We covered Responsive Web design, Parallax Web Design, Single Page Design, and Flat/ Minimalist Design in our last post. Now get ready to cover three more forms of modern web design.

To read part one click here: Modern Web Design Techniques Part 1

Typography Design  Typography is the term given to using text as a design element. When using typography in web design you need to consider, font, size, color, orientation, position, and purpose.

Often you may have a sizable of amount of information to present to a visitor. The problem is a visitor does not want to read through a solid block of text. That is when you will use spacing to create readable chunks of information. You then may want to increase the title size to make it stand out. Your links will want to be a different color to show that that the text is clickable. Perhaps you may want to make the highlight a word for emphasis. All of this is considered examples of typography design. Proper typography is also knowing when your design is too bold or flamboyant.

If content is king then readable content is a trait of a great king. Allowing typography to be properly implemented will not only allow your site to look better, but also allow your content to be better understood.

Death of Flash and Add-onsAt one point is was difficult to use native languages to get the graphical results you wanted on a website, some websites required you to download software to have their website work. You may remember seeing flash websites throughout the web and may wonder why they are not as prominent in current times. The truth is flash is not supported on most mobile devices, and most web browsers require users to install flash for it work. Viewers do not like having to install software to view a website, and frankly, they shouldn’t need to.

With advances in Web programming, we can now create the desired effects without needing to install additional software. You should be wary of companies that tell you that you need a flash site for your design to work. By utilizing the latest HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript specifications, animated sites are more easily implemented and work natively in modern Web browsers.

Rich BackgroundThe opposite of flat design, rich backgrounds are being used more and more. Often displayed full screen, the background may consist of a short video normally without sound or high definition photos. This method is often best used to showcase a specific product with a clean focus point.

With advancements in compression techniques and faster internet speeds worrying about memory intensive content loading has become less of problem, thus allowing for adding another design method to design palate.

Bringing it all togetherThe beauty of designing a website is that it can use a combination of these methods or none at all. You will want to keep your website looking modern and fresh, but you do not want to push the boundaries too far or your viewer may have trouble navigating to specific content. It is a good idea to always implement basic web design standards to keep your viewers feeling comfortable. Keeping up with modern web designs will not only keep you stylish, it will also show your viewers that you are a professional.

 

Image credits: Guitar, by Travis-t83