TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction - page 2

Brighter And Bold Designs - page 2

Typography and Font Combos - page 5

Cinemagraphs - page 5

Mega Drop-down Menu - page 6

Virtual Reality (VR) and 360 Video - page 9

Conclusion - page 10

References - page 11

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1. Introduction

There are archaic generations that believe websites are pointless, well many including myself
would tend to disagree. Websites have actually made our lives easier in ways in which we don't
actually realize, its the source of the information we gather when doing research. Without that
website there wouldn't really be a welcoming platform to display the information. Websites are
also cheaper than printing out advertisements and therefore save money. As people we have
become used to many things such as advertisements, on estimate we could see about twenty
advertisements in our morning alone. We don't realize this because we've become able to filter
them out, but how can websites grab our attention? Trends have developed in order to
successfully grab our attention in ways we don't realize, these trends are for example making
the websites user friendly or using colors and fonts to stand out.

2. Brighter And Bold Designs

Colours have emotional and psychological impacts on us. Colour plays a huge role in our lives. Colour
psychology is the science of how colour affects human behaviour. By (Brian K, 2017) Colour psychology
actually is a branch of the broader field of behavioural psychology .Colours create good visual and
emotional effects. Adding a few colourscan make a boring site exciting, a good site ugly, or can evoke
emotional responses. Pink: soothes, acquiesces; promotes affability and affection. Yellow: Expands,
cheers and increases energy. Red: empowers, stimulates, dramatizes, competes and symbolizes passion.
Green: balances, normalizes, refreshes and encourages emotional growth. Orange: cheers, commands;
stimulates appetites, conversation, and charity. Purple: comforts, spiritualizes; creates mystery and
draws out intuition. White: purifies, energizes, unifies; in combination and enlivens all other colours.
Blue: relaxes, refreshes, cools and produces tranquil feelings. Black: disciplines, authorizes, strengthens
and encourages independence.

One of the most crucial elements needed to convey effective messages on a web site is through the
appropriate choice of colour schemes. Colour can control and affect the look of the website. Web
designers must be very familiar with effect of colours, developing more appealing and effective web
pages which are more likely to send images and messages of the site to users directly and effectively. A
designer should not sacrifice readability, legibility, and even accessibility of a web site. One can choose a
white, a collared, or a patterned background for the pages. Colours are good attention grabbers,
because they are loud and obvious. Colours should help the reader or user to enjoy the web experience.

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Colour gives readers a predefined feeling and prejudices about the web page even before they see the
content. Creating a background and foreground with enough contrast makes the content legible. Using
warm colours that include red, red-violet and brown gives vibrant and energetic feeling to the page.

In 2016, brutalism and minimalism were movements that in to the light. More personality was
infused into the design work that still worked within those stripped-down aesthetics. Bright, bold
colour became the natural answer in at least some cases. It is not only just about enthusiastic,
bright colours either. Another thing that has come back in a big way is gradients, blending and
blurring those exuberant hues into spectra reminiscent of a noonday sky or a splashy sunset,
(Williams, 2016). Examples would be the redesign of the Instagram App icon (brand revivifying)
and Stripe.com

Therefore, the use of brighter and more colour can make web pages more aesthetically pleasing
to users and adds a level of simplicity and professionalism.

liptonicetea.com
Yellow is a warm, primary, high energy colour that can make your website seem comfortable and
inviting. It is however a difficult colour to utilise correctly. For example, when it's overused it can be
slightly unsettling for users. It's definitely an over the top colour and there's nothing subtle about it but
it's true that you can't go unnoticed with a yellow website. By using it in the right way a designer can
give a website a lot of personality. Lipton Ice Tea uses Yellow in a great way. It grabs the attention of the
user and fills them with happiness energy.

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sarahdrasnerdesign.com
this website utilises a mostly blue web design with blue being its background. This gives the website a
refreshing and cool atmosphere as well as bring calmness to the viewers. It does however make use of
other colours and shades of blue to add some vibrancy and fun into the website to showcase creativity
and ensure the viewer isnt bored with a plain blue design.

kitkat.co.za

Sticking to the brands already flawless red colour scheme, this website is filled with red. From its red
background to the images on the website littered with the sleek red product, this website stimulates
viewers to want a KitKat and the dramatic reds empowers the viewers, making them feel more
confident in getting a KitKat.

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3. Typography and Font Combos

Combining not only fonts of different families, but also fonts with images in quite creative
manners, typography is a trend which has taken storm in 2017 web design. Typography creates
creative room for the designer to unleash their imagination to its full extent. Marketing
professionals and designers will often use fonts which are appropriate for the design like hand-
written typeface for fresh produce to give the design a more human approach. The trend this
year however, is to use a variety of fonts in a design. This is not restricted to using the same
typeface in different sizes but combining two or more typefaces to create a complete blend in a
design. Typography is an effective trend because it is eye-catching and has no boundaries in
creation. Tumblr is a good example of the effective use of typography in a website. The
minimalistic backgrounds with bold words make the message stand out and create an attractive
appearance to the eye. Typography and the font-faces we choose has a huge impact on
multiple aspects of our website including readability, mood, perceived article length, user
experience and much, much more. The success of any website or online advertising campaign
can be determined the effective use of typography. Therefore, typography is may be considered
one of the more important trends of web design for 2017.

4. Cinemagraphs

A creative way to catch a consumers eye is by making use of cinemagraphs. Cinemagraphs

are a rising new trend for online advertising and web design in 2017. A cinemagraph combines
a still photo with a looping moving element to create a dynamic and eye-catching image. The
trend quickly became ubiquitous in social media in 2015, but is now making its way to the world
of evolving web design. As a society, we are surrounded by images and visual media every day
and it is getting harder to stand out from the crowd, but with this upcoming trend we have the
added benefit of portraying a certain mood or ambiance that is not always possible with static
images. An example of a company who has made use of cinemagraphs effectively includes an
online magazine called Gilt Taste Magazine, where the portrayal of fresh produce is made

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enticingly to viewers. The looped images used are attractive to the eye and draw the viewers
attention to the site immediately.

More examples of brands who have already jumped on this trend include two of first few brands
who made use of cinemagraphy within their campaigns Coca-Cola and Heineken. Heineken
shared a cinemagraph showcasing Heineken bottles with snowflakes falling in the background
for a holiday campaign on both Facebook and Instagram. Coca-Cola simply captured the image
of a red Coca-Cola can against a looping blue background to make the brand name pop, and it
was successful drawing in hundreds of thousands of consumers.

5. Mega drop-down menu

The mega menu has been popularized with magazine-style blogs and ecommerce websites. They differ
from normal dropdowns because instead of just flowing down vertically these mega menus expand
wider, often containing multiple columns of content.To effectively use this feature, you should use
highlight with different columns for recent stories, related categories, and other links to the site all in
one dropdown. This helps in creating an appealing and organised website, thus creating a relationship
and linkage between colours. This technique works well if used with good judgement but its not great
for every site. In fact its really only useful if you have enough content to justify a mega menu. They look
best when filled up with content which is why magazine websites work best. Mega drop-down menus
traditionally:

show all the options in one large panel

is a single drop-down that appears on hover
groups options into related categories
uses icons or other graphics to help the user.

IMAGES OF MEGA DROP-DOWN MENU:

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Benefits of using a mega-drop down menu? Visitors can get a sense of your blog or website by
skimming through related content. If the website or the organization has a lot of content, this
feature speeds things up and simplifies things for them. This trend does not work on mobile
since theres no room on the screen. But plenty of people still browse the web on desktops &
laptops so theres a wide audience out there in support of the mega menu.
There are numerous other reasons why mega drop-down menus will become a mainstream feature of
many websites:

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1. They offer a good compromise between simple and expanding menus.
2. They are easy to use and should suffer fewer accessibility problems.
3. They look great and give designers more scope to express their artistic creativity!

EXAMPLES

ASOS is and e-commerce website that allows users to shop online for the latest clothing and fashion.
ASOA on the top of the page there is a symbol of a house for the home key, next to it there are woman
and man options. One hovers their mouse on top of them and then drop-down a menu on all they have
or they sell that is woman related. In this website too there are different font sizes and colours to
categorize everything that goes together.

GLAMOUR is a lifestyle magazine that gives out information on how to live a holistically glamorous
lifestyle and be updated on latest trends. On top or Glamour home page there are tabs of fashion,
beauty, body and soul etc. When one hovers their mouse on top of those tabs, on each there shows a
drop-down menu with options about more of than tabs information, with colors and Glamour also
added pictures to the down-drop menu.

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Relevant Magazine is about resent trends and articles about all that is happening around people in our
lives, relevant topics in our days and very sensitive topics such as faith and culture. Relevant has a blue
box logo on the top left corner on the screen one clicks there and color coded options drop-down.

6. Virtual Reality (VR) and 360 Video

The Virtual Reality announcement last year had the gadget world abuzz, however, the trend has
not made a huge impact on web design yet. Given our already firmly founded tendency to think
of the web as a kind of alternate reality, there is no denying that VR is going to impact the web

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in a huge way in 2017. (Laurinavicius, 2017) states that one great example of how Virtual
Reality and 360 Video can be incorporated into web design to create a breath-taking, interactive
experience is Peugeot 208s promotion campaign that utilises both technologies to showcase a
new product. The virtual reality gear has already been used in order to help build stadiums, the
contractor had a brilliant outside of the box thinking. When the contractor submitted the plans for
the stadium, a virtual reality headset was provided. When looking through the headset, one is
able to see what the stadium should look like if the contractor was given permission to build that
stadium.

The use of Virtual Reality (VR) and 360 Video, therefore, is a trend that will pick up speed as the
year progresses.

7. Conclusion

All in all we cannot fight progress, websites will continue to progress whether we like and accept
it or not, there are ma y contributing factors to this. Some of the main factors are the fact that

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websites are available any time of the day and any day of the week, its accessible at home and
most importantly the convenience. One does not have to leave the bedroom to research and
gather information. people always want the most recent gadgets and technology, that is why the
new trends are so appealing to us. As humans we tend to want to take the easy route, a website
is that route that we have been searching for.

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8. References
Laurinavicius, T. (2017, January 25). Forbes. Retrieved from
https://www.google.co.za/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/tomaslaurinavicius/2017/01/25/w
eb-design-trends-2017/amp/

Williams, J. M. (2016, December 9). Webflow Blog. Retrieved from https://webflow.com/blog/18-

web-design-trends

Azzollini, M. (2017, June 27). Top 8 Typography Trends of 2017. Retrieved from freepik:
http://www.freepik.com/blog/top-8-typography-trends-2017/

Chamberland, R. (2017, Mar 7). Cinemagraphs: the next big trend? Retrieved from Deschenes Regnier:
http://deschenesregnier.com/cinemagraphs-the-next-big-trend/

Creger, R. (2012, January 31). 12 Successful Examples of Cinemagraphs. Retrieved from 99Designs:
https://99designs.com/blog/creative-inspiration/12-successful-examples-of-cinemagraphs/

Iveta, A. (2017, February 14). Graphic Design Trends 2017: Whats Hot and Whats Not. Retrieved from
Graphic Mama: https://graphicmama.com/blog/graphic-design-trends/

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