The digital landscape continues to evolve at a rapid pace and in many different ways. Staying abreast of it can be bewildering, particularly if you don’t know your Responsive Web Design from your vertical scrolling. Though, if you’ve got a good web design team you shouldn’t need to.

We like to start with our clients’ needs and tailor the technology to their brand, working to optimise usability and accessibility, all wrapped up in the kind of deceptively simple design that makes it stand out in the crowd.  An efficiently designed and user-friendly website says so much about how you value your business and how confident you are about your product or service, instilling the same confidence and sense of value in your customers.  So make it good, get it out there and be seen – keeping it vibrant and on trend is an investment you can’t afford not to make.

With that in mind, we’ve taken some time to think about and to identify the trends that we’ll be recommending and implementing for our clients in 2013, whether they’re targeting consumers in Northern Ireland or the Northern Territories.

2013’s Top Web Design Trends

It’s all about what you do and how you look... the trend is all about joining the dots, from offline to online and beyond:

1.    Responsive Web Design

With the surge in mobile and tablets predicted to outstrip laptop sales over the Christmas period and into 2013 your site needs to be ready for every format. Responsive Web Design eliminates the costly process of designing and developing on a device by device basis - a single design works perfectly from desktop to tablet. It’s an easy trend to predict because it’s an absolute essential – miss this one and you’re missing out big time!

2.    The Year of Typography

Typography, and not just by virtue of the very many fonts available, has never been bigger.  The right typography goes a long way to positioning your brand and says so much about how up-to-date you are – any designer worth their salt will advise on getting it right on your site. 

3.    Vertical Scrolling

Mobile channels are here to stay – being there for your customers means being in their pocket, right when they need you.  Lots of websites are already both vertical and horizontal scrollable but the big trend for 2013 is vertical – straight up! It’s user-friendly, convenient and makes for easy navigation. Add the trend for vertical scrolling of menus and buttons and you make it even easier for users to shop and tweet, sharing your offer or innovation, as those buttons remain on screen and so easily accessible.

4.    Parallax Scrolling

It’s been around for a while, associated mainly with video games, but it’s becoming popular as a way for designers to control the depth of design objects on your site. Put simply – it makes for a more engaging browsing experience, enhancing your site’s stickiness and keeping your customers immersed in your site for longer.

5.    Big Buttons

Big has always been beautiful – but now it’s practical too! Big buttons not only look good but make touching and tapping even easier. There’s one drawback – big graphics can slow things down. To keep this trend trending, designers will have to find a way to speed things up. The trend to go big will also apply to images and backgrounds – an easy way to maximise impact!

6.    Keep It Simple

Easier said than done, but that’s all down to how good your design and development team is. Don’t be afraid of white space – your viewers will thank you for it. Too much information can be intimidating, immediately turning your audience off. 

7.    Brand It

And we’re back where we started – building your online presence around you. Branding is the big topic in 2013. Because there’s no point sacrificing your recognition to stay on trend - the two things must work together, complementing each other and building your brand online. As the real and virtual worlds converge even more in 2013, a good designer will have both the tools and know-how to bring your brand properly to life in the online space, joining the dots and making your business look slick wherever your customers find you.  

If you want to talk about getting the website you need to grow your business in 2013 – give us a shout! Call The Web Bureau on 028 9073 1190 or email info@thewebbureau.com

This month’s entry to our desktop wallpaper calendar challenge comes from web designer, Mark Kirwan, who has created Novembers wallpaper inspired by Leonids meteor shower.

Here Mark explains his rationale behind the wallpaper:

"The Leonids meteor shower reaches its peak around November 17 so I’ve designed my wallpaper as a tribute to this astronomical spectacle. Historically, this shower has produced some of the greatest meteor storms in history, and if you’re lucky (and somewhere dark after midnight), you might just spot it yourself!"

As with all the wallpapers our web designers create, Mark’s desktop wallpaper has been sent in to Smashing Magazine for their monthly wallpaper design competition. 

Let’s hope his wallpaper is featured, making it a hat trick for the Web Bureau, following Andy and Mark McGall’s previous features.

What are your thoughts on Mark’s Meteor Shower Wallpaper? 

Let us know by posting your comments below and be sure to check back in December when the next member of our design team, Glenn Drain will be taking on the wallpaper design challenge!

Make “Meteor Shower” Your Wallpaper for November

If you’d like to download “Leonids Meteor Shower” as your desktop wallpaper calendar for the month of November, follow these simple instructions:
1.    Click here to view the wallpaper
2.    Right click on the image and “Set as Background Image”
3.    Alternatively save it to your “Pictures” folder on your computer. From here you can right click on the image and select “Set as Desktop Background”

Continuing on with our series of desktop wallpaper calendars, our web designer, Andy, has taken on the month of October and created a Halloween themed design.  Andy’s wallpaper is titled “Halloween Moon”.  Here he explains the thought process behind his illustration.

“As the nights draw in earlier and earlier and Halloween fast approaching I decided on a suitably gloomy theme for my wallpaper.

 I wanted something slightly different to the usual witches and pumpkins associated with Halloween. I've always loved the film The Nightmare before Christmas (it's kind of about Halloween I assure you) and my intention with this design was to attempt to create something in that creepy yet quirky style.