9 Best Web Design Trends of 2020 (With Examples)
Get our posts emailed to you with our monthly newsletter, subscribe here.
With the sharp increase of do-it-yourself web design applications such as Squarespace and Wix, it would be easy to imagine stock web templates are taking over.
But it’s simply not the case.
2020 has already seen businesses diving into innovative, non-templated web design elements that hint at a new era of website aesthetics.
Where traditional websites offer a professional finish with informative content and standardized landing page menus, 2020 is turning away from stuffy, square design trends.
Instead, 2020 web trends offer bright colors, bold photography, straight-talking slogans, and futuristic 3D graphics.
This new foray into more brazen next-generation design offers a heightened feeling of interactivity for the user — a feeling underpinned with an essence of brand confidence.
Want to know what’s ‘en flique’ for 2020 web design? Here are the top web design trends hitting the market today.
2020 Web Design Trend #1: Vibrant Contrasting Colors
This year’s web design trends are seeing the return of bright, block colors covering all white space. Immediately eye-catching, the combination of various striking colors creates a multi-layered textural feel to your website.
By harnessing such vivid, bold colors, companies demonstrate an air of confidence.
Take a look at this website by Pest Stop Boys. The vibrant colors are overlaid to simulate a jungle environment, alluding to the idea of pests:
Where conventional pest websites tend to stick to sensible white-background websites, Pest Stop Boys demonstrate themselves as something a little ‘extra’ with the striking colors.
The boldness of the visual aesthetic makes this company appear more confident than its competitors.
Equally, according to color psychology, vibrant colors that contrast with each other spark attention and arousal in viewers. These color combinations also tend to induce excitement in the onlooker.
If you’re attempting to arouse excitement in your potential customers or draw attention to specific elements, bright colors could be the way forward.
Here’s another example — Illuminating Radioactivity, a company that seeks to explain radioactive activity.
Bright color schemes are used to scatter the website with terms associated with radioactivity. By doing this, the website immediately highlights public concerns:
Alternatively, check out Fontsmith. The font design website uses block color to pique interest in each different typeface.
What’s more, studies show that eye-catching colors lead to higher conversions rates. While it takes customers 90 seconds to form an opinion on a company, 62-90% of that judgment comes down to the color palettes, alone.
In this sense, even if you don’t fully commit to the bold color schemes in 2020, you should be using vibrant colors on your call-to-action buttons. Red, green, orange, and yellow are the most effective colors to increase conversion rates.
2020 Web Design Trend #2: High Fashion Fonts
In line with conventional ideas of high-class fashion, Vogue-inspired fonts are peppering 2020 websites. These minimalist typefaces tend to feature high, bold lettering with serifs.
Bold fonts promote the experience of classiness and heritage. This is why you’ll see this style typeface utilized to signify opulence, as with Alessandra Zanghi’s bespoke wedding consultancy service or Queen Garnet, a luxury health and wellness brand.
Prominent fashionista-inspired fonts can also give the impression that a stylish company is well-established, as with the case of DDD Hotel, a top Japanese boutique hotel.
2020 Web Design Trend #3: Close-Ups of Human Faces
Another inspiring 2020 modern web design trend for websites is the use of close-up images of human faces.
Usually incorporated as a full-screen image on website landing pages, large images of people’s faces add humanistic elements to the product or service being offered.
It’s been shown that the use of human faces in visual design enhances the user experience. Eye-tracking software shows that the vast majority of website users will gravitate toward images of faces before looking at any text or logo design.
By adding human faces to your homepage, you draw in your customers’ attention. Strategically placing prominent human faces close to products or combining your product with an image of a human face will direct your users’ eye-lines to your product.
LOOP, an earplug brand, uses this tactic to showcase their product. The company’s homepage favors minimalist design elements, featuring nothing but the side profile of a human face.
Human faces can also be used to give a first-person perspective.
Research shows that the use of human faces in responsive web design elicits an emotional response from the viewer, especially if the focus is in the eyes. Using human faces in this way encourages trust and establishes authority.
Fuego Camina Conmigo, a PR agency, uses this tactic to showcase its client-centric approach. By humanizing its website with faces, the company establishes trust with potential clients with the human touch.
2020 Web Design Trend #4: 3D Graphics
One of this year’s top graphic design trends, 3D graphics have boomed in 2020. One of the most prominent recent website design additions, 3D graphics help to conjure up images of conceptual design processes and futuristic visions.
While a focus on realism has been trendy in previous years, 3D graphics in 2020 have a digital ‘cartoon’ feel. This less realistic feel distinguishes between reality and conceptual design as if to highlight the idea of virtual reality.
Zenly, a mapping app to find friends and family near you, uses this design trend. The website features playful 3D graphics in a cartoon style, hinting at a more exciting virtual reality than actual reality. This invites customers to join by alluding to the futuristic nature of the service.
Alternatively, this design trend is also used to demonstrate conceptual design and process.
In a similar style to conceptual drawings, 3D graphics are used to illustrate what a product or service can do. 3D graphics can also help companies portray a clearer understanding of their futuristic ideas and processes.
Take PLINK, a new digital payment gateway. The concept may be confusing to customers who aren’t used to digital payment platforms. To remedy this, PLINK uses 3D imagery to visually explain the next-generation process in an easy-to-digest manner.
2020 Web Design Trend #5: Retro Gaming-Inspired
Every era recycles fashions, and 2020 is no different. Harking back, retro nostalgia can be seen injected into all walks of life, from clothing trends to cooking inspiration to web and UX-oriented design.
In terms of website design, retro gaming has made a significant comeback. 2-bit style, flat design, basic color palettes, and retro gaming characters are being resurrected from the archives.
These development trends pay homage to the technologies that came before this complex generation of technology.
Often used in an ironic sense, retro styles demonstrate the sheer speed of progress through the eras.
Timesheets Magazine, a London-based zine for creatives, uses the style to contrast with current-day photography. The combination gives a fun effect while highlighting the changes in artistic style over time:
This same idea of progression can be seen by coders and gamers, who often use the 2-bit style to present their programming portfolios. Mariah Weathersby’s developer portfolio is a stellar example of this:
2020 Web Design Trend #6: Bold Slab Sans-Serif Typography
Another top trend this season is slab-style sans-serif typography. Usually brandished across a landing page, bold fonts are used on their own or with subtle imagery.
Psychologically, sans-serif fonts assist with clarity. By being easy to read, brands can define their names or slogans easily.
On 2020 websites, large sans-serif fonts are being used on landing pages to immediately single out a message to the customer.
Some websites use this bold typography to shout their brand names.
This is the case with HELLOMOJITO, a design agency whose homepage features stark white lettering against a block electric blue background. The contrast combined with the sans-serif typography burns the name on to the back of the visitor’s mind:
Alternatively, brands use this technique to instantly promote what they do. Highnoon, a marketing and consultancy agency, uses slab lettering to highlight their services directly on their landing page.
Using bright sans-serif typography against a dark background, Highnoon uses an ever-changing slogan to ask: ‘Are you ready to make your digital marketing (brand/technology/results/vision) remarkable? So are we.’
This typography trend is also being used to exclaim brands’ visions or values. Umami, a digitalization agency, uses stretched sans-serif lettering to call out the niche goal, with the tagline ‘Humanize Digitalization’.
2020 Web Design Trend #7: Illustrations
Creativity and self-expression have been strong societal themes across art and culture in the last few years. 2020 brings this trend to website design through illustrated graphics.
Somewhat juxtaposed to the robotized ideals of the online economy, illustrations humanize a website. This is thanks to an illustration’s hint at an ‘artist touch’ — especially if hand-drawn.
Where previously trends have focused on sharp photography and stark realism, this new thirst for custom illustrations gives way to expressionistic aesthetics. Not only is this style used to showcase creativity, but it also seems to simplify ideas.
Both creativity and simplification are modeled by Moderne, a SaaS tool that helps creative teams collaborate:
Moderne’s homepage features a hand-drawn gorilla from a few simple crayon-like marks. The simplicity of the drawing, combined with the creativity of the illustrations, alludes to the tool’s nature.
Mercury Annual Report uses custom illustrations to simplify the complexity of their energy report. Basic illustrated icons help to depict the complicated data so that readers can better absorb the information.
2020 Web Design Trend #8: Motion Graphic Animations
Motion graphics and animations have been a regular feature on premium responsive web designs since the early days of the internet.
However, the motion graphic quality on 2020 websites is like nothing that’s come before.
Thanks to the super hi-tech capabilities of modern web design and motion graphics, websites in 2020 now leverage this style to create an interactive feel. Brands are using animations to inject life into company narratives and to convey those storylines to website visitors.
MAT, a professional artist, uses this technique to present his illustration portfolio.
The landing page features a girl with her hair blowing in the wind. An intimate slogan dances across the screen as if in the breeze, reading ‘Part of Your Story’. In this instance, the motion graphics bring the artist’s work to life.
Rouser Lab is a communications and product development firm working on climate change solutions. Its website harnesses motion graphics to convey the firms’ storyline.
To express Rouser Labs’ ideal that people need to wake up to climate change, a message breaks up the minimalist design, reading ‘Not sorry to burst your bubble.’ Moving bubbles bump across the screen to drum home this message.
2020 Web Design Trend #9: Responsive Web Design for an Immersive Experience
Showing the true caliber of 2020responsive web design, immersive, interactive landing pages gamify the user experience.
Combining state-of-the-art 3D graphics with a user-controlled customer journey, companies use these sophisticated responsive web styles to suck web visitors in and flaunt their capabilities.
This is why creative individuals often use this technique to present professional portfolios and offer their services for hire.Celia Lopez, a talented website and app designer, uses this technique to exhibit previously designed websites.
Creative agencies, software firms, artists, and game designers are the most common companies to employ this style.
Moxy Studio, a software design agency, parades this technique, combining it with futuristic sounds to infer their cutting-edge skill as developers:
Conclusion
Web design trends in 2020 are all about celebrating the human race and its ideas. Using vivid colors and bold text, 2020 websites are arousing excitement with catchy slogans and brazen purposes.
Other web design trends show companies humanizing their brand with people’s faces or custom illustrations, saluting the creativity of humans.
2020 is also seeing retro touches of nostalgia commemorate website design trends from generations passed, praising the leaps into the future that companies are making.
Perhaps the most cutting-edge web design trends are those that create an immersive user experience through responsive web design and 3D motion graphics.
These next-generation styles invite expectations of what’s to come over the next decade of website development.
