The evolution of new technology significantly impacts today’s society and various other industries. While a few developments more or less affect the entire work industry, artificial intelligence (AI) is a relatively new and controversial technology.
This technology has been advancing steadily in recent years and is now being used in numerous industries. From a business standpoint, it has improved workflow efficiency and manufacturing processes and generated new work opportunities.
Today no less than 60% of companies are either exploring the possibilities of adopting artificial intelligence or trying to realize its potential to transform the way they do business. The problem is that a significant portion of them (one-third) struggle to produce substantial change with AI.
The lifecycle of an AI solution usually consists of problem definition, data collection, model building, model fine-tuning, and applying the solution to solve a specific problem. Various experts build the solution to solve business problems. Still, a problem solved by a data scientist does not automatically translate into a constant stream of actual value for the business. Once deployed to production, the AI solution cannot be left as-is. Like any other system, it requires continuous maintenance. However, any AI solution’s maintenance differs significantly from the maintenance of other systems (e.g., microservice-based applications). The performance of any AI solution can be affected by many factors, and if the maintenance work is not done, the solution will cause problems instead of solving them.
Today, I’d like to cover the weekly life of a project manager. When I’m managing a project, these are the things I do every week:
Putting these things together will often require meetings or conversations, but having a concrete idea of what you’re delivering each week can make it more clear what to focus on.
This is an article from DZone’s 2022 Low Code and No Code Trend Report.
For more:
Many companies are looking to low-code and no-code platforms to build apps in the visual environment. They provide the opportunity for faster app development and reduce the dependence on highly skilled developers. Companies may hire less experienced or only minimally trained staff (I’ll call them citizen developers) to meet service gaps and to respond to skills shortages, ensuring their larger dev team can focus on more advanced projects.
Starting your own business is a process with a fair share of challenges. Even in the web design world, where you can potentially minimize costs by working from home and collaborating with freelance contractors, many expenses exist.
To run a successful web design business, you need enough money to invest in everything from skilled colleagues to resources (like fonts and themes), software subscriptions, and technology tools. Finding a way to fund your company can be the most complicated part of ensuring its success.
For most new companies, the easiest option to generate opportunities is “bootstrapping.” Learning how to bootstrap a web design business means knowing how to bring your business to life with virtually no starting capital.
Here’s how to get started.
Successful bootstrappers take an idea, such as creating a web design company and create a fantastic company without the backing of investors. It takes significant dedication, commitment, and single-mindedness to accomplish your goals, but some of the world’s greatest entrepreneurs, like Steve Jobs and Sam Walton, got their start this way.
The term “bootstrapping” comes from the phrase “to pull yourself up by the bootstraps,” which indicates overcoming challenges on your own without any external support.
The pros and cons of bootstrapping include:
Pros:
Cons:
Bootstrapping a web design business can be complicated, but it works for many companies if you follow the right strategy. The good news is web design companies generally don’t require as much initial capital as some other types of companies, like standard retail brands or companies with a need for brick and mortar offices.
However, there are still steps you’ll need to follow to ensure success.
While you might not work with investors when bootstrapping your web design business, you’ll still need some essential initial funds. To run a web design business, you won’t necessarily need a massive initial investment, but you will need something.
To determine how much capital you need to raise from your income, savings, a line of credit, or other common bootstrapping sources, think about:
The easiest way to ensure a bootstrapped web design business is a success is to ensure you are offering specific clients something they genuinely need. In a service-based landscape like web design, you need to know what your customers want and offer something they can’t get elsewhere.
For instance, can you differentiate yourself from other web design companies by helping with modern trends like 360-degree video and XR-ready design? Can you build apps for companies from scratch and provide ongoing maintenance for the websites you make?
An excellent way to find your USP is to examine your competitors. Find out what other companies in your area are offering their customers, and listen to consumers in your industry when they talk about what they need from a website designer.
Since you’re relying only on your cash and the money you make from your web design business to fuel its growth, choosing a model optimized for consistent cash flow is essential. Bootstrapping a business often means you place most of the profit you gain from your company back into the development of the brand.
With this in mind, consider how you’ll offer services and charge your customers. Are you going to ask for a portion of the fees up-front before starting a web design project? Can you provide your customers with subscription models to improve your revenue consistently?
For instance, you could provide help with ongoing maintenance, development, and support rather than just offering to build websites for companies. Another way to make additional income is with professional services, like consulting.
Make sure there’s a market for the services you’ll offer before launching your business by examining the surrounding environments and services your competitors provide.
Keeping costs low will be essential to ensuring your success when bootstrapping a business. Fortunately for web designers, it’s relatively easy to cut down on fees. For instance, WordPress is free to use for your development projects, making it an excellent choice for many web design strategies.
You can also look into common free and cheap alternatives to web design tools online, like GIMP. Shop around for the things you will be paying ongoing fees with. For instance, it’s best to check out multiple vendors when looking for web hosting and marketing support.
While keeping your costs low, it’s also essential to accelerate profits as much as possible. You can look for ways to boost customer retention by building stronger relationships with your clients and offering them deals on long-term subscriptions.
If you have time outside of your web design business, you can also try taking on some side hustles. Options include:
Finally, while the goal of successfully bootstrapping your web design business will be to grow as rapidly and consistently as possible, it’s important to be cautious. For instance, you’ll need to be able to afford the fees of every new designer you bring onto your team, so consider looking for freelancers and contractors rather than permanent hires.
Use organic channels for marketing your services, like blogging and content marketing which can help improve your SEO standing and attract attention among clients. Plus, encourage your customers to recommend your services to other brands.
As new clients approach your business, ensure you only take on as many customers as you can reasonably handle. Compromising on quality will damage your relationships with customers and harm your reputation.
When you’re bootstrapping a business, you get the benefit of being able to eliminate any outside influences from your growth. You’re free to focus on building relationships with companies of your choice, and you get to make decisions about your growth. However, there are downsides, too, like significant stress and limited financial opportunities.
While bootstrapping your business is tough, if you manage to complete the process successfully, the results can be fantastic.
Featured image via Unsplash.
The post How to Bootstrap a Web Design Business first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.
Moving from studying design into the big wide world of web design is a daunting process. It’s a competitive and dynamic industry that’s growing all the time. It’s estimated that between 2020 and 2030, web designer jobs in the US will increase by 13%. One of the most challenging aspects of starting a career in web design is getting hired, especially as a freelancer.
The first thing that most clients and agencies look for is usually your level of professional experience. They want to work with someone who, while perhaps not a veteran, has at least a few years of experience. This can lead to a lot of frustration for new designers. After all, how are you supposed to get experience if nobody hires you?
Moreover, clients and agencies miss out on promising candidates when they pass up on skilled designers just because they don’t have experience.
Here’s why we should all give zero-experience designers a chance.
Professional web design doesn’t come cheap, and for a good reason. Most freelancers who have been in the business for many years have built a solid reputation for themselves and have no shortage of work. Web design agencies have a higher degree of accountability and a quality guarantee, which is why hiring their services can cost more.
If you’re looking to get design work done on a tight budget, you’ll have better luck contacting someone with little or no experience. However, they’re most likely looking to build up their portfolio and will gladly offer you competitive rates.
Clients often assume that anything produced by an inexperienced designer will be sub-par or unusable. While it is true that an extensive portfolio is a good sign, it isn’t the only reason to hire someone.
New web designers may not be as well versed in business, but many of them are still highly skilled and motivated individuals with a lot to offer.
Whether self-taught or college graduates, they have devoted countless hours to becoming good at what they do. Instead of passing on a zero-experience candidate, give them a chance to show you what they can do with a mock-up. If you’re still dubious, then go with someone else. But you never know what someone has to offer until you put them to the test.
As we’ve already established, finding work as a fresh-faced web designer can be challenging. This means that those with little to no experience are more likely to have time to devote entirely to your project, as they won’t be splitting their focus.
Agencies and well-established freelancers usually juggle several different projects at a time, meaning they will take longer to produce a result. If they happen to be working on a higher-paying job simultaneously with yours, you can guess which one they’ll prioritize.
It’s always comforting to know that the person handling your design work is focused on you and you alone. You know your project won’t be on the back burner or forgotten about.
This applies more to big web design agencies. New designers know their lack of experience counts against them, even for entry-level positions. If you choose to look past that and hire them anyway, they won’t forget it in a hurry.
Once you’ve hired them, you have all the time in the world to help them learn the ropes. Include them in projects headed up by more experienced designers, give them lower priority jobs, and create an environment where their technical skills can flourish.
Everyone has to start somewhere, and you can bet that they will remember who decided to give them an opportunity when nobody else would. A few years later, when they’ve found their feet in the industry, you’ll have a skilled, experienced designer with something you can’t buy: loyalty.
Industry veterans eventually become somewhat set in their ways. They develop their unique style and way of doing things, and while this isn’t bad, it’s different from someone freshly entering the industry for the first time.
New designers are much more eager to take instruction and expand their repertoire according to your needs. They have the time, energy, and motivation to learn new skills and may have a different approach to projects simply because they have not yet learned otherwise.
Not every job is going to be massive and high paying. People need web designers for small business sites, event pages, small ad campaigns, and other similar projects. Established designers looking for bigger fish will often pass up these kinds of jobs. But they are ideal for new designers who need to build their portfolio website.
On the other hand, new designers will usually take any opportunity to make money and gain experience. If your project isn’t massively complex or high stakes, use it as an opportunity to give someone a chance to showcase their skills.
No designer starts their career with experience, and many work in other design-related jobs for some time before they begin to do what they’re genuinely passionate about. Industries that make it hard for entry-level professionals to find work often discourage them from pursuing their goals. While philanthropy might not be high on the list of priorities for clients or agencies who want the best in the business, it’s always good to remember that growing industry means recognizing potential.
Not every newbie will be a prodigy. But without people out there willing to give them a chance, even the most gifted designer will eventually lose heart.
In short, experience isn’t everything. While it is a vital asset to any designer, there is certainly room in the industry to allow those with potential to grow.
So, next time you’re looking for new hires or someone to take on a freelance gig, remember what it’s like to be the new guy and consider hiring someone less experienced. You will sometimes find the brightest gems where you least expect them.
Featured image via Pexels.
The post Why Zero Experience Designers Need A Chance first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.
Automation is the theme of this month’s collection of exciting new tools for designers and developers. There are tools to make your images better, tools to create illustrations, and tools to make your workflow more efficient. Plus, a whole host of tools that are just plain fun.
Here’s what is new for designers this month…
designstripe lets you create beautiful illustrations with no design skills. Drag and drop different elements into place, then customize them for your brand.
DesignMaestro is a free keyboard extension app that lets you automate the tasks you repeat daily. Set up a macro with a keyboard shortcut, and tap the shortcut to perform the action.
Ghost is one of the best personal blogging platforms around, and version 5 enhances it with custom code, support for video, and performance upgrades.
Yep is a new search engine from the makers of Ahrefs. Built from the ground up, Yep will give 90% of its ad revenue to content creators.
The CTO Field Guide is a free ebook for anyone newly promoted to a technology officer role or looking for a tech leadership role. It’s a simple guide to making the most of your first 90 days on the job.
ASCII Art Paint is a free, open-source web app for creating images made up of text characters and hieroglyphs. It’s a great way to add pictures to text-only formats.
Make your own fun, wallpaper art at up to 8k resolution using Effekt, a mix between an image editor and a visual toy.
Animatiss is a fantastic collection of CSS animations that you can use for free. Tailor the speed of the animation, preview it, then copy and paste the code into your project.
Skiff Mail is an email app that features end-to-end encryption. This means your email stays private and secure, so you’re free to discuss sensitive matters.
Super Designer is a collection of design tools for performing simple tasks. There’s a background generator, a pattern generator, a blob generator, and more—all free to use.
Web UI is a collection of UI kits and templates for Figma and Adobe XD. Most designs are free to download and use for projects, and some require payment.
Use this free online background remover to quickly and easily delete the background of photos, leaving you free to paste the foreground over flat colors, gradients, or even different backgrounds.
Untitled UI Icons is a set of clean, consistent, and neutral icons made for Figma in Figma. There are 3,500 icons in total. The line style is free to download.
Turn your Mac or iPhone into an old-school Macintosh with this retro wallpaper and icon set, and transport yourself back to 1984. OS is a premium download.
Shrink.media is a free app for web, iOS, and Android that lets you reduce the size of your image file size and dimensions to reduce its footprint.
This big library of 3D avatars is perfect for any project that needs staff images. There are different ethnicities, clothing, facial expressions, and accessories, so you never run out of options.
Felt is a modern map maker for the web that gives you more control, more design options, and easier sharing than Google maps.
SureScan is a helpful app that hunts through terms and conditions for dubious conditions on your behalf, so you can spend your time doing something less boring.
Reform is a no-code form builder that you can use to create clean, branded forms for your business without any design or code skills.
Discover how the best brands evolve their messaging over time with Copy Foundry, a brand positioning, and copywriting library to help your products stand out.
The post Exciting New Tools for Designers, June 2022 first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.
Navigating the world of web design can be difficult. There is so much conflicting and outdated advice.
How many times have you been advised to obey the 3-Click Rule? It states that users must reach the content they want in three clicks. But, according to the Nielsen Norman Group, no research supports the 3-Click Rule. It’s just a guess, the web’s equivalent of an urban myth.
There are dos and don’ts of effective web design in 2022. In this post, we’ll present the most important so that you can design websites with confidence.
Design Patterns sound like a complex technique. All it means is copying standard, well-known approaches. Jakob’s Law says that most people spend most of their time on other sites, so they will understand your site better if it is like those other sites.
You can’t make your site like every other, so your job is to pick and choose which design patterns will be most helpful to your target demographic.
Some of the most recognized design patterns include placing the logo in the top left of the viewport, underlining links, and placing essentials like shipping information in the footer.
Inclusive design holds the opinion that the web is for everybody. It hasn’t always been that way. Just a few years ago, it was common to see sites excluding some demographics to reduce development costs.
Excluding anyone from your website is wrong. In many jurisdictions, it’s so wrong it’s illegal. But, perhaps more importantly, excluding 5% of users deducts 5% from your profits.
It’s never been easier to be inclusive. The first step is to make your website responsive so that it caters to every device. Then, follow accessibility guidelines to ensure that you welcome everyone. Finally, be ready to listen to your users, and adapt to their needs.
As a website designer, you’ve undoubtedly looked in envy at some of the more original sites out there. It’s important to remember that many of the most experimental sites are usually targeting other designers. Something that works well on a portfolio site won’t translate well to a local convenience store.
99 times out of 100, the simple choice is the right choice. Most people aren’t interested in an original design. They’re interested in accomplishing a task. The less effort expended to complete the task, the better the experience.
Complexity most often creeps into navigation. Start with a logical structure, and use simple, hierarchical navigation.
Every website has goals. It might be promotion, profit, utility, or a combination. Each part of that website, every single page, should have one goal.
Hick’s Law says that the time it takes to make a decision increases when there are more choices. And the Goal-Gradient Effect says that a customer is more likely to complete a process the closer they are to the completion. Combine the two, and it means that giving users one CTA (call to action) on a page increases the chances of them taking it.
It’s OK to still have navigation, links, and secondary goals provided each page has a single clear purpose.
Consistency is often referred to as the hallmark of quality. It means that you’ve paid attention to details. But consistency isn’t just about giving a good impression. Consistency is also essential for good UX (user experience).
Users learn to navigate your website as they go. They learn your website’s ‘rules’ or the logic as they interact with it. If your UI (user interface) is consistent, they’ll learn the rules faster and feel more confident.
Areas that often fail the consistency test are the corner radius of boxes, the style of links, and the tone of writing.
Design isn’t all about usability studies and reliance on design patterns. Design should also be beautiful.
Beauty is often seen as shallow and unimportant. However, the Aesthetic-Usability Effect states that a beautiful website is more likely to be seen as usable by customers.
A pretty design is a high-converting design.
To ensure your design is pretty, pay attention to your typography hierarchy, color scheme, and the symmetry of your layout.
The worst thing you can do is make users wait. The more technology advances, the faster connections get the higher user expectations.
Your site needs to load in under a second and be interactive in under two seconds. Otherwise, you’ll lose customers who bounce back to their search engine and try one of your competitors instead.
Delays don’t only apply to the speed of your site. You need to ensure that the information or product a customer wants is easy to access. Don’t bury it multiple levels deep in your site. If users are delayed by complicated navigation or unpredictable structure, they will exit your site as surely as if it took 10 seconds to load.
Users have zero amounts of patience.
Browsing through the web, the number of designers that block users from seeing the content on a website is astounding.
The most common culprits are newsletter subscription offers. How can a customer know whether they want to sign up for your newsletter when they haven’t yet seen your products?! Let the user browse your site, and then offer them a newsletter subscription.
Another common culprit is cookie notices. Most sites require a modest cookie notice to stay on the right side of the Law. And yet they display a huge, site-blocking modal as if the cookie notice were the most critical content on the site.
Content is frequently left until last. That’s because it’s hard. Just because we learned to read and write as kids doesn’t mean we can write persuasive, engaging sales copy.
Content is vitally important for SEO (search engine optimization), but more importantly, it’s essential for CX (customer experience).
Most websites make three big mistakes with their content.
Mistake one is unbalanced copy. That means writing 25 words about your flagship product and 5,000 words about the company’s history.
Mistake two is writing for the company, not for the customer. That means organizing content around the company structure rather than customer tasks.
Mistake three is too much content at once. Walls of text are a turn-off. Instead, write short, scannable snippets that will keep customers engaged.
…Just try to be good.”
That quote is from the titan of twentieth-century design, Paul Rand.
It boils down to this: originality is about you, and quality is about the website. Great designers care more about their output than their reputation.
Featured image via Pexels.
The post 10 Dos and Don’Ts of Web Design in 2022 first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.
As a website designer, your professional life revolves around crucial questions that might help you to deliver better results for your clients.
Which widgets are essential to driving conversions? What kind of checkout page elements do you need to include? Should there be a video or slideshow on that product page?
One of the biggest queries that we face when building landing pages to encourage sales is whether a CTA (call to action) button needs to be above or below the fold.
Answering the question: “Where should the CTA go?” correctly could make or break your client’s chances of a sale. Unfortunately, this particular concern has been the source of a raging debate for many years now. Everyone has their own opinion about CTAs and where they belong.
Today, we’re going to cover the benefits and issues with placing a CTA above the fold.
Starting with a quick refresher, the term “above the fold” refers to any area of a website seen on a screen when a user arrives on a webpage. The content that appears above and below the fold may differ depending on the device you’re visiting a website with.
Experts in the design and digital marketing world have frequently claimed that if you want to get the best results with a CTA, you need to place it above the fold.
This strategy makes a lot of sense. If your CTA is above the fold, then your chances of it being seen are significantly higher. Some customers might not want to scroll to the bottom of a page to find out what they need to do next in their buyer journey.
Additionally, according to the NN group, the 100 pixels that appeared above the fold were seen 102% more often than the pixels underneath the fold. Eye-tracking technology learned that more often than not, you’ll get more engagement above the fold.
Just look at this landing page from Lyft, for instance, you immediately see what you need to do next:
It’s not just a single study that has touted the benefits of an above-the-fold CTA, either.
Another report into the “importance of being seen” found that above-the-fold ads and CTAs had a 73% rate of visibility compared to only 44% for those below the fold.
So, with stats like that to think about, why would you ever consider using a below-the-fold CTA?
As with most things in web design, there is an exception to the rule.
Yes, above the fold, CTAs will be better for you most of the time. However, there are times when you might need to think outside of the box.
Most people think that placing a CTA below the fold practically guarantees that it won’t be seen. However, if you’re creating a website page or landing page that includes a lot of vital information, your audience will need to scroll.
For instance, if you’re creating a page where someone can download an app to engage with a business they already know about, it makes sense to speed the journey along with an above-the-fold CTA. However, if you’re trying to convince someone to sign up for your webinar, you might need to tell them what that webinar is all about first. That’s where a below-the-fold CTA comes in handy.
Customers might not have a lot of time in their busy schedules for scrolling these days. However, they still need the right information before they can make a decision about what to do next with your brand. According to Marketing Experiments, below the fold, CTA buttons can result in a 20% increase in conversions. However, this conversion boost only happens when you’re providing valuable, engaging, and persuasive content.
Check out this example from the Boston Globe, for instance:
The fold is often an essential consideration in web design.
However, it’s not all you need to think about when you’re deciding where to place sign-up forms and valuable CTA buttons.
According to the Nielsen Norman group, the content that appears at the top of the page will always influence user experience. However, that doesn’t mean that you need to place your CTA there. What you do need to do is ensure that whatever you have above the fold is promising enough to engage your visitor and make them scroll.
Put simply, what’s above and below the fold does matter, but your focus should be on taking advantage of customer motivation, rather than worrying exclusively about an imaginary line.
When deciding where a CTA belongs, you need to think about motivation.
How motivated is your prospect to click on a button? How desirable is your offering at that time, and how much does your visitor already know about the thing they’re being offered?
If you’re going to need to provide more information before your customer wants to convert, then a below-the-fold CTA makes more sense.
If you’ve already provided all the information that your customer needs and a prospect is visiting from an advertisement or another page on the website, then above the fold should be exceptional.
The reality for web designers today is that achieving higher conversion rates doesn’t really have that much to do with whether a CTA is above or below the fold.
What’s important is whether your buttons come under the right amount of copy that answers the correct questions for an audience.
Remember, when visitors come to a website, they’re looking for different things. There are visitors that:
In some cases, you may even place multiple CTAs on the same page. Some people will have a general understanding of the technology and what it does. This means that they’ll be happy to click on the button at the top of the fold.
On the other hand, there could also be visitors arriving on the same page that don’t understand what the benefits of real-time personalization are. This means that you need to elaborate a little on what you have to offer. A simple one-line explanation isn’t enough here.
Deciding where to place different elements of a website is a common challenge for web designers. Despite tons of blogs out there, that claim “above the fold” is always the best option for any conversion rate optimization, the truth is a little more complicated.
The critical thing to remember as a web designer is that a CTA button asks a customer for commitment. Even if the CTA allows someone to download a free demo or sign-up for a newsletter without spending any money, it requires a customer to start a relationship with a brand.
In a world where customers are less trusting of companies than ever, it doesn’t make sense to push them into a relationship too quickly. Asking for a commitment from a target audience before they’ve had the chance to see what’s “in it for them” is not a good idea.
Jump in too quickly, and you’re likely to rub people the wrong way.
The issue for today’s designers isn’t figuring out whether a button needs to be visible from the moment someone arrives on a page. Instead, you need to think about whether visitors are finding the CTA at a time when they’re ready to take action.
You can only answer the question “where should the CTA go?” after you’ve carefully analyzed the project that you’re working on.
Remember, above the fold isn’t always the answer.
Featured image via Pexels.
The post Perfect CTA Placement: Above-The-Fold Vs. Below-The-Fold first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.
Are you bored with some of your current design projects? This month’s collection of website design trends can help break you out of that rut with some fun and funky alternatives.
And all of these options are anything but boring. From visual display to technique, these trends present a different set of challenges.
Here’s what’s trending in design this month.
These website designs have so many layers of information that you almost don’t know where to look or where the design elements start and stop.
This can be a complex technique to make work because of the number of elements competing for the same attention in the design.
What you are likely to see with this design tend includes an image or video background with some motion but not anything that truly demands attention. Then add on a few still images in smaller frames throughout the design. Layer on text as well for a three-deep effect.
If you interact with these designs, you’ll find that they are not flat either. They all include animated elements, hover states, and interactions that help direct you through the layers of what can be a somewhat complex design.
Western National Parks Association uses a background image, middle images with animations, and multiple text layers (some on the pictures and some on the background). There’s also scroll animation to help build the design. A lot is going on, but it does not feel too busy.
WIP Architects is another design with layers that interact with each other and include motion. With a lot of scroll animation and layers that go in front of and behind other elements, engagement helps this site work.
The Shipwreck Survey uses the same basic layer outline with a little more overlap between elements and less overall animation. The primary animated effect on the homepage is the scroll bar.
This interesting website design trend can be incredibly useful or a wasted element – directed click actions. These are buttons, icons, and animations that tell you to click somewhere in the design to move to the next stage of interaction.
The direct approach ensures that users see and have the best possible chance of doing what the design is intended for. On the other hand, if you need this much instruction, is the design too complicated? Or is there a middle ground where this trend looks great and is usable?
In each of the examples below, these directed click actions are a bit different.
HUG Co has a big circle to click in the bottom third of the screen. It’s almost designed like a bullseye, and you can’t miss it. The thing that is interesting here is that most of the video falls below the scroll. The click action also has two emojis to denote action – a smiling face or pointer when you are ready to click. (The click extends the video to full screen.)
ThinkOvery also uses a similar circular click icon. It also takes you to the next screen in a single movement so that you can continue to explore the design.
Living with OCD has a different approach with scroll and back-to-top icons paired in the bottom right corner. The scroll option includes words to help create direction and instruction. It consists of a small animation and an interactive hover state when you get close to the interactive element. The interesting thing here is that it is not actually a button, and you use a traditional scroll to interact.
If you are a stickler for readability, this design trend might make you cringe.
In each of these designs, words are broken across lines – some with and some without hyphens. For the most part, there’s not much confusion about what the words are, but it does make you pause and think during the page experience.
Why would this be a design trend?
It’s a combination of using large typography, long words, and figuring out a solution to create a common experience between large and small screens. Many of these words would not fit on mobile screens, for example, with the same weight, scale, and impact as the desktop counterparts.
Hence, the word break solution. It creates a consistent user experience across devices.
This technique should be used only if you think your audience is savvy enough to understand what you are trying to communicate with the word break. It can be a tricky proposition!
Plantarium breaks at “plant” with a word that’s made up. But with the imagery and supporting terms, you still know immediately what the design is about.
Michelle Beatty takes a common word and breaks it. Because “photog” and “rapher” are the only letters on the screen, it’s pretty easy to figure out. What’s interesting is that the word break is not on the syllable, but the letters do stack nicely with this break visually.
Wreel Collective breaks a word with a hyphen in giant letters – something we rarely see in website design. Hyphens are not often used in this medium. Because of this, it gets your attention and makes you think about the words and the design.
There are a lot of rule-breaking trends in this month’s collection. They are interesting, fun, and require a certain level of risk to execute.
Could you see yourself (or your clients) opting for a design that features one of these trends? Time will tell if these visual compositions grow in popularity or begin to fade fast.
The post 3 Essential Design Trends, June 2022 first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.
