How Web Design Trends Changed over the Years?

It is well evident looking at the history of web design that every half of the decade, there is a major design trend that takes the design industry by storm. Web design has changed and evolved over the years since the world’s first website was created in 1991 and late 90s when CSS was released to now where we are talking about generative designs, IoT designs, and XR designs. Web Design has transformed in massive ways over the last three decades. In this article, we will be taking a look at how the most notable design Trends changed during this period.

Web Design Trends Changed over the Years

Late 90s to early 2000s (birth of the industry)

With the beginning of the internet and internet-based applications, the field of web design was born and back then the trend was to come up with really vibrant bright colors and designs. The world’s first website was published in 1991 and there was no CSS at that time, but things started to get more exciting when CSS was released in 1996. And back then UI/UX design was a newborn baby whose future relied on a lot of nurturing from the industry.

As we moved forward towards the early 2000s, the design trends changed. With the release of Flash software, a lot changed in web design but before that designing was not a priority of the organizations. Most of the companies did not have any digital presence and some core tech companies that had a digital presence focused on HTML and not on designing.

Early 2000s to mid 2000s (UI centered)

The early 2000s the Golden Era of web design, it was exciting because now designers had exciting Technologies such as flash to do anything and everything they wanted. With the help of Flash, now the websites were highly animated, fully equipped with UI sounds and overall better designed. Till now, user experience was not the part of web design trends.

For the websites in the early 2000s, there wasn’t much physical space to design for because monitor resolutions back then were typically 800 by 600 Pixels. But design industry saw many path breaking trends in this time when web designers back then were establishing some solid UI patterns that are still used today.

Mid 2000s to early 2010s (Skeuomorphism)

We saw another major change in web design trends in mid 2000s. Around the mid-2000s we saw the introduction of Skeuomorphism in web design. Skeuomorphism is a web design principle that involves practices for making the digital layouts resemble Real World objects. Many websites that came in 2000s were following this new trend of Skeuomorphism but of course not all websites designed during this time was Skeuomorphism, some of the biggest internet tech companies were rather minimalistic.

Minimalism is a design practice that focuses on lesser is more. It believes to keep the components on the screen as less as possible and only display components that have some functionality. With more and more companies focusing on minimalism, till early 2000s most of the websites were minimalist.

Early 2010s till 2015 (Web 2.0)

In the late 2000s and early 2010s we saw a huge explosion of a new design aesthetic encapsulated by the term Web 2.0 . Web 2.0 is the current version of web where the focus is on user generated content where internet application work as a digital architecture where users can share information with each other.

This was the time of dot com bubble and the industry saw a lot of jobs for designers, this new design aesthetic featured a lot of bubbly topography and other such Design Elements along with gradients, drop Shadows, glows and more. Here the user experience also started to be a part of the designers workflow but not a priority.

2015 to 2020 (Minimalism)

After years of Skeuomorphism in Web 2.0, the design industry saw a dramatic shift in web design with the rise of flat design, the pendulum swung over to the other side of minimalism with fewer gradients, more white space and more Simplicity. Due to this new trend of minimalism, more and more digital interface and website started focusing on “less is more”.

In this period between 2015 to 2020, we saw the focus shifted drastically towards the user experience. Designers started designing interfaces that were minimalist and easier for the user to navigate. Design thinking and following the best design practice became common in this period.

2020 to Present day (XR and IoT design)

One thing that is still common from the five years back trends is that these days flat design and minimalism is still largely with us. Many web design trends changed and evolved between 2015 to 2020 but the industry by far has excepted the flat design and minimalism from past decade, except that we have also added a few more trends.

Since 2020 to present day we are seeing highly illustrative UIs with beautiful animations a lot of color and depth. Design industry is now experiencing a major shift into both VR and AR for UI design. There has been recent shift towards IoT design since IoT devises are becoming more popular. As of 2024, the design industry has been such that all in all the design has become more accessible and more user centered.

Conclusion

Web Design Trends Changed over the years, and these changes have made our digital interface more beautiful as well as easy to work with. Largely the design industry has moved from complex designs to simpler ones with better user experience. Web design has changed and evolved over the years since the world’s first website was created in 1991 and late 90s where CSS was released to now where we are talking about generative designs, IoT designs and XR designs. The evolution of design is inevitable and the best way to protect your career from this every changing landscape is to keep on upskilling yourself and have a keen eye on the latest trends in the industry and learning skills related to those trends.