Every year, trends in web design evolve subtly, and 2022 is no exception. While there aren’t many significant changes from year to year, 2020 introduced several fresh design trends. It’s time to examine how they will change this time around.

WordPress websites have closely mirrored current trends, with a few exceptions to their users’ preferences. In addition to becoming more emotional, tactile, interactive, and joy-inspiring than ever before, websites are narrative tools that take the consumer on a brand trip.

You may better understand why implementing these elements would help engage your audience and establish your brand as knowledgeable, authoritative, and inventive by understanding the logic and justification behind the prevalent web design trends.

Give this list a look if you’re going to start a complete website makeover and are stuck or unsure where to start. We’re confident that something in this article will spark your imagination and motivate you to develop an intriguing new approach to your website design.

1. Themes Inspired by Nostalgia

1990, welcome back! It’s simple to forget that we previously had to use “dial-up” to access the internet, endure long photo buffering times and browse the web on extremely pixelated screens to get around a jerky, vibrant, brand-new, brand-new digital world.

Today, we find the internet’s wild west era delightful and humorous because of the vivid colors, clip art graphics, and wild antics. We find ourselves daydreaming about the notion of a website whose sole purpose is to entertain. The cyclical drive to update the past has given rise to a new generation of Web 1.0-inspired design that is splashy, catchy, and enjoyable.

What essential components go into creating this vintage look? Experiment with vibrant backdrops, bordered table layouts, and robotic typefaces like Courier, Times New Roman, and ITC American Typewriter.

The early years of WordPress web design are sometimes portrayed in a romanticized (or chaotic) manner, highlighting a period when best practices were actually “a thing” and when unrestricted creativity allowed each website designer the freedom to express their businesses and ideas in particular ways.

Take a journey down memory lane and consider some of your favorite websites from that era. Get design ideas from their colors and layouts. Do your site design service by respecting the web we once knew and loved?

2. Micro-Interactions

The pleasing interactions you have with websites when you hover, scroll, and click are made possible by the delightful micro-interactions.

The way text or graphics react to a mouse hover, or click is something we see on websites and applications more and more. Text links that change color to indicate a link associated with that particular item are how we are used to viewing it. The micro-interaction in this edition of the game is a little animation that offers nice feedback. An icon on your site could move, change sizes, take quick action, or do other things that add a little more and make the user experience more engaging.

3. Hero Bold Text

The hero picture on your landing page is the first thing a website visitor will see. Trends are currently literalizing the concept that that space should make a message.

By making text the website’s hero picture, you may draw attention to the message you want to get through. We don’t allow much room for interpretation when we go through websites quickly in search of solutions, information, or inspiration. A brilliant and authoritative technique to successfully communicate your message is to swap out the usual hero picture for a bold line of text that sets out exactly what your visitor will get from you.

4. Dark Mode

A respite from the too vibrant and colorful websites that are increasingly prevalent when surfing is provided by the appealing and contemporary approach to web design known as “Dark Mode.”

The dark mode is meditative and draws attention to specific elements of your website. It enables you to draw attention to select elements of your site by making the backdrop around them darker. Visitors will be forced to linger at your site due to the aesthetic’s dark, contemporary appeal, which attracts attention to your visual content and strengthens your emotional branding.

5. Memphis Design

Memphis design, a style from the 1980s distinguished by strewn, vividly colored patterns and lines, has been one of the most unexpected design movements of the last few decades. Memphis design is lively, energetic, and memorable when done well; imagine an immediate party on a page. This bold and vibrant approach may come across as vulgar and flashy when handled incorrectly.

Minimalism was first rebuffed by Memphis design. Therefore, the uniformity of minimalistic web designs common in modern styles may contrast the usage of dots, squiggles, geometric forms, and vibrant colors in contemporary web design. This fashion is returning as a strategy to keep website visitors interested and reinvigorate the creativity of nostalgia and pleasure.

6. Drawn by Hand Illustrations

Inadvertently, the rising ease of digital craftsmanship in web design, layout, and aesthetics gives the perfect environment for a resurrection of hand-drawn illustrations. Hand-drawn text and artwork are extremely aesthetically beautiful because of their imperfections; they are philosophically endearing and have a “farm-to-table” appeal that attracts visitors. The suggestion is that these images are unique and made specifically for you rather than being a digital stockpile copy.

These hand-drawn qualities can be portrayed in design through doodles, scribbles, sloppy cuts, handwritten lettering, and textures like crayons, pencils, and paint. By including these components in your website design, you can give it a more intimate feel that will make your visitors feel more at ease and connected to your business.

7. Storytelling websites

Applying a storytelling strategy is becoming more common for web designers to use a digital interface to communicate a message or tell a complex tale. This is also beneficial for interestingly presenting difficult information to a large audience. Because we are primarily visual beings, integrating data knowledge with visual effects enables inclusive design and a more thorough grasp of crucial information.

Storytelling gives your website a cadence, rhythm, and evocation when utilized to communicate brand messaging. By giving visitors the freedom to stay and explore your website in ways that foster a sense of connection with you, you may assist in directing how they should feel as they browse through it. Use huge text, graphics, animations, and micro-interactions to emphasize your value proposition and bring visitors through a web experience where each element leads you to a new feature and advances the plot.

8. Interactivity

Engagement is an important resource and insight. And happily, we enjoy engaging in our social, digital environment. As a result, using interactive components in your site design is a fantastic approach to engaging your audience and discovering more about them.

Consider this scenario: You are a skincare company and would like to learn more about the items that attract your target clients. A fun approach for customers to connect with your online store and allow you to gather data and improve your product offerings is to set up a quiz that detects visitors’ unique skin types and proposes things that could assist.

9. Micro-Animations

Like micro-interactions, micro-animations are brief, purposeful animations that you may incorporate into your website to give it movement and dimension. Although not all of them must be interactive, they may greatly improve the user experience.

Using micro-animations on e-commerce websites is a fantastic method to use them nowadays. Shopping is made even more enjoyable by adding a short animation to the models wearing the merchandise. Customers may visualize how the clothing will appear in the real world by seeing how it moves and fits and how accessories can be worn.

Websites are evolving from a flat surface to a more dynamic virtual world that includes movement, 3-D perspective, and a more immersive digital experience thanks to animations and interactivity.

10. Creative Scrolling

Many contemporary design movements aim to upend the status quo by introducing characteristics that make you pause and consider the website you’re seeing. To get the additional information and determine the direction the website story intends to go, we are accustomed to instinctively scrolling up and down across web pages. Changing things up and including a horizontal scrolling function may affect the user’s behavior and make them want to see more.

By using psychedelic visuals, the parallax effect, and even technological advancements into the third dimension and virtual reality, creative scrolling also incorporates the artistic application of imagination. Don’t allow conventional web page layouts to make you feel limited. Instead, experiment with some fresh, original layouts and add scrolling movement to those concepts.

Conclusion

Keeping an eye out for changes in web design is always a smart idea, whether you’re a full-time WordPress web designer whose career depends on being current or just a website owner attempting to keep your site beautiful. It could enable you to improve your website’s aesthetic appeal, usability, or user experience.

According to consensus, here are this year’s trends: They can appear to be barely changing. Most well-known websites still rely on minimalism since it is a safe option for most of them. But being creative is handsomely compensated. And as technology advances, the web will be dominated by features like augmented reality and fresh ways to use WordPress themes.

I hope that some of these WordPress site design trends have inspired you. You can’t wait to dig your creative heels into the process and get started on a brand-new makeover for your site.