In today's age of progression, we often hear the term 'less is more' associated to a lot of the most modern design ideas:
The 'modern home' is now a home that utilizes a lot of free roaming space with splashes of color, modern fashion is now considered vibrant colors put together in simple articles of clothing, even Apple did this in the tech field by stripping away the keyboard on its i-Phone and the cpu from its i-Mac.
The web design field is no different. When we get website redesign requests from clients, it seems the main thing they are looking for is a modern and clean new look for their business. Which makes sense because you must keep up with the industry to really compete. But the whole 'less is more' statement is too broad, what exactly does that entail? Well we've put together a list of 8 common elements we feel most modern website design has:
1. Minimalism
Minimalism seems to be the most essential part of modern Website Design. Business and organizations alike are bringing website design back to the fundamentals with a 'less is more' approach to design and layouts that help site visitors find what they are looking for easier. Websites for these companies are showcasing fewer pages, a lot more blank space, and just an all around simpler style of design which helps visitors digest information better.
2. Use of White Space
This is a continuation of minimalism, that we have been taught in the past was a bad thing. White space use to be demonized back in the days of the overtly complicated flash websites of yester-year, as a admittance of lacking content. Today, white space is seen as a great buffer between content elements that give site visitors room to breathe. Which in turn helps isolate certain call to actions for your website, allowing you to direct your site visitors eyes to where you would like for them to focus on.
Check out these examples below of good use of white space, bad use of white space, and terrible example of white space use (from left to right)
3. Visitor Friendly
An intuitive and easy to maneuver website is key to modern website design. Customers that can not easily find what they are looking for or simply just have a hard time going through your website smoothly, are less likely to stay on your website at all. The speed in which your web pages load also play a strong role in visitor retention. Modern website design compresses images, uses only a few different fonts, and more to ensure that your website quickly loads to cater to your website visitors. 4. Cohesive Color Palette If you know the bare minimum of all design, you know that color cohesion is ever present throughout the field in some form or fashion. A great color palette can help with making all of the different facets of your business or organization fall under the same style, creating a recognizable brand identity. Companies that utilize primary colors as well as secondary and even tertiary color, have more to play with when it comes to creating landing pages, flyers, icons and all other marketing tools. 5. Cohesive Typography
Modern websites will normally have an order of text that uses a title font and size, that relates to a sub-title font and size, that ALSO corresponds to a paragraph font and size. Although most paragraph font size is 15-16px, titles and sub-titles are free to be played with based on industry and level of artistic eligibility that field allows. Check out our example of this below in which we showcase a client of our's who is in the business teaching field.
If you click on the image to view the full site, you will also see that not only does the typography have cohesion on the site, but it also is the same typeface as the clients logo as well. This is a typical feature of modern design, cohesion across all aspects.
Now moving further, cohesion with text also has to to be thought of in terms of being received. For example, using large and artistic header font's for a neurosurgical practice would possible not be received well by clients because it is not deemed as 'professional' based on common practice in that field and may increase bounce rates due to that. So it's very important that this is kept in mind while experimenting with fonts.
6. Full Length Strips
Full length website strips create a better experience for your website visitors by dividing your website layout into several rectangular sections. These strips can differ in height and exist as a way of again creating space and organizing the website in ways it can be easily digested. You will see these rectangular strips commonly used in a lot of modern websites to help chop up information and again, create a more user friendly website.
7. Semi-Flat Design
In a simple way of defining what semi flat design is, we must understand what flat design is. Flat design is a style of design that does not give the perception of any 3D features such as shadows. So therefore semi-flat design allows a little bit of shading and the perception of 3D, while still remaining flat and 2D. Apple is most credited with pushing the flat design into the current state of affairs, however companies like Uber came around with a website and app that pushed the semi-flat design that is now emulated by a lot of companies now.
That was our list of 7 Elements Of Modern Website Design! Let us know your thoughts below and also reach out to us for your web design needs by clicking here