What’s the purpose of good website design? Ideally, your website should be your best sales rep, bringing your business new leads. To do this, it should be optimized for maximum search engine visibility, and once found, must provide a seamless user experience, making it easy for visitors to navigate between different sections of the site to find the information they need. It should convey something of your brand identity, and ultimately, facilitate easy connection points, including conversions.
None of that’s new, exactly. The requirements for a good business website have long been agreed upon. But the means for meeting those requirements are subject to change. Indeed, each year brings some exciting new website design trends, and if you’re considering a website overhaul this year, these trends are worth exploring.
Where is Web Design Headed in 2022?
Here are a few of the trends we see as particularly noteworthy for 2022.
- A sense of play. First and foremost, we foresee more and more organizations shaking off self-serious professionalism in favor of a more playful Web presence. This may include silly or colorful graphics, vibrant font choices, or even humor embedded in the written copy. Given the grim couple of years we’ve all had, this move toward playfulness feels both obvious and welcome.
- Storytelling. At Woland Web, we’ve focused on brand storytelling ever since our inception. Now, more and more design teams are catching on, providing their clients with websites that present the consumer as the protagonist facing some kind of problem or obstacle, and the brand as a source of help. StoryBrand is our framework of choice to clarify your messaging to connect with customers.
- Horizontal scrolling. While vertical scrolling is the tried-and-true method of website navigation, we anticipate a slight move toward horizontal scrolling, especially for sites that are more portfolio-based. This is also a notable trend for sites that involve maps.
- Chaotic typography. Traditional typography arranges letters in a clear, linear way, emphasizing easy reading. Chaotic typography may present letters in a more jumbled, less linear way… still with readability as the goal, but also an emphasis on creating striking or unusual visuals.
- Nostalgia. We’ve all coped with the uncertainties of the COVID era in different ways. For some people, the natural response is to retreat to simpler times, if only in memory. Website design can capture a sense of nostalgia through retro fonts, grainy images, or even particular color palettes that recall bygone eras of design.
- Layer images. Over the last several years, there has been a clear preference for clean, minimalist designs. That’s starting to change now. One area where we see that is in the use of layered multi-images, which can often provoke a kind of “mood board” effect. Expect to see this more often in the months to come.
- Metallic textures. We’re also graphic designers, employing metallic textures, drawing attention to certain areas of their illustrations. Gold foil textures seem especially popular. Note that these metallic textures often go hand-in-hand with the nostalgia we mentioned above.
- Oversized typography. We previously mentioned chaotic typography. A related trend is the move toward really big, oversized fonts. We’re often seeing sites where the headline takes up the whole screen, really creating an epic first impression.
Let’s Talk Design Trends
These are just a few of the trends that we expect to dominate website design over the coming year or so. If you have questions about whether these design trends could possibly enhance your own digital branding, we’d love to have a conversation. Reach out to the design team at Woland Web whenever you’re ready to chat with us.
