Smashing Magazine - we smash you with the information that will make your life easier. really.

Thanks for gathering this collection of trends… this is my favorite kind of Smashing Magazine post. Gotta stay on the cutting edge! Looking forward to the follow up post next week.

Brilliant. Thanks for the list.

It’s not always easy combining style with great content but I think the trend will be for strong CMS’s like Joomla to combine style with substance. Then you’ll have a truly inspiring website.

Great article – looking forward to Part 2.

Going to repeat what everyone else has said, thanks and great article.

Well, letterpress is been used since a few years i.e. Apple’s revamped website (after aqua).
What we can see is a global trend to add deepness to graphic design, to make the navigation tips closer to physical perception.

And thanks for the great job you are doing !

Very amazing collection.

Every time I think you guys can’t come up with another great article, you do!

Very pleasing to read post! Will be eagerly waiting for the second part.

I think that ‘The Magazine Look’ is part of a bigger trend – Now that we’ve gotten pretty good at web design, the design of the web and the design of the offline world are merging. Some other examples:

– Wooden and paper textured backgrounds
– Handwritten type faces
– Images with polaroidesque borders

This is has been happening for a while, but I think we’ll see more of it.

this is great…, thanks…

What font is used here, http://www.francescomugnai.com/ ?

wouw nice, what about an article or tutorial about:

how image replace works and the technics for it.

I’m interested in how innovative PNG transparency will get. The possibilities seem endless!

Great article! Thanks :-)

so these are the 72 hour long posts ;o?

You mention 24ways.org @ PNG transparency, but as far as I know there are no (semi) transparent PNG’s used at that website, all transparency is accomplished by CSS! The only images used are those of the writers and the diagonal background image.

They are really interesting, thank you so much!!!

Really excellent article.

It is always nice to see what is being used out on the web. I have seen a number of the techniques but had not realised they were quite so mainstream just yet. Maybe they are.

Will have a bit of a mess with what you have shown to see if it can improve any of my work or future designs.

BANG! sparks are flying! love ya!
Thx singmash manigaze!!!

Inspiring!

Great post ! I’m waiting for the next one !
Lots of interesting ideas that are confirmed by my day to day surf.
Thanks !

Viewport from paulicio is awesome !

thanks for this helpful article

Great post!!

Great collection, thank you.

Drupal Con’s got Smashed – strong motivation for Drupal themers!

Nice article!

Great post. I was thinking of twisting my site a little bit this way.

Except for _maybe_ the first two, these are not really new trends for 2009 I think. The title should have been: The most popular trends in web design in the last couple of years. Of course, it’s hard to predict what’s going to happen, especially in a field as fast changing as web design.

Nice article though, but it’s not what the title promised.

i always like hearing about trends.. gives me guidance on what NOT to do too often.

Very nice collection. I particularly like Modal Boxes. A trend I’ve noticed is that the font
Helvetica Neue is being used more often. But when I load a site using this font it displays jagged in Firefox.

Bad ass article for us web designers. Danke.

a lot of these aren’t even from 2009. I’ve seen some of these sites on CSSRemix and other “inspirational” CSS galleries a year or longer ago.

magazine style! love it… light and informative….

My website makes use of the letterpress look for headers. Didn’t realize it was such a popular trend…dang.

loved the post, but i wonder if the term trends makes us go out and implement these visual strategies, no questions asked or imagination required. rather than if they were named as inspiration, perhaps then we’d use, manipulate and go beyond them… these will be in my head most definitely, but we should all strive to create new trends not live by them.

awesome.

I love all the designs on the list.

Random question, but what software made the video on the media boxes section (www.goodbarry.com). Is it straight Flash or is there a program that is outputting to Flash?

Awesome post! Thanks again SmashingMag!

Well, this was interesting, never heard of sIFR befor, thank you very mcuh for mentioning it!
I’m excited about the second part.

2009 is looking like a great year :)

We have to kill carousel. It’s over!

Interesting trends. Thanks.

Best Smashing Post ever. Bangin.

grt article…highly useful….

great!

I didn`t know about the sIFR thing … have to test it now :) great stuff!

Wow, this inspires me like a small green egg!

Great inspiration. It has opened my eyes to what my blog needs adjusted :).

Good article, but the pedant in me couldn’t help making the following points:

I can’t help but join Jenn in pointing out that the first style is not what you’d describe as ‘Letterpress’ in print media. Letterpress refers to printing using metal letters. The style you’ve featured would probably be better described as de-bossing, a printing technique where the type is stamped into the surface you are printing, so the letters form an inverted relief pattern.

Also, a lot of the examples you give for png transparency are actually created using the CSS opacity feature.

That’s it, end of pedantry.

I hope you all remember, that just because they are all trends, doesn’t mean that they are all good….

I’m going to hate a lot of sites designed this year because some of these trends are wack.

It’s cool, I like them. Thanks for your article.

sorry its by mistaken. ur article is very good

I’ve not heard of Smashing before this. Definitely bookmarked now. Great article, and great response for the most part. Please, designers, keep your comments positive, do not give in to your inner hater :)

I can’t wait to read the second part!

Interesting..

Both the letterpress and the re-introduciton of introduction blocks. The first reminds me of the emboss-period, Photoshop 4 era IIRC.
And re-emerging introduction blocks. Much like the ‘coverpage’, stuff like that just seems to keep coming back with every new jump in the ever growing web-publish-enabled group of people in our society. Makes you wonder if they should maybe be considered a natural step in someone’s evolution towards a full blown publisher. A need to identify oneself in an unknown environment. Much like how when you’re new in a bar it takes a while before new faces are introduced to you, as opposed to you being introduced to new faces.

png transparency? about time! :)

All of this reflects trends that have been around for the past 2-3 years. Really surprised the boundaries weren’t pushed here…. not mention of Mobile Web Trends?

good

Web Design Trends to avoid in 2009

Superb collection…

Interesting and very useful article. I am going to refer this link in my blog

Regards,
Swami K

Interesting article. Something which has been around for a while is introduction blocks. Some of my clients have been using them, and like you say they only work in certain situations. When running usability tests with participants, some find the intro informative on a site when there are few clues indicating the site’s purpose. In other situations they make the homepage feel cluttered and are often overlooked in favour for navigation links and calls to action.

Look forward to reading the remaining 15 trends.

Absolutely awesome. Thanks for sharing this.

I have to agree with some of the others– I feel like a lot of these trends aren’t new, just making comebacks. I know CSS3 has a new RGB transparency feature, which may be the reason for this new resurgence. However I remember the popularity of using the CSS alpha(opacity) trick in the early 2000s. The return to the embossed type look actually scares me a bit– it can look awful in the wrong hands.

Awesome!

Web technologies and endless design possibilities are finally heading in the right direction!
Excellent article!

Keep on experimenting and making websites interesting!
D

Thanks for the great article. And thanks for featuring our work.

Nice work !

Thanks for mentioning our site (cut and taste). I have no idea what “magazine look” means, but the clicks come either way, haha. There is a grid structure to the site, but I’m sure it is under-utilized, compared to other sites that change their layout from page-to-page. Anyway, thanks again for including our site in the mix!

Great post. Please continue your web design trends in various aspects, its educational.

I find that the example on this page have more user focus than those: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/01/07/textures-in-modern-web-design/
The later seems to be a designer ego show and ignore the fact that people have to read and use the pages.

So I like those trends much better :)

Are there any tutorials on how to makes the slide shows (Carousels)? Particularly the yahoo one? I’m not a flash guy.

really good compilation :D 10/10

but i think 1 thing they forgot is the good old mootools slider noticed alot of the sites using it amongst the collection.. maybe that was last year :P

Actually, not only is what you’re showing not “letterpress,” it isn’t even an “emboss” either.
It’s mimicing a “deboss.”
“In debossing an image such as a logo, a title, or other design is heat-pressed into the surface of the paper with a die, creating depressions rather than raised impressions as in embossing. The same techniques used for embossing — blind, foil, and ink — can be used with debossing to create visual effects and texture. Debossing can be done on hard and soft covers.”
Lack of knowledge of fundamentals rears is ugly head again.

Thanks very much for outlining some great examples. I particulary like the pressed letters, PNG transparency and magazine style. I’d like to use these in some of my own designs in the future. But at the same time – I like to try and create my own style rather than follow a trend.

Really worth to know these things. Thank you very much!!!!!

Too bad TARGET = “_blank” isn’t a trend. I got really tired of hitting the back button or cmd clicking on your links.

Very helpful thank you.

There are many latest web designing trends that have come today in picture.

Amateur and professional Web designers alike are getting a new tool to help them easily create sites that are fully interactive.

-There should be a consistent theme and design running throughout your site ie same header image and/or logo, slogan, navigation, copyright and colors.

Regards,
Nathan Hauritz

That’s amazing. Thanks for that nice and helpful article

Good job! Awesome work…

I need to know more how to do it…
I am more interested in the magazine look! Please send me the links.

Thanks!

Very nice and thanks for sharing cute latest thing about designing and trends.
I would like to know and read more amazing and interested post at smashingmagazine.com

All the best!

I absolutely love the magazine look. I think it brings me back to the good ol’ days of print ads. It’s very simple and clean, leaving the page uncluttered but dynamic enough to attract the readers attention.

Great post!

TJ
Boston Web Design

Just thinking a bit about some of the offerings here. All really nice, crisp looks.

I want to encourage those of us watching these trends to not simply copy them. Instead, absorb the look, determine how you might interpret that in your own visual language and then “go get some.”

Staying current with fashions and trends is fun. However, avoid becoming a copy cat. Take what you see and synthesize it into something that suits your style and your client’s needs.

There’s another thing to take into consideration. Don’t just do something because you think it’s cool. Do it because it truly expresses a point of view or an essential quality.

Not everyone is an innovator. Yet everyone can synthesize ideas. Ideas, like language, are viral. They mutate quickly and become something more than what they were the last time they were encountered. Ideas easily evolve into something new – and hopefully interesting.

I can’t emphasize enough how much we as designers need to step back and ask ourselves — “Are we truly representing ourselves and our clients’ best qualities?” Or are we merely plagiarizing the work of others.

Synthesis over “Me-Tooism,” I believe, will win every time.

BTW- I think calling the style “letterpress” is a misnomer. The look appears to be more like “die cut” or “deboss.” It is a more representative naming based on the analog versions of the style, as done before in the print world.

Peace

Very nice and thanks for sharing cute latest thing about designing and trends.
I would like to know and read more amazing and interested post at smashingmagazine.com

I love what bludomain.com offers!

Ashlee

this article will surely help me.

thank you for sharing the knowledge with the world.

Whoa, it’s pretty extensive. Thanks for the detailed and well-illustrated post. I’m still trying to take in everything that you’ve mentioned and am finding myself agreeing with most of it.

The options are many. Ideas abound in playful abundance. But only a few of these will stand the test of time and manage to shape and mold the future.

Only time will tell which ones those would be.

Thanks for the trends and the nice examples….
is there any possibility of giving some tutorial sites on the above trends.

Thank you, very useful. Even there are different trends, for instance in Norway. We are designing for emotions!

Well done.

awesome job!!!!!!!!!!!!

Haha!! Good post… at least NOW we know what to expect!
But yeah, everything on there is true. Use of illustration could have been on there somewhere too though

I can’t believe so much has changed within a few years so referring to these articles keeps us fresh!!

I <3 Whitespace

warm smaller small slowly suggested satellite volunteer developer

fantastic updates on the latest trends. We do see them but don’t realize. This is categorized and put in a very good manner.

Keep up the good work!

Nice one.
I have also been seeing more movable tabs lately!!!!

Great article, Thanks !

great inspirations….

Very helpful – thank you

this collection is grade..
thanks