Web designing is an erratic industry. Quite like other expressions of art, there has been constant and stunning evolution that has taken place so far. It was just recreation for enthusiasts back in the time, but now has become a mature rich medium with strong aesthetic and functional appeal. With the influence of 2009 there are some astonishing web trends hitting the deck now in 2010.

Web designing trends change every year due to a number of factors such as advancements in technology and changes in user behavior. It is important to do away with old web design principles and adopt new ones. New trends help web design to evolve with time and improve the creativity of websites

Latest web design trends always tempt the designer to try new design styles. Being web designer, one should stay abreast of new challenges and opportunities. Let’s take an inside look what’s being cooked in 2010.

1. Huge and jazzy Illustrations

Huge illustrations are close relative to the oversized logo/ header; it does much the same thing. It creates a visual impact that the visitor won’t forget easily. Unlike the oversized header from above, these are not part of the site’s branding. Instead, these images catch the visitor into your site by creating immersive experience for them. In 2010, web designers are finding themselves more versed using these big statements in their design to beacon and lit-up the site’s tone as today visitors want to read less and see more.





Not only headers, Icons are being used more often for conveying the meaning of text content or website sections to create simple visual cues.



2. Rich and Gigantic Typography

Arial, Verdana and Tahoma are not the only fonts dominating the web today. Instead, strong and vivid typography is the current trend. Today, designers are blending huge and crisp typography with catchy visual design to communicate the most important messages of their websites. With technologies like sIFR and Typekit designers’ work became even easier to enable some typography richness. Another good choice is using the CSS @FONT-FACE implementation which is supported by most of the leading browsers today.



3. Interactive Interface with Single Page Layout

Most of designers prefer clean and crisp illustrations to give distinctive feel that can’t be replicated by photography or simple clip art. The result is a wide range of professionally illustrated designs that are engaging and inviting. Effective one-page layouts hide any web sections that are not a priority. If a visitor wants to see one of those elements, they can click to uncover it. This is much more effective than leaving everything visible, which would make the page complicated and overwhelming. Likewise, the concept behind one-page layouts makes additional pages unnecessary. With emerging powerful JavaScript libraries and faster connections, many websites now have little need for several pages. Designers can easily fit information on one page, without bothering the visitor with a hierarchy. These one page layouts are the web designs that incorporate best latest web design trends. Usually they are used for portfolios.





4. Out of the box patterns

While out-of-the-box-designs on the web aren’t particularly a new thing, they are becoming more prevalent in the actual designs of the sites themselves, rather than being used sparingly. Overall creative approach is often more important and more memorable than the attention to details.
When it comes to creativity, designers need to be careful, because a new creative approach can literally break a website. Often, it’s a good idea to find a compromise between a creative approach and a classic, traditional design, and balance between both.
Designers, open your mind to the possibilities of exceptional design for your site !!





5. Newspaper and Magazine Layouts

This trend is strong contributor in blogosphere. Mostly, corporate websites hardly consider this area, but bloggers – they just seem to love this trend. Numerous WordPress themes are available in the market leveraging use of both newspaper and magazine layouts for blogs. This trend is blooming rapidly in 2010. Now-a-days, people are migrating from traditional media like newspapers and magazines to web, and, it is consequently affecting other web sites and web in general. Organizing the content into a single page is, however, is a bitter pill to swallow, but it catching up the designers and users attention.





6. 3D Elements & 3D Text Effects

3D effects will puff up in 2010. 3D type effects and also 3D elements within the web page are gaining popularity. Three dimensional shapes, wrapping elements, and tilted edges will give visitors the feeling of space and depth. 2-D is out – 3-D is in.





7. Sketches/ Hand drawn designs

Using Sketch- based designs can really add a personal touch to your Web site, inviting a sense of playfulness and wonder in your visitor.

Sketching or Hand-drawn designs are turning out to be the best way to give simple, unique and personalized looks to your web copy/blog. Not only hand drawn images, handwriting style is also gaining much popularity.





8. Modal/Light Boxes

Modal Box is a way to bring up additional information and imagery about a specific item without taking user away from the page. It presents the additional information until the visitor closes it, bringing the visitor straight back where they left. Modal windows are often presented in a very subtle way: they are often semi-transparent and have a “Close” button.
Modal boxes are becoming great solution for designers due to their ease of usability.

Wrapping up

Modern Web design is flamboyant, appealing and more user-friendly. We’re surpassing a charismatic use of visual design era for the sake of aesthetics and a pleasing user experience. Traditional trend from print design are rapidly being applied to the Web. Horizontal and even diagonal orientations carry out a fresh perspective to the flat 2-D designs we’ve seen for years (with their text enriched, flashy catchy pages). These developments are a sign of the upcoming era of Web design, in which designers can use new tools and techniques to their utmost potential. In future, these trend is supposed to rock the boat of web design in many ways!!