Must Design

You'll never feel left out at a hipster web design party with these 15 key terms under your belt

Buy and sell handcrafted, mousemade design content like vector patterns, icons, photoshop brushes, fonts and more at Creative Market.

It almost seems that this year flat designs have taken over the world of graphic design by force, but especially in the arena of mobile apps with the first industry-shaking flat design being for the iPhone5. Reality is that flat design has been around longer than the emergence of the iPhone5, but of course it was Apple that helped to bring such cross-industry awareness to the design style. 

The "Web Design" category of general interest covers its fair share of ground. Informative articles on everything from UX to client management, to conversion psychology,...

What are two of the coolest colors in web site design? And do you think we've assembled a collection for you that will knock your socks off? Take a peek >>

Flat web design has been a huge topic in the web, even Apple is adopting flat web design style and you need to make sure you upgrade your site too!

With the release of iOS7 just around the corner, clamor over the changes Jony Ive will institute is growing. The general consensus--on this site and elsewhere--is that Apple is about to get a flat makeover. But for the uninitiated, “flat design” can be a confusing term. So let’s talk it out, shall we?

Web Design Example Intercore
There are a lot of things I like about this website design for the private equity firm Intercore such as:

The Good
* Responsive Design.
* Animated Storytelling (love the factoids fading in and out).
* Large Hero.
* Flat color palette (monochrome color schemes).
* Location of social media in CONTACT area.

The Bad
The biggest nit I have is the lack of social media, but that brings up an interesting choice too. I'm betting a private equity firm isn't dependent on the web either for customers or SEO so Intercore's decision to only have Facebook and to put that link low down on the contact page reflects their business model better than it would most (who need customers from the web and care about SEO).

I Liked the company and there is confusing information on their abaout page. Don't feel compelled to play shuffle the deck in social media. If I was going to explain their corporate umbrella the Facebook About age is not where I would do it (lol).

Interesting and good ideas well executed to steal here. Whoever created this site knew what they were doing from a design and content architecture perspective.

The Ugly
By zooming out on my laptop I found their Twitter link. This is one of the perils of responsive design. The link is also broken directing into the home page so will share the fact their Twitter is broken on their Facebook page.

2014 We Design Trends

1. Grid Layouts - Agree & Is Good!
Yes visual marketing + pinterest + mobile is making the grid ubiquitous. I created a Mondrian grid in 1999 when we launched FoundObjects.com (not gone sadly). Grids help share MORE information faster and in the same space than any other design element.

2. Image Captions - Agree and is GREAT
The area immediately under an image is HOT. Everyone looks there but few designers use captions to reinforce or explain the image. Paying more attention to keywords under images is a great idea.

3. Extended Form Elements with JQuery - Don't Know? Does anyone?
Can't comment on this trend as it is new to me and I don't program so its potential benefits are fuzzy at the moment.

4. Deeply Focused Landing Pages thanks to Mobile - Agree & Is Cool
Don't understand this trend except enough to say COOL and WANT ONE.

5. HTML5 Video Players - Agree and GLAD
Don't play your videos on YouTube only since you just make the rich get richer. Figuring out how to play videos "in your stack" is important and having your own HTML5 player is cool.

6. 3D vs. 7. Flat Design - I come down on Flat Design as the winner due to mobile.

8. Personal Portraits - Agree and Like

9. SVG Vector sweeps web as browser support escalates. Agree & Glad.

10. Fonts get cool thanks to server advance - cool and like but not a religion or anything lol.

11. Lazy Loading Animations - cool and can think of several uses.

12. Customized Image Galleries - cool and we need.

13. Mega Navigation Menus - Don't know but don't like idea, seems confusing where confusion can really hurt.

14. Expanding Search Bars - cool and will use.

15. Featured Detail List - LIKE and is cool and new to me.

16. Mobile First Design - Agree and am doing my first now with CrowdFunde.

17. HTML5 Canvas - cool and new to me.

18, Pixel Sprites and Browser Games - New to me but COOL!

19. Quick Registration via social - AGREE!

20, CSS3 Keyframe Animation - Cool, want one.

December is always a great time to look back on the year that was and the new year that is soon to come. There are many exciting things that 2014 has in store for us who live, work, ...