a font (typically 1-2) you should stick with those so that your audience can be aware of what to expect when they visit your pages.
Navigation Menus
When looking up different web design trends that people may like or dislike, there is a clear argument to be had on both sides about the hamburger navigation menu (featured below). This isn’t a trend that fully has my vote to avoid, rather it’s something to take note of when evaluating what you are looking to do for your website (specifically how it will appear on mobile.) The argument here is whether or not viewers know what the hamburger menu is at first glance, and the likelihood of them clicking on it rather than having the information already laid out for them. On a mobile site, you don’t have the same view as you do on a standard computer screen which is where this argument can be continually debated. My vote is to simply take note of this argument and think about what suits you best.
The constantly changing internet can make it difficult to keep up with what’s the hottest new style and what’s trending the best with different audiences. However, there are some trends that we are confident can be avoided across changing times and platforms. Hopefully avoiding the trends listed today will help you create something your audience will enjoy viewing for years to come.
We hope you enjoyed our blog post this week and found some of this advice helpful! We can be found on Instagram, Facebook, and we are now on LinkedIn! If you would like to connect with us please reach out via the chat or contact sheet on our website.
Written by: Jordan Basham