Trends and movements are constantly working in the field of design, whether it’s a new design technique or styling practice. Â From web 2.0 to the use of CSS grid systems, to the movement away from table based layouts to DIV and semantic based code.
The Web’s designers and developers have created an open environment where sharing knowledge with each other is encouraged. While excellent resources can spur from this environment, rampant copycat-ism and faddish repetition can flourish just as easily. This article will examine some of the major movements in web design and the trends that, for better or worse, came from each.
So what exactly constitutes a movement, and what differentiates it from a trend?
From the Wikipedia article Art Movements:
“each movement was seen corresponding to a somewhat grandiose rethinking of all that came before it [...] Generally there was a commonality of visual style linking the works and artists included in an art movement.”
From the Wikipedia article Fad:
“a trend, meme or a craze, is any form of behavior that develops among a large population and is collectively followed with enthusiasm for some period, generally as a result of the behavior’s being perceived as novel in some way. A fad is said to “catch on” when the number of people adopting it begins to increase rapidly. The behavior will normally fade quickly once the perception of novelty is gone.”
The key factor that differentiates a movement from a trend is that movements share a common goal and a sense of purpose. For example, the punk rock movement of the late 1970′s and 80′s was never deemed the “leather jacket movement” or the “mohawk movement”, simply because leather jackets and mohawks were just the items associated with the core group (the punk rockers). These items were then picked up by the masses, and at that point, became “trendy”.
Trends are most often executed with little thought of the actual principles from which they may have originated.
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Classifying ideas as a trend or a movement can be extremely difficult until time has passed. Movements may either be fed on or fueled by the trends they are associated with. Many would be movements fizzle out and collapse into mere trendiness. On the other hand it’s not uncommon for a person to get into a movement due to a particular trend and then steadily up their involvement until they eventually become an integral part of the movement.
Major Movements in Web Design
Table Based Layouts
The shift to a table based layout was one of the first major movement in web design, and although most designers cringe at the thought (“tables = bad!”), tables truly did set the stage for the graphically intense web we know today. Additionally, the table based layout helped convince the business world to invest time and resources in deveopling their online presence. Without these investments, it’s unlikely web designers and developers would hold the jobs they currently have.
The use of tables offered “easy” multi-column layouts for the first time, and also made possible the “image slicing” that most designers still do a form of today. Design from this period had the tendency to appear extremely boxy, since anything that wasn’t a hard edge had to be faked with images.
Some of the trends that stemmed from this movement:
- Blocky header graphics
- Horrible “splash pages”
- Kitchen sink navigation on the left side
- A lot of flat colors/an overall lack of texture.
CSS & Standards
The next major movement in web design, and the movement that most resembled a traditional/cultural movement in respect to its focus and evangelicism, was the web standards movement and the push for the adoption of CSS as a layout tool. This period even led to the term “standardista” being thrown around. This movement helped establish the standards that now serve as the foundation for everything we know today.
Some trends that came from the CSS & Standards movement were:
- The ubiquitous w3c validation buttons,
- Putting absolutely everything into a list whether it was semantic or not
- Using tiny fonts (which have grown even tinier as the sites age and monitor resolution increases)
Web 2.0
The Next Major Movement in Web Design was Web 2.0 or the Interactive Web.
Web designers have long called themselves “interactive designers”, “user experience designers”, “User Interaction Designers”, and pretty much anything EXCEPT “web designers”, but it’s only become more than posturing within the last 5 years or so. Today’s developers and designers are working on sites that are incredibly interactive and often built mostly or entirely on user generated content. Flickr was one of the first sites to use Ajax and user generated content to create a truly immerse experience. For the first time, the a user was an active participant instead of a mere content consumer. Flickr, Myspace, Blogger and other sites like them kicked off the “Web 2.0″ movement.
Trends from this period include:
- The desire to “glossify” everything,
- Large text and big buttons
- Starburst style “stickers” declaring that the site was “Web 2.0″ or version “2.0″
- The much maligned “shiny floor effect”.
However the largest trend to come from the movement is probably the name of the movement itself. “Web 2.0″ is a clear example of a legitimate movement being adopted beyond the audience that had the education to properly understand its meaning, leading to the experience that we’ve all had where a potential client calls and demands a “Web 2.0 Flash Site”.
Current Movements and Trends
As previously stated, it can often be difficult to differentiate a trend from a movement until time has passed. Currently there is a push for more and more interactivity, using the canvas element, real fonts on the web, and an overall shift to mobile. Only time will tell whether all of these will prove to turn into individual movements, fizzle out into trends that we shake our heads at in 5 years, or coalesce into the next incarnation of web design.
Where do you see it all going? What are some current trends that you can’t wait to see pass?
I think that the trend is interconnection. Web pages will not work as individual brand product, they have to interact and interconnect. Graphic impact now is less important than quality of content; when a company decides the look of the web page, needs to think on how easy is to expand it.
I fully agree with you that content is the most important aspect of any site, but I think I disagree with you when you say that visual design is becoming less important. Instead I believe that further interconnection is going to fuel the design side of things. As average people do more and more with their data I think there will be more need for design not less.
There’s been a lot of debate going on regarding exactly this issue over at smashing magazine
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/09/24/does-the-future-of-the-internet-have-room-for-web-designers/
and I sit firmly in the “why would design ever become obsolete?” camp.
However, as I say in the article, only time will tell where we are headed as an industry.
I see your point. I think I did not express myself correctly, because a good design is the one that works better for the site. Period. From this point of view it cannot be less important. What I meant was this: I remember 6 years ago, when the visual impact (animations, images, and so on) was the main hook for the credibility of a site, but with the time, this technology has been reduced, and the graphic design has been simplified to allow more flexibility in the content; because update the information, changing and refreshing the site AND interconnecting it (with facebook, twitter, news, and so on) has become more important. Then, the options when designing a web site has been simplified to serve the content. The challenge now is to be creative to not look like a template but respecting this flexibility??? But yes, there is a debate. Internet is evolving
helping article. thanks
I agree with above, interactivity, in terms of sharing content is going to be a a long term movement not just a trend. The early forms of this I believe were called mashups; such as google maps plus flicker, etc.
Design will always remain key especially as a means to dealing with the loads of content we fill our sites and apps with.
Great job on the article… ALA quality and effort.
Mashup is the keyword!!!!
Thanks for your comment. I agree that portability/usability of data is totally going to keep growing, and is definitely more in the “movement” category in my mind. I think that’s a great thing for the web.
However this data always has to be presented for the end user. Often the data isn’t presented one way but many different ways depending on how/where/on what device it’s viewed and I think we will certainly be seeing more of this in the future Which, as you point out, equates to design playing a larger role not a smaller one, which is good news to those of us who are trying to make a living at it :)
I think the thing to remember is that everything on the web is designed. It’s either done skillfully, with a focus on how to enhance the content and add to the viewers experience, or it is done hastily with little thought or consideration for it’s effects. Nothing makes it onto a page/site/app without someone putting it there. We have to design on purpose or we will design accidentally.