What’s Hot in Design for 2012?

whats-hot-in-2012

Design trends in 2012 are going to be big, bold and attention grabbing show stoppers. Simple designs for both print and web with carefully designed, functionality for web design are the key to successful and contemporary looking design.

What’s Hot in Typography?

The use of custom fonts is now the rage, web developers are making much more use of these to stand out from the usual standard web typefaces. It is possible to display custom fonts using tolls such as Typetester, WhatTheFont  and CSS Typese.  In this year are textured fonts, 3d effects, transparent text and shadows. I know it’s all the things we designers have been avoiding, but now is your chance to indulge in those guilty pleasures. This applies to print design and web design.

What’s hot in Image Use?

Think BIG. Large images and backgrounds are in. Quirky images are good, those business stock photos are out, out, out.  Think street photography, puns and associations, think different and colorful. Vintage and Retro designs are still on trend.

What’s Hot in Colour?

Forget the neutrals, think greens and pinks. We want colour and lots of it, saturated hues, vibrant and bold. Try and keep your colours to two or three per page though, we are not talking psychedelic rainbows.

What’s Hot in Animation?

Keep it subtle, and only use animation when it does not distract the viewer from the main information on the page. Best used when it IS the main information on the page. HTML5, JavaScript, jQuery and CSS3 are all the rage. Animation is not just about moving images anymore, think animated menus and navigation aids.

What Screen Size Should You Be Designing For?

Don’t forget we are living in the age of the smartphone explosion. Your designs should look good on all size of monitor from huge apple screens to hand held devices. The best solution is to design a mobile version for your site; the user’s browser should be detected by your host so that it can send the correct design to the user. When designing for mobile only include what is essential, it may be necessary to use scale-able graphics.

Using Social Media

Make sure that you include all of your social media accounts on most of your pages. Make it easy for users to see where to click to share your beautiful content. Create product pages on Google Plus and link to these from the relevant pages. Google plus is projected to reach 400 million users by end of 2012. Remember links mean better ranking, and so do social shares. You can also use all of your social channels to publicize your content.

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