How Has Web Design Evolved?

Web design first came to being more than two decades ago. With technology moving at rapid speed, everything has changed from the way people communicate with each other to day to day life activities. As this change has been taking place, the way we view websites too has evolved. Styles and tastes are now no longer what they used to be. Like fashion, with styles of clothes changing from one decade to the next, so has website design, certain trends have come and gone. Visuals that were considered attractive 20 years ago are no longer pleasing to the eye.

2005
The standard website layout which has pretty much stayed the same first came to being in the mid 2000s. Websites were designed with a top navigation. This was due to pages containing large volumes of text becoming unacceptable. Web development companies began categorizing information to make it appear clean and uncluttered. Web pages were short and scrolling was not as popular as it is now. Websites had varied colours but darker shades were more widespread. Websites were also written in Flash, which is all but forgotten in this day and age. In addition, content management systems made its first appearance at this time allowing websites to edit content and make the necessary changes on their own.

2010

Websites now sported drop-down menus and design was becoming more of a thing. The colour spectrum was being used more effectively. It was during the period preceding this that smartphones were introduced; soon mobile site design became widespread amongst companies and industries. Narrow columns, magazine like layouts and single coloured backgrounds became more acceptable. Infogragpics were seen more frequently and towards the end of 2015 increased broadband speed allowed video backgrounds to become a benchmark of a well designed website.

Today

Today we see responsive websites gaining popularity. The mobile site phenomenon seems to have been replaced by responsive design, at least, for now. Information appears on slides, there is minimal text and rotating banners. There is emphasis on high resolution images, fonts are flatter and websites are streamlined more than ever before.