The 20 Dominating Web Design Trends for 2022

Experimental navigation, scrolling results, and kinetic typography are just some of the net design traits dominating 2022. 

Try the complete listing with examples of the most effective web site designs in 2022 to get impressed to sort out your internet design initiatives this yr.

One frequent theme amongst these traits is movement design. Gary Simon, an skilled UI/UX designer and frontend developer, believes movement design might be in every single place in 2022. To see a number of examples of internet sites utilizing scroll-based animations, parallax results, animated SVGs and extra, try his video:

1. Experimental Navigation

What we like: Experimental navigation might help interact and information guests to browse the positioning in a specific means. 

Experimental navigation refers to navigation patterns that subvert the standard sample (all caps navigation throughout the highest of the display screen with sans serif typography). These experimental patterns might help create curiosity and information customers to maneuver across the website in a selected means. 

Take Kim Kneipp’s portfolio website for instance. In case you click on the Menu button in the fitting nook of the homepage, a menu slides in from the underside of the display screen that appears just like the desk of contents in a e book. Every web page is numbered to recommend an order of studying. On the fitting, the initiatives are additionally numbered and categorized by kind and coloration. 

2. Scrolling Results

What we like: Scrolling results can stimulate guests and encourage them to maintain scrolling. 

Scrolling results — animations which can be triggered by scroll motion — can create extra dynamic internet experiences. These are more and more used on interactive web sites to intrigue readers to maintain scrolling, signify a break in content material, and create a three-dimensional expertise. 

Engineered Floors does simply that utilizing a mix of horizontal and vertical scrolling and different results. For instance, when the consumer lands on the homepage, they see a picture of what seems to be a chair on the fitting. Because the consumer scrolls, this picture zooms out to disclose a lounge, which is progressively lined in carpet. This 3D expertise is pleasant and informative. 

3. Kinetic Typography

What we like: Kinetic typography can delight guests and assist them digest your content material. 

Kinetic typography — or shifting textual content — is an animation approach that is been round for the reason that 60s when characteristic movies started utilizing animated opening titles. It will possibly used for the same objective in web site design to instantly seize the customer’s consideration as soon as they land on the homepage.

It can be used to spotlight vital sections, information the customer as they scroll, and progressively reveal info, like on Arcadia. 

4. Drag Interplay

What we like: Drag interplay can present customers with a way of management over their expertise. 

Drag interactions are designed to imitate an precise, bodily motion. They primarily permit web site guests to choose up and transfer objects on the display screen. This kind of gesture interplay is being carried out on extra web sites, and ecommerce and portfolio websites specifically. 

Take Robin Mastromarino’s portfolio site for instance. Along with clicking on the controls of the homepage slider, you may drag and drop the completely different slides to browse his featured initiatives. The web page transitions and animations are based mostly on the drag pace to offer customers with a way of management over these results.

5. Retro Typography

What we like: Retro typography can encourage a way of nostalgia and sentimentality in web site guests.  

Increasingly firms are utilizing huge, daring typography with a retro really feel to headline their homepages. This type works greatest for a brief phrase, with the remainder of the web page stored minimal and clear.

That is half of a bigger development labeled “Neue Nouveau.” In its 2022 Type Trends Report, the foundry and expertise firm Monotype describes Neue Nouveau as a twist on the Artwork Nouveau motion, which was characterised by ornamental designs, embellished stroke endings, and diagonal and triangular character shapes. We are able to see a few of these similar traits — like natural kinds and prospers — in typography immediately, in response to the report.

Here is an instance from French restaurant Picky Joe. The psychedelic-looking headline matches the retro inside of the restaurant as seen within the picture on the fitting. 

You may try different restaurant web site designs here. 

6. Cinemagraphs

What we like: Cinemagraphs might help draw the customer’s eye across the web page, even in probably the most advanced layouts. 

Cinemagraphs — high-quality movies or GIFs that run on a clean, steady loop — have turn into a well-liked means so as to add motion and visible curiosity to in any other case static pages.

Whereas full-screen loops had been common previously, this yr you will see smaller cinemagraphs integrated into advanced layouts to assist draw the attention and preserve readers scrolling, like on this instance from the design and expertise studio Grafik.

7. Brutalism

What we like: Brutalism prioritizes simplicity and performance, that are pillars of the consumer expertise.

To face out in a sea of tidy, organized web sites, some designers are choosing extra eclectic, convention-defying constructions. Whereas it may appear jarring at first, many common manufacturers are actually incorporating these aggressively different design parts into their websites, resembling Bloomberg.

Brutalism emerged as a reaction to the increasing standardization of web design and is commonly characterised by stark, asymmetrical, nonconformist visuals, and a definite lack of hierarchy and order. In different phrases, it is exhausting to explain however you know it when you see it — like with the beneath instance from Chrissie Abbott.

8. Monochromatic Gradients

What we like: Monochromatic gradients are visually fascinating however not distracting. 

Gradients have been all around the internet for the previous few years, and are nonetheless quite common in 2022. This yr, many web site background are gradients which can be each monochromatic and pastel.

Kendra Pembroke, a Visible Designer at Pink Ventures, mentioned “I see quite a lot of gradients, particularly monochromatic ones, which give a way of depth and visible curiosity with out being too distracting.”

Artistic Studio Higher Half illustrates a perfect example of how to make this effect look fresh and modern. It combines bold typography and hover animations with a monochromatic, pastel yellow gradient background.

9. Layering

What we like: Layering can help add depth to a site and tell the brand’s story. 

Layering images, colors, shapes, animations, and other elements add depth and texture to a site that doesn’t have a lot of text. Below is a stylish example from the singer-songwriter SIRUP. 

10. Textual content-Solely

What we like: This minimalist strategy ensures guests solely get probably the most important info. 

Some web sites are reducing out photos and outstanding navigation sections altogether, counting on just a few selection strains of easy textual content to tell guests about their firm.

Danish company B14 makes use of the hero part of its homepage to easily describe its mission assertion, for instance. It is a fashionable, uncluttered strategy to presenting info that gives a stark distinction to its portfolio part, which makes use of cinemagraphs, hover animations, and an animated cursor effect. 

11. Animated Illustrations

What we like: Animated illustrations assist convey advanced concepts and add some character to a website. 

Extra firms are turning to illustrators and graphic artists to create bespoke illustrations for his or her web sites. “Illustration works effectively to convey extra advanced concepts that way of life photographs aren’t all the time capable of seize,” Pembroke defined.

In web site designs this yr, these illustrations are sometimes animated so as to add interactivity.

For instance, should you hover over one of many illustrations on the NewActon website (designed by Australian digital company ED), the illustration and people within the surrounding space will wiggle. Then, solely the illustration you are hovering over will proceed to maneuver in a small circle. This design can also be useful: every illustration represents one of many classes from the navigation menu on the fitting.  

12. Extremely-minimalism

What we like: Extremely-minimalism can positively affect the consumer expertise and web site efficiency. 

Taking classic minimalism to the intense, some designers are defying conventions of what a web site must seem like, displaying simply absolutely the naked requirements. This development, often called “ultra-minimalism,” will be nice for the consumer expertise and cargo instances.

The location from designer Mathieu Boulet is centered round just a few selection hyperlinks to their social profiles and data.

13. Mixing Horizontal and Vertical Textual content

What we like: Mixing horizontal and vertical textual content defies conference and may due to this fact delight and intrigue some customers. 

Liberating textual content from its normal horizontal alignment and putting it vertically on a web page provides some refreshing dimension. Take this instance from motion sports activities video producers Prime Park Sessions, which mixes horizontal and vertical textual content alignments on a minimal web page.

14. Geometric Shapes and Patterns

What we like: Geometric shapes and patterns can direct customer’s attentions to sure merchandise or CTAs. 

Whimsical patterns and shapes are popping up extra ceaselessly on web sites, including some aptitude in a panorama in any other case dominated by flat and material design. Canadian design studio MSDS makes use of daring, patterned letters on their homepage.

15. Skinny Serif Fonts

What we like: This development provides a degree of sophistication to a model. 

As a consequence of display screen decision limitations and an general lack of on-line font assist, designers averted serif fonts for years to maintain web sites legible and clear. With current enhancements, serif fonts had a giant second in 2021.

Whereas final yr was all about huge and daring serifs, 2022 is ushering in thinner, gentle serifs, in response to Monotype’s 2022 Type Trends Report.

As seen on The Sill, a svelte serif headline provides a dose of sophistication and magnificence.

16. Overlapping Textual content and Photographs

What we like: Overlapping textual content and pictures maximizes area on the web page. 

Textual content that barely overlaps accompanying photos has turn into a well-liked impact for blogs and portfolios. Freelance artwork director and front-end developer Thibault Pailloux makes their overlapping textual content stand out with a colourful underline beneath every title.

17. Damaged Grids

What we like: This convention-defying approach could make normal web site pages or sections extra fascinating.  

Whereas grids stay some of the frequent and environment friendly methods of displaying textual content and pictures on web sites, broken grids proceed to make their means into mainstream websites and supply a change-up from the norm. Try the web site for HealHaus, for instance. Its homepage options photos and textual content blocks that overlap.

18. Natural Shapes

What we like: Natural shapes add character with out distracting from the content material.  

Gone are the times of strict grid layouts and sharp edges — now it’s all about curved strains and delicate, natural shapes.

“Natural shapes might help add some playfulness with out affecting the best way the data is displayed,” Pembroke mentioned.

Within the instance beneath from Spring Invest, the natural shapes within the hero part usually are not solely ornamental however useful. The yellow dots act like a cursor, drawing the tear drops that type the corporate’s emblem. These shapes not solely add a second of pleasure — additionally they assist reinforce the model’s identification and worth proposition to “form the way forward for commerce.” 

19. Internet Textures

What we like: Internet textures draw consideration to a specific part on a web site. 

Web textures are background photos that visually resemble a three-dimensional floor. When achieved effectively, textures can immerse viewers in a web site by participating tactile senses, as demonstrated by Color Of Change — the background evokes a duct-tape-like texture.

20. Grid Strains

What we like: This development emphasizes the grid as an organizing precept. 

Grid strains have began cropping up increasingly in current months, and for good cause. Grid strains construction content material in a means that makes it simple to learn and perceive — however it additionally provides a contemporary aesthetic. On the Foundations for a Better Oregon website, grid strains are used to create a transparent structure that appears futuristic.

Design Traits You Can Use on Your Web site

In fact, you don’t want to include all of those traits to construct among the best web site designs in 2022 — we doubt that’s even doable anyhow. Nonetheless, even including a pair as outstanding elements or subtler particulars can enhance your website’s UX considerably, resulting in increased engagement, extra CTA clicks, and a greater final result to your on-line enterprise.

Editor’s be aware: This submit was initially printed in January 2018 and has been up to date for comprehensiveness.