Web Design Today

The 1st of November brought a new edition of CSS Reboot. Websites from all over the world simultaneously launched their new standards based re-designs on this date and are featured over at www.cssreboot.com. Almost 1,000 sites joined this endeavor so analyzing them should give us a pretty good view on today’s web design trends.

There are all kinds of sites featured and while the big design firms, the trend-setters, aren’t so well represented their influence can be clearly observed glancing through the entries. People always tend to find their inspiration in the work of the big names in the web design world and some elements, perceived as cool at a specific time, will be used again and again. These are trends. Most of them will come and go, eventually weeding out unnecessary design surplus and leading us slowly but surely into a better future for the web design wise. Or, at least, one would hope so.

The whole web is starting to shift into what some call “Web 2.0”. This is a trend in itself. The so called “Web 2.0” websites have a certain look and feel to them that can be instantly recognized.

A very important part of their aspect is the color scheme. Most these websites feature strong, bold and warm colors with a strong contrast, usually a combination of blue, green and orange.

I’d say that this look was strongly promoted by people such as Firewheel Design with their very successful web application Blinksale and 9rules, an important promoter of the “Web 2.0” movement, just to name a couple.

After the web witnessed a short timed increase in the number of sites that promoted toned-down, pastel color schemes, it seems that now people aren’t afraid of strong colors anymore.

Just like aqua buttons a couple of years ago, now it seems that star-like badges are everywhere. These are so popular that the tutorials showing how to make them have enjoyed quite a success: Fireworks tutorial and a two parts Photoshop tutorial.

In a variety of sizes, colors and purposes, you’re bound to see at least one of these badges a day while surfing the web. It was cool in the beginning, now it’s just too much. I have no idea who promoted these things initially but he/she should feel pretty proud of his/her influence right now.

Similar to these star-like badges, another effect seems to be taking over the web these days. It’s the so-called “reflection” effect.

I agree it may work in some cases and add a pretty decent visual effect but this is clearly a case of over usage.

Another little thing that I find annoying is the omni-presence of those oblique stripes in one of the top corners of your browser’s window. I agree that the people over at MakePovertyHistory who I believe promoted these stripes the first time had a good idea in using a piece of screen real-estate that is usually available and for a good cause too, but these things are used for everything nowadays. And when combined with the dreaded star badge effect, I simply feel it’s too much.

One last thing that caught my attention was the fact the quite a few designs embraced the “more than a footer” approach that I discussed in a previous article. From going extreme and placing the entire site’s navigation at the bottom to simply duplicating it I saw all kinds of approaches.

Some made perfect sense when backed up by a more conventional mean of navigation but some simply ruined the site’s usability. Just a reminder than you should always think twice before venturing on uncharted routes.

As a couple of final observations, most of the featured designs were based on centered layouts and had a fixed width to accommodate 800×600 resolutions. Few were left-sided layouts and even fewer were liquid layouts. While more and more websites are starting to ignore 800×600 resolutions and using the available screen real-estate for 1024×768 I think it will still be a while until we can safely forget about those small screens.

The web is constantly evolving. Just make sure that your site’s purpose comes before its visual appearance and think twice before doing what all the cool kids in town are doing.