During the pandemic, millions of people around the world were stuck at home, everything quickly moved to online: work meetings, food and clothing delivery, sports training.
Websites and apps had to compete strongly to grab the users’ attention and loyalty. Therefore, it’s crucial to know what features and elements in UI/UX design can win the hearts of the audience in 2021.
Trend #1: Same-style icons
In 2021, using mixed icons, making the website a “catch-all soup”, is simply unacceptable. They violate the integrity of the interface and the accuracy of the project.
A website or app that meets the trends should use ready-made specialized icon libraries of the same family.
Trend #2. Dark mode
The dark mode is already a big trend in 2020 thanks to OLED screens, and it has become even more popular this year.
Dark themes look super modern, highlight the main design elements, reduce eye strain, and most importantly, save smartphone battery power.
This trend is especially followed by banking products developers like https://www.qulix.com/industries/banking-and-financial-software-development/. This makes apps and websites more stylized, austere, and credible.
Trend #3. Minimalism and simplicity
The history of interfaces has seen all sorts of things, and today design has come to the conclusion that a good interface is one that is practically invisible.
People spend a huge amount of time on large platforms, so their main function is to provide content to users. Thus, the design shouldn’t draw full attention to itself. In this case, it focuses on the details: interface mesh, fonts, icons, colors, animation.
Ultra minimalistic navigation also belongs to this trend. Website content gravitates towards more videos with voice scripts and less text. Navigation has become easier over the past few years to accommodate very small devices and even less attention span. Extremely minimalistic navigation eliminates most of the usability hassle.
Trend #4. Free-hand design elements
Doodles, wireframes, sketches, prototypes are seriously used in many designs now and work great. This is due to the fact that many are tired of the “perfect” design. And these elements bring a kind of humaneness to websites. This is an important step for users irritated by the artificial synthesis of technology.
Actually, this trend is about sincerity and imperfection, which allow the brand to establish an invisible connection with the user.
Trend #5. Edgy 3D elements
3D graphics have always ravished people, creating the effect of presence. Web designers and top software development companies are increasingly using 3D to be compliant with VR/AR technologies that gain momentum.
But before integrating such heavyweight content as 3D graphics, make sure your application has high performance and loads all the elements quickly.
Trend #6. Mixing photos with graphics
The use of high-quality photographs covered with illustrations or graphics conveys the brand spirit and shows the creativity of the company.
Trend #7: SVG animation
There are too many illustrations today, and many websites and apps use cheesy images that are boring to look at. What can revive them? Animation!
Code-generated SVG animation is used for both illustrations and icons. So feel free to animate whatever is appropriate to animate.
Trend #8. Neon and light
Futuristic colors such as purple, bright blue, and neon pink give designs a hint of the future glow. Professionals use bold colors to make web designs stand out and grab all the attention of users. It goes well with other uptrends like dark mode or minimalism.
Trend #9. Asymmetric layout
For years, websites have been grid-based. This has always been a popular approach because it organizes the structure and allows you to focus on key elements. Now things are different. The upcoming trend is asymmetrical design in balance.
Trend #10. UX texts
Many companies have changed their communication style. The goal is to make it less formalized and more like normal dialogue with a hint of humor. But you have to stay in line and know the target audience you are interacting with.
Trend #11. Blurred elements in interfaces
Blur is the tendency that dies and recovers. This happens once every six months: the trend dies, then the generation of designers changes, newcomers look at old popular works, do the same – and now the blur is in trend again.
Blur often solves the problems of functional design. Fuzzy elements help to add depth to the interface and show the hierarchy of elements. In other words, using blur, you can highlight important buttons and show the user what to look at.
Trend #12. Using emoji
The modern Internet user is used to focusing on symbols, not words, and icons and emoji are easily understandable elements. Regardless of what language you speak, you will understand that the emoji with a man and a computer means a developer, and a bill means money.
Moreover, research shows that we judge people based on the emoji they use in dialogue. Therefore, the introduction of icons and emojis into the interfaces of mobile applications will become one of the leading trends.
Trend #13. Grained gradients
As you already understood, the world of design doesn’t stand still: something is simplified, but something, on the contrary, becomes more complicated. So, this also applies to gradients, which are constantly becoming more complicated to acquire a new mind-blowing look.
Now, gradients covered with grain are considered more trendy as they have a more realistic look.
Trend #14. Massive cropped photos
The use of photographs in design is not new but now designers prefer high-quality photo, which is used in large size in the figure. The figures can be completely different, it doesn’t really matter. The most commonly used are ovals, rounded squares, rectangles, etc. In any case, using a large photo and choosing the trendy color and font will make the design look beautiful and expensive.
Wrapping up
In 2021, knowing the main UI/UX design trends can be critical to a company. As the competition becomes more intense, it’s becoming crucial to follow fashion tendencies. Make UX more friendly, personalized, muted, and minimalistic. Then the attention and love of users are guaranteed.
