Uncategorized, Web Design
Web design is constantly changing from year to year. Here are some trends that are making it big in 2018.
Hand-Drawn Fonts
Just look on Instagram to see how viral custom hand-drawn fonts are becoming in recent months. These unique typefaces add character and charm as well as a good bold identity that can be used across your brand. It can help you win over younger audiences, with a new powerful and distinctive look.
Organic Shapes
Gone are the days of strict grid layouts and sharp edges – 2018 will adopt curved lines and soft, organic shapes. This can be highly effective in producing some stand out design with vivid colors, but also can be adapted for spectacular results in the minimal look.
Overlapping Text and Images
Text that slightly overlaps accompanying images has become a popular effect for blogs and portfolios. Combining beautiful images and nice/readable text can result in an eye candy touch that will get your user’s attention.
Duotone
These pared-down, two-tone color schemes look cool and contemporary, Duotones are very similar to color overlays, but this technique uses two colours to overlap the whole image from one side of the color spectrum to another. Not only does the Duotone give the photo a refreshing look, but it can also set the mood based on the chosen colors. Works very well with Bold colour choices.
Illustration
More companies are turning to illustrators and graphic artists to create bespoke illustrations for their websites. After years dominated by flat design and straightforward minimalism, adding illustrated touches to your site is a great way to inject a little personality.
Web Design
Towards the end of the year, Chrome v62 will be released, bringing with it many new changes for both users of the browser and site owners. The biggest change will be the marking of non-HTTPS sites.
These sites will be marked with text input fields and will automatically be viewed in incognito mode as ‘not secure’. Google has started rolling this out, by reminding all website owners that they need to switch to HTTPS or their site will be marked like this.
Further to the marking of non-HTTPS sites, website owners will also have to incorporate SSL Certificates to secure the information being shared between their server and their visitors. If this isn’t incorporated it means that sensitive information could be exposed to the internet. HTTPS will be the norm in due course, so there is no need to worry about transferring across.
There is a problem with SSL Certificates though. Not all websites which have this certificate can or should be trusted. Luckily for us though, Google has come up with a solution for this.Users who are worried about which sites can be trusted should look no further than the URL. Look for letters in the URL which seem out of place, such as numbers in the place of letters, or letters made to look like numbers. Even look out for additional letters or numbers that shouldn’t be there. There are fully comprehensive guides out there which can help you distinguish between safe sites with an SSL Certificate and unsafe ones with the certificate.
You can also look out for an EV SSL Certificate (Extended Validation Certificate). This will show that this site is completely trustworthy. A trusted website will have the company name next to the URL, such as Apple, Inc (URL). Unfortunately, not all SSL certified sites will have this, but most of the big name companies will. It will only be a matter of time before more and more smaller sites are also becoming EV SSL certified.
However, despite all of this, it is important to note that phishing sites can hijack sites which already have SSL certification in place. This can add the appearance of being a legitimate site, even though they are not. These phishing sites can also use free (and non-legitimate) SSL certificates to make themselves appear more trustworthy.
If you’re worried about the SSL certification as Chrome moves to its new version, you can access a full guide to enabling HTTPS for your site, and how to avoid your site being marked as ‘not secure’. It is always worth keeping up to date with the latest phishing scams and makes sure that your site is fully protected from hackers to ensure the security of your servers, and your visitor’s data.
