Website Design Predictions for 2012
A new year is here and what treasures will it hold in terms of
further progressing what we see through our browsers? 2011 trends
gave us some exciting things to play around with including HTML5,
CSS3, A massive improvement in mobile design, subtle textures,
social media sharing, design below the fold, big images and photo
backgrounds and some great use of typography. So in light of these
trends what can we expect 2012 to bring?!
My predictions are as follows:
Increased social media sharing
integration
A big contender joined us last year in to the social sharing
arena, Google+, so expect more things to come from them in terms of
integration into your webpages. With the three super-powers,
Google+, Facebook and Twitter, and integration tools at our finger
tips, we now have more tools than ever to promote our products and
services through social media. This year I would really like to see
better integration of these tools rather than the standard 'like',
'tweet' or '+1' button. I think there's some legs in an application
to better house these tools on our pages whether this be a third
party solution or just purely achieved with the design of our
pages. I want discussion and feedback, a buzz around the thing I am
viewing, not just a number count. Think of the added value of
content on your pages to help SEO via social networks. Let's hope
this happens.
Custom Fonts
With the increasing popularity of font libraries such as Google
Fonts, Font Squirrel and Typekit, I'd expect to see more designers
pushing to use custom fonts within their designs in 2012, rather
than sticking to the web-safe fonts. In 2011 we saw these libraries
being used quite a bit, however as these libraries continue to
grow, they are giving us an increasing number of opportunities to
pick a font that suits our designs without compromising this text
being picked up by search engines. CSS3 and HTML5 will also aid in
the positioning of this text, so expect to see far more use of
custom fonts breaking the box layout.
A long shot but… Touch screen
displays and facial/body recognition
So we've all got used to waving our arms about with the Kinect
and making funny finger movements on mobile devices, but when is
this going to come to the standard web interface? Will our monitors
be upgraded to touch screen with in-built cams?! Will our browsing
move totally to these kind of interfaces?! Will this all happen in
2012???? It may not achieve mainstream adoption in 2012, but it's
not far off, and when it does our designs will see a huge change
and hold a whole new browsing experience. A big change to happen in
one year but it would be good to see some progress towards this.
With gesture-based gaming continually growing in popularity, we can
safely see a shift in our browsing experience to a more fun and
interactive method on the horizon.
Other predictions
include:
1. Breaking the boundaries with CSS3 and HTML 5 Usage
2. Full browser width page Layouts
3. Dynamic Movable Content
4. Vector Illustration and Infographics
Well there you have it, you heard it here first! I'm sure many
other trends will emerge from the woodwork this year as well as
trends from 2011 continuing. Feel free to give me your own opinion
and share your views by contacting me via twitter: @danielruffle
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