13 Amazing Web Design Trends for 2020 that will Dominate the Industry

Change is constant. For those associated with the web design industry, this phrase often acts as the motivation that constantly pushes designers to create innovative designs. But change is a process that doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time to mature just like fine wine.

In 2020, there will be a lot of new things as well as modifications of past techniques happening in the web design industry. Be it playing with extremes, experimenting with new techniques and previous styles or ceaselessly exploring technical possibilities, the web design trends in 2020 will get incredibly creative.

Wondering what these newest web design trends will be like? Our web designers started studying and researching the latest developments in the web design industry over the past few months and what we came across has left us absolutely impressed. We found out the latest web design trends that will be shaping the web design industry in 2020 and beyond.

In this post, we have compiled the top 13 biggest web design trends for 2020 that will dominate the screens. So, get ready to gain inspiration if you are a website designer or you want to get your website designed or redesigned in accordance with the latest industry trends.

1. Minimalist Designs

One of the most exciting web design trends for 2020 is to experiment with the previous style of minimalist designs. Simplicity is going to become more popular in the upcoming months and many designers are already working on exploring this approach.

Minimalist design is a threadbare style that extensively uses white space, has limited colour palettes, and gives every single element of the design lots of room to breathe so that none of them distracts attention from the visual hierarchy. This design style is not only capable of creating aesthetically interesting websites but it also helps improve the speed of the website or the page loading time, especially when it comes to mobile.

There will be newer developments in this style such as the use of strategic imagery to impress the users at the first encounter. Large scale photos and videos with a bare minimum of text will be pulled to the foreground to use it as a powerful visual to draw attention to your business objective.

Another cool feature that will be included in minimalist web design is minimalist navigation. Navigation has been experimented with to make it simpler over the last few years to accommodate smaller attention spans as well as smaller devices. But in 2020, things will get further simpler since smaller devices are on the rise especially wearable devices such as smartwatches. Website content is also likely to undergo significant revamp from text to voice script. As a result, navigation will be made extremely simple for the users in terms of usability so that they can move around the website without having to wonder how and get an immersive experience at the same time.

2. Dark Mode

Dark design will be one of the most happening design trends of 2020. These designs look ultra-modern and make design elements pop. They are truly dynamic and improve the visibility of other accent colours. Though it became a widespread trend in 2019, it will continue to grow bigger this year.

This design mode also complements perfectly with the other 2020 web design trends. Web designers and UI designers will create interesting futuristic dark backgrounds with a higher contrast ratio but will also focus on reducing eye strain. Users will have the option to enable the dark mode when using websites.

Many web browsers including Google Chrome already have built-in dark mode so that when the user switches the dark mode on, websites can automatically switch to this mode. But this works only if the website supports dark mode! Though Google Chrome has a “Night Eye” feature to turn websites dark even if those are not optimized for dark mode, you never know how your website might end up looking in forced night mode. You can stay ahead of the curve if you embrace dark mode when designing your website since so many websites haven’t caught onto this trend yet. So, you can have your website look visually appealing and provide a great user experience without having to take a chance.

3. Typography

Typography will see a lot of modernization and innovation in 2020. Here are the typography trends to watch out for –

Text-only Heroes: Designers will experiment with only text elements in the hero area of the website. Removing the typical background image and incorporating typography is likely to be one of the most intriguing trends and a new practice of this year. The typography will also see a lot of personality attached to it through some experimentation as below.
Outlined Typography: This one is an emerging typography trend that is expected to spread more in 2020. Designers now have many fonts to work with and outlined typography can impart a distinctive effect to your website. The usage can be made more visually interesting by combining animation to the text. For example, you can add an animation that will pull out the “fill” of the letters and leave only the outline as the viewer scrolls downs the page.
Bold and Heavy Fonts: Such fonts will be used to create a visual starting point on your design and will act as a focal point to draw the attention of the visitor. However, choosing the right font family and using it the right way will have the power to make or break your design. The trick is to use the heavy fonts for a few words or a short phrase and contrast it with thinner fonts to make the overall design more attractive.
Maxi Typography: Be ready to make a stronger statement with maxi typography! The maxi trend began in the previous year but it is all set to take the centre stage in 2020. For a lot of websites, this could become a focal point. However, when using maxi typography designers need to make sure that no 3D elements or gradient is used. It should always be flat.
Oversized Fonts: Larger-than-life typography will be one of the hottest trends! Font-sizes on the web will continue to increase so that visitors can literally read from across the room. Brands are likely to embrace this typography trend of using nearly half of the home page’s viewport to display their name. Some brands are also likely to use oversized typography as a style of navigation to take visitors to different pages of their website.

4. Artificial Intelligence, Contextual Technology and Voice Technology

The web design industry is likely to experience the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) and contextual technology like never before. AI is progressing at a rapid pace and designers can yield great benefits if they adopt it in their strategies along with contextual technology. Contextual technology helps give digital media a ‘human’ touch by interpreting user behaviour and their needs to deliver personalized experiences. For example, users can be offered individual content and design based on their location, language, operating system, date and time, and several other characteristics.

The use of AI in website design is taking another popular form through sophisticated chatbots that are meant to provide assistance and around-the-clock support to website visitors. There are a lot of improvements and developments required in this area, however, to make the chatbots more emotionally intelligent so that they can be used to guide visitors through the website, products and services, answer queries smartly, and make the website meaningfully conversational or more interactive.

Another trend which is likely to grow rapidly in 2020 in this context is voice technology. We are already accustomed to audio controllers like Alexa and Siri and they have changed our digital experience but voice user interface or VUI has not been adopted yet by most companies onto their websites. Voice is the future and the integration of voice command will emerge largely within the web interfaces and UX of apps and web design layouts in 2020.

5. Illustrations

Different styles of illustrations will be among one of the hottest web design trends this year. There will be a lot of amazing artwork to see having detailed, well-executed, and customized characteristics. Most websites will don attractive detailed illustrations throughout the pages as well as the hero sections to tie up the design together. Illustrations will also be paired with animation to grab the attention of the visitors and communicate with them.

6. Trendy Luminous Colour Schemes

Colour schemes like hot pink, blues, greens, purples, earthy tones, and pastels will be incorporated into designs to provide a futuristic glowing and luminous feel to the websites. Unconventional duotone web designs will make this trend shine and can be utilized to transform any image into your branding solutions. Designers will strategically use these courageous glow-in-the-dark neon colour combinations or highly saturated colours with muted and darker shades to make websites appear more bold and daring. Additionally, the luminous colour schemes will gel well with the other 2020 web design trends such as dark mode and extreme minimalism.

7. Micro-Interactions

Micro-interactions in websites are a growing trend in web design. These can take forms like user-triggered UI animations. For example, depending on the type of action a visitor takes on the website such as hit the submit button, upload a file, focus the cursor on a particular product, scroll down the category pages, see an active upload status bar or hover over a call-to-action, an interesting animation can be put into typography or other design elements to delight the visitors with a ‘human’ or a lively feel.

Facebook has been using micro-interactions successfully from some time and if you have observed, they have increased incorporating such tiny animations when you type in certain words and phrases or even when you take tiny actions like hitting on the ‘Like’ button. Although these additions seem not so important at the superficial level, when it comes to evaluating the overall user experience, they really add up turning generic, mundane functions into something immersive, engaging, and memorable.

So, this trend will keep soaring in the coming months and many websites will use micro-interactions strategically across the websites to make the interface more interactive.

8. 3D Elements and Motion Effects

This year will also see rapid growth in using immersive 3D technology in interaction design and graphic design. There are vast creative options available for designers in this space now as the technology is likely to become more cost-effective. Here are the types of 3D web designs which will become an inevitable part of web design –

Static 3D Graphics: With realistic smooth shapes and attractive colours, designers will use static 3D models while keeping all other design elements minimalist to provide the overall website design a clean, modern and balanced look.
Interactive 3D Effects: The healthcare and gaming industries are already benefitting a lot from interactive 3D technology. This year interactive 3D effects will see a huge utilization in various other industries for branding especially retail and merchandising, e-commerce, real estate, manufacturing, marketing and advertising, publishing, and entertainment to transform consumer experiences.

Get ready to delight your users and make them stay longer at your website with more static, animated, and interactive 3D visuals and motion effects!

9. Line Art

This is another hot trend that will dominate all fields of graphic design and web design. Line art illustrations provide a clean, professional and a super creative look to the websites. It can be used against a plain background to represent 2D or 3D objects and overall it also complements the other trends of web design for 2020. Many websites have already started incorporating line art illustrations mostly in the travel and e-commerce industry. There are numerous opportunities yet to be explored.

10. Patterns and Shapes

Now this is a huge comeback from the past and this time patterns and geometric shapes will evolve into more refreshing and diverse options. Patterns will be seen not only covering the entire background but also on separate individual parts of the background. Designers will create some really hot and modern web design looks with patterns and shapes in 2020.

11. Combination of Photos and Illustrations

While we have already mentioned about illustrations setting a hot trend this year, the other huge web design trend that will be on the rise is combining real photos with simple 2D illustrations. Many websites have creatively been implementing this trend on their designs by replacing parts of real photos with illustrations or graphics to develop a fun and exciting combination of two realities. This trend is helping websites stand out from the crowd by providing unique visuals and communicating tailored messages.

The charm and versatile appeal that this trend is capable of providing to otherwise boring and bland product photos or brand images, it is only going to get more popular over time. It can also be used to communicate more serious messages on abstract or complicated concepts like finance and tech but the designers should know how to utilize its flexibility. There is a lot of opportunity in this area for the designers to create something sophisticated with a playful touch according to the requirements of the brands.

12. Black and White

The evergreen and classy black and white web designs will continue to be trendy even in 2020. These web designs will be mostly minimalist and will include line art illustrations and maxi typography. Many websites in various industries will be seen focusing on the black and white colour scheme with grayscale images. Portfolio websites and legal websites will utilize this trend more to create clean, modern, and crisp web designs.

13. Retro Style in Modern Websites

A big comeback in web design trends this year will be the design style of the 50s and 60s or the retro style. Black and white photos, dust, noise, vintage typography and duller colours are some of the retro effects from previous time periods that will return in web designs and inspire designers.

However, designers are likely to remix these throwback styles of the pre-internet era in bits and pieces with different modern styles to create unique designs that feel vintage but are still modern in aesthetic.

Web Design Trends 2020 Takeaways

Web designers are constantly looking forward to the future as well as reinventing the past for inspiration. The year 2020 will be all about futuristic interactive web designs. Starting from eye-popping colours and attention-grabbing visuals, stunning typography, 3D effects, AI and voice technology to improvising old trends, minimalism going to extreme minimalism, no eye-straining dark designs, super user-friendly navigation, and UX there will be a lot of surprises awaiting web design trends in 2020.

Want to have futuristic designs for your websites and apps? Contact Leidsens and discuss your projects! Our highly experienced team of graphic designers, web designers and UX designers continuously thrive to stay current and updated with the latest trends in the industry and combine their outstanding creativity skills to deliver future-proof websites and mobile apps.