Master the art of web design with these 7 must-know trends for students – enhance user experiences and create visually stunning websites.
Engaging in web design is a great way to foster your creativity and start a career that will let you work on exciting projects while also making good money.
Another significant benefit of this profession is that you can master it without formal education.
Even if you are already in college and studying another subject, you can acquire web design skills and hone them through self-learning.
We won’t sugarcoat it. Being a full-time student and learning this profession will be uneasy.
Luckily, whenever things get too tough, you can simply say, “Please, someone write my paper for me,” and delegate your tasks to professionals to focus on your future career instead of boring tasks.
In the meantime, you will have to work on your creativity and skills to become an expert in web design. And you will also have to keep an eye on trends because this field is incredibly fast-changing.
To help you get on the right track, we’ve gathered the top seven current web design trends that every student aiming for this profession must know about.
1. Accessibility
2022 was a turning point for commercial web design. In the spring of last year, the U.S. Department of Justice published the Americans with Disabilities Act and revealed a new set of guidelines for site accessibility.
According to the new guidelines, all commercial sites are now considered “open to the public” (Title III of the ADA) and must ensure accessibility for people with disabilities.
This created a major trend for accessible designs. So if you are honing your skills in 2023, you must know how to make sites more accessible for users with various impairments. This knowledge will make you an in-demand professional in your field.
2. Artificial Intelligence
Now that AI is literally everywhere, it’s no wonder it made its way to the industry of web design as well. By this time, AI design tools have already come a long way. Still, they didn’t replace human creative professionals.
But they did introduce a new big trend. In 2023, every good professional must know how to create appealing and effective designs with AI elements.
If you are just getting started in this field, you might want to learn how to create designs for chatbots and learn how to leverage AI technology in your work. This will definitely give you a competitive advantage.
3. Mobile-Friendliness
The next trend isn’t really new. In fact, it has been around for many years. But it still remains one of the most crucial ones in the industry.
Studies show that 55% of all traffic comes from mobile devices, with 92.3% of Internet users accessing the web using their phones. The numbers speak for themselves – with so many mobile users, mobile-friendliness is one of the most crucial features in every web design.
Sites must adapt seamlessly to different devices and screens. As an aspiring professional, you must learn how to adapt your projects to mobile too.
4. Minimalism
The era of bright, animation-heavy, and flashy sites has come to an end. Today, minimalism is a new big trend.
More and more companies are embracing a minimalistic aesthetic that enables them to create a better balance and focus visitors’ attention on the important point without overwhelming them with tons of heavy elements.
As a beginner designer, you must know about this tendency and practice applying it in your projects. To do this, you need to study the concepts of white space and color psychology – these are the primary concepts that will let you create effective focus points on a minimalistic page.
5. Nostalgia
This next trend is taking the world by storm and applies to the design industry as well.
According to specialists, due to the Covid-19 lockdown, when people were forced to stay at home and stop meeting their friends, families, and colleagues, many people started reminiscing about their happy times to overcome lockdown-initiated loneliness.
This jump-started the nostalgia trend. In 2023, brands use nostalgia in many aspects of their work to create more powerful and meaningful connections with their customers and prospects. And this tendency is applied to web design as well.
6. Micro-Interactions
In the past, there were a few standard ways for users to interact with a site. These included watching videos, reading a blog post, clicking a link, filling out some forms, etc.
Now, companies strive to take user experiences further. To do this, they incorporate micro-interactions into their pages.
One example of micro-interaction is a progress indicator that appears when users complete a multi-stage process or fill out a form. According to experts, such elements improve UX and brand awareness.
Thus, as an aspiring designer, you must know about this tendency and learn how to use it in your work too.
7. Dark Mode
Now that dark modes are available in many gadgets and online resources, more and more users recognize its benefits. Namely, a dark mode reduces the stress-causing blue light, eases eye strain, extends battery life, etc.
Due to these reasons, more and more companies strive to incorporate this feature in their sites and apps. This is another key tendency to keep an eye on and master as a future professional.
The Bottom Line
The job of a web designer has a unique creative flare, pays well, and is incredibly fulfilling. This is a promising field that can ensure a stable and fruitful career for you in the future.
And your college years are the perfect time for mastering this profession, even if you major in a different sphere.
The good news is that mastering this job is possible without taking a special college course. Instead, you can delegate your tasks to professional writing services to save time and engage in self-learning in the meantime.
There are plenty of educational materials on the web that you can use for self-learning to acquire basic skills and knowledge. But apart from this, you must keep an eye on the industry trends, and now you know which ones are the most important to keep in mind in 2023.
