Web design has a lot of trends that are constantly changing, the old ones get away, the new ones emerge in an endless process of design evolution. So no wonder that there are endless discussions of web design trends going on and on all over the Internet – even we have published the web design of 2009 trends review. So now we’re after something that’s currently popular. We have even managed to find a couple or reviews of top trends for 2010 done by WebDesignLedger and DesignTutorials4U. These guys have done a great job but we feel like we have a couple of ideas to add.

By the way, all of the trends are illustrated with our own templates’ designs. After all, we do not only talk about trends, we actually follow them. Enjoy!

1. Social Icons

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Trend description: Social network icons are getting bigger and bigger (just as their value grows). Besides, they often get customized according to the general website style.

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2. Hand-Drawn elements

Trend description: Hand-drawn elements and sketches either on the highly important spots (such as header, working area etc.) or all over the design.

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3. Large Images

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Trend description: The photo is the main element of the design and is often in the center of composition. By the way, there’s sort of a subtrend here – the big photo is used as a background for the design.

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4. Magazine layout

Trend description: Grid-based design approach with lots of images and font play, just like in good old magazines. This trend has come from 2009 design trends.

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5. White Space

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Trend description: A lot of white space (or light-gray) with mostly minimalistic layout. By the way, the template design right above is one of numerous examples of how one design utilizes multiple trends. Check out the social icons in the header, look perfect for such a strict style as White Space. By the way, the iconset used for this design is also available at TemplateMonster. Here it is:

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6. Functional Tilling

Trend description: The functional elements (e.g. players, forms, buttons) are located in places previously considered inappropriate for anything at all.

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7. Typography

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Trend description: Use of big letters and original fonts, often placed on websites as ordinary text (extra large) without converting it into an image.

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8. Rich Textures

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Trend description: The background texture is a zoomed photo of something that has an interesting texture in real life.

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9. Original play with perspective

Trend description: The functional elements are located around the design in a way that makes you feel like they’re on various distances from you (unlike the line-oriented designs that we are all used to).

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10. Retro

Trend description: It pretty much speaks for itself. Old fonts, bright colors with slight sepia effect. Plus this trend often utilizes the old photos.

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11. 80-s

Trend description: Bright forefront colors with dark backgrounds. Plus – no Eighties are Eighties without a shiny disco ball!

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12. Grunge

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Trend description: Uses vector graphics and design elements with grungy and shabby effect.

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13. Interactive design

Trend description: The website design elements are connected with the functionality – some of the design elements become active when certain functionality is performed (e.g. the design changes when a user presses navigation buttons).

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14. Oversized Footer

Trend description: The footer is much bigger that it used to be, now it contains not only one line of main menu and copyright info, now it’s optimized for a lot of links which makes it sort of a mini-sitemap.

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15. Lightboxes

Trend description: Dialog boxes that appear after certain actions of a user – they either contain additional information or functional elements (such as order forms, login forms etc.).

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16. Minimal

Trend description: Ok, this trend is now new but it’s still very popular. It uses a very small amount of elements (often only navigation menu and a background) in order not to distract the audience from the website’s direct goal – whatever it is.

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17. Icons in design

Trend description: Also an old trend, but it’s even more popular than the Minimalistic style. This trend means that the functional elements of a website (for example the navigation tabs) are accompanies by the graphic icons that simplify perception.

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18. Scattered Navigation

Trend description: The navigation elements – either buttons or text – are scattered in a mess around the design. It may seem uncomfortable but on the other hand the navigation elements are bigger in this case and are very easy to use.

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Ok, that’s about it with our vision of currently actual web design trends. In case you have something to add to this list please feel free to leave a comment to this post. After all, it’s the audience who sets these trends.