Web Design Trends for 2021 Share: BeKey Date Published 22 October 2020 Categories Blog Reading Time 6-Minute Read Let’s talk about trends in web design for 2021, shall we? Designers will try to break free out of bland corporate interfaces, we’ll get more animation, stories, and, we hope, drama. Blandness Gets Banned If you, like us, will open dribble or start looking for web-designs on Pinterest, you will find out that the most popular designs are suspiciously alike. It’s not the designer’s fault—it’s not even a fault, exactly; it’s just easier to present users with a familiar interface if you want them to make a quick journey down the scroll towards CTA and, well, purchase or not purchase, right? It is true. But is it fun? According to what we saw in the design studio’s latest case studies and award nominations, it’s not always fun. It can be fun—with a good copy. Don’t get us wrong, hero text and the picture or video behind it is still trendy. It’s a good template; bad templates aren’t used… Aren’t they? Last year produced an amazing amount of pages with alternative, unconventional grids, unexpected, weird animations, sparkles, nods to aesthetic of the 00s, 90s, 80s, and so on, cyberpunk colors, collages, full-page videos, cursor-following animations, mini-games on the page, and others. It doesn’t mean corporate style will go. It means it will get uncomfortable. And that’s where our other trend comes. Animation-induced Storytelling Animation is a perfect tool for storytelling. It is both close to camerawork in cinema—and to camera work in game design. With it, we can tell the stories about our product in more colors and details, we can make it fun for users to explore them, can show them from different angles — from different pain points, and we can get users to control the unfolding of these stories. The animation is both fun and challenging to create. On one hand, you have to keep in mind all the quirks and unpleasant outcomes animation can cause (like lags and quirks and nausea) and make sure it doesn’t get in the way of understanding the content you’ve written. On the other hand, it must engage, empower the content, highlight certain parts of it. Scroll-based storytelling can be applied in different ways. It can create pauses in-between two paragraphs; it can illustrate; create an illusion of reading a book or a magazine; it can help users gain a deeper understanding of your services. On the other hand, click-based animation allows you to play with perspectives; add depths to your interface; create almost POV-game design; let users look at the product from different angles, or even learn how it looks in different environments. But what else can help us disturb the corporate style in web-design? Minimalism Huh, you’re going to say, but minimalism is nothing new. And you’d be right. Some would argue that corporate websites are already using minimalism, as the top of their main page is usually a combo of image+name of the product+value proposition+CTA. Nothing excessive, right? But what is about the picture? Does it deliver a better understanding of products or services that are offered? Is it an illustration of the business automation services that are clear and easily recognizable by the website’s target audience? Is a copy says what the product does and why is it worth installing? Is it clear where the CTA button leads? Netflix has a minimalistic design, as well as Google. Facebook’s updated page? Nah. Minimalism doesn’t mean you have a few elements on your website. It means you have just enough elements to send a message to the audience; to catch the user’s attention and explain to him, short, why you are what they need. For minimalism to truly work, you don’t need to strip your webpage out of everything that is not your offer. It’s not enough. It has to be a good offer. It has to compel; it has to be self-explanatory; it has to move users. And for that, you need… Drama Drama in web-design is what can make even the templated, bootstrapped websites entertain, shock, push consumers’ pain buttons, and make them feel. And you need them to feel, aren’t you? Even if you a B2B brand: people behind the businesses still make emotion-based decisions; they need a rational confirmation of the validity of their decision, yes, but it’s still emotional, and it still works mostly on confirmation bias: they liked you, then you presented evidence, then they thought: “Oh, they are really good. Just as I thought.” And that is why you need drama. What do we mean when we say drama? We mean what creative agencies, along with creative groups and large, large audience studies are doing when they advertise a product. You need what they have but on the website. To implement that—whereas it’s in minimalistic design or corporate design, or when planning a scroll-based animation—you have to know how the creative industry is doing that. A good idea to start is to look at Cannes Archives or at any other archives where good ads are collected for junior copywriters and designers to study. Look at the ad—at that, for instance: We know lots of people know it by the meme, but how many of you have seen the ad? And think, what exactly makes it so compelling? Why is it good—or considered good? We’ll give you a few hints. It demonstrates the value of the product (autos move so flawlessly, a person was able to get into twine between them while they do so.) The copy isn’t showy, but sincere; it is his body, and he can do that, and he couldn’t have done it if it weren’t Volvo’s vans. Van Dam is a Belgium actor, so there’s an aspect of localization. You don’t have to use video to convey the value of your product with emotion, though. It can be created via any medium you want it to be in. Try doing it in web-design next year. This article was previously published on the BeKey Blog — Predicting web-design trends for 2021.