94% of the first impression any client gets about a brand website comes from web design. 

Immersive imagery. Playful shapes. Moving elements. 

Web design has come a long way from the flickering, pastelly brightness of the nineties, the tiny-text minimalism of the early 2000s, and the sleek rebrandings of the late 2010s. We’re looking at websites now that fulfil a function far more than just a place to park your brand and hope for the best: we’re looking at websites that exist on their own merit as an essential pillar of your brand’s personality. 

This is not new. 

What is new is this: we have social media platforms that now struggle to maintain the same level of engagement as they did previously. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Tiktok are all inundated with their own issues, and so a greater proportion of brands are turning to older ways of communicating with their consumers. 

That means websites. It means forums. It means web design. 

For 2023, we’re going to see more websites. 

Here’s what they’re going to look like.

What’s here to stay: 

Vanillafication 

Some people might not have a fully-kitted out desktop or laptop computer. 

But they will have a phone. 

Websites that prioritise clean, effortless aesthetics that load fast and look good are poised to see an even greater boost as consumers’ shrinking attention span means they will pivot away from any brand website that takes ages to load on the device they use the most: their mobile phone. The age of instant gratification and hyper-speed responses is only giving rise to faster websites, and in 2023, speed is going to be an increasingly important element in web design. 

Inclusion through typography

2022 showcased some excellent advances in typography: from 70s-inspired curls to user-set sizes, typography gained new importance as a unifier across all capabilities. Adaptable colour schemes, alt-text, keyboard navigation, and captions will see a greater focus in 2023 as companies strive to create a more inclusive internet experience for everyone. 

The Return of Experimental

Web design can be fun. 

In 2022, websites that introduced an element of enjoyment to consumers did well, and in 2023, it won’t be any different. Bold colours, beautiful typography, and stunning animations still draw significant attention, and with the growing return to the nostalgic, websites in 2023 can really benefit from turning the clock back to move forwards. 

Trends 2023

It’s not all about the past. 

2023 is looking forward to a bright future. 

Here’s some of the highlights. 

1. Hanging a(round)

Sharp, angular lines aren’t going anywhere. The days of brute minimalism are still on us. 

However, more and more platforms are opting to take their sharp edges away and replace them with squovals, squircles, and rounded corners. Google and Youtube have already hopped onto the circular see-saw, and with Google and Youtube settled as two of the platforms used daily, we’re likely to see this trend cropping up in other websites sooner rather than later. 

2. Micro-interactions

We’ve already mentioned micro-movements. 

This is a step beyond that. 

Consumer attention spans are growing shorter. Their focus is narrower. 

The web is huge, noisy, and chaotic, and it’s only getting more so as brands try and grab hold of as many consumers as possible – and they’re trying to do so by injecting their websites full of character and expression. 

Beautiful imagery. Text that sings. 

Animation.

A little animation goes a long way towards connecting a brand and its audience. Throw in ‘hidden’ animations – ones that only appear when the consumer interacts a certain way with the website – and you can definitely see repeat visits from your closest fans. 

According to Andrea, our lead designer, “gratifying animations can give users a micro-dopamine kick”, keeping them coming back to your website for the pleasure as much as the product. However, it’s important that all your animations don’t slow down the way your website loads. In 2023, speed is still the biggest factor for website success, and clunky, slow-loading sites that look beautiful will not benefit from any micro-interactions added to the site – no matter how expressive they are. 

3. Interactive gradients

Whether you’re a fan or not quite sold on gradients, their presence in 2023 is undeniable: not only will we see more static gradient design, but websites that want to add movement to their site without limiting their loading speed may opt to add warping gradients to their page as a form of expression. For sites where speed is the greatest concern, adding animated gradients and shifting gradients is the best of both worlds: you’ll add character to your web design without limiting what your web page can do. 

4. Lazy Loading

Think of your website as a book. 

Your user can only look at one page at a time. Lazy loading is a way of making sure that that page – the only page that they’re looking at – loads up fast. The rest can come later. 

Does it matter in the long run? It does if you’re a site with a lot of content to go through, particularly if that content is imagery, animation, or video. Your consumers only have milliseconds to decide whether or not they want to stay on your webpage long enough for it to make an impression, and lazy loading will keep those precious milliseconds focused on the things that matter: the content that’s drawing your customers in.

5. Reassuring Reality

The web is a global platform. 

Some days, there is more bad news than good news to read about. 

Web design can help with that. Keeping your web design light, your typography calm, and your users in control is a way of combatting the growing cynicism of the web – and no, it doesn’t have to be happy. People who go on the internet are used to having very little control over their viewing habits: from GDPR to hiding the unsubscribe button in typographic loopholes, hostile web design to keep people pinned to the page or the brand is not new. 

But it’s no longer the norm. 

Calming calls to action. Visible controls: unsubscribe, increase the text, remove all tracking. 

Andrea says, “the web has the duty of making its audience a little calmer, but it’s not about whimsical, on-the-nose, super-happy illustrations or animations: that’s a sign of cynicism. But we’ll see the trend of letting users know that they are in control.”

6. AI-bstract imagery

AI-generated art sparks a lot of opinions on both sides of the argument. 

But it definitely has its place in web design in 2023. 

Partially, it’s because we’re still in the early stages of refining AI art generation. Partially, it’s because it’s an innovation to the art world that has opened up access to creation to people who don’t have the technical training for art or design. 

Either way, AI art has a distinctive uncanny-valley style to it that web designers can use to their advantage. From strange proportions to questionable colour choices, AI-generated art can be an interesting stylistic choice for brands that want to set their opinion down on a controversial topic – and for those not in the know, it’s setting a style that can quickly set them apart from the rest. 

7. AI Know You

Your online experience is unique to you. What you watch, what you read, and what you look for is going to vary – and AI can bring it all to the forefront. 

What AI can do is still in its infancy. AI can be taught to create experiences that change depending on the person who views the advertisement, but it will take time before it’s ready to make these changes. 

DALL-E was a taster of what can happen when AI is made available to the public. 

Now we can build on it. 

Andrea says, “the next step for AI is to have it actually create on-demand virtual experiences: for example, Google knows what I like and what I don’t like, and tailors my advertisement based on that knowledge. Tone of voice, imagery, vocabulary use – even pop culture references – can all be tweaked to create content on the fly.”

8. 3D Dreams

In 2021, a living billboard caught the attention of pedestrians in Shinjuku. In 2022, more animated billboards took over public spaces: Times Square, Piccadilly Circus, Shenzhen. 

Websites will see more of the same: images that seem superimposed on your screen depending on how you tilt your phone. Images that follow you. Text that seems to stand apart from the rest. While the technology is relatively new, consumers are already used to images that stand out as larger than life, and careful use of 3D imagery can only add to an immersive experience. 

9. Frasurbane

This is not a new trend – but it’s taken on new life in the latter half of 2022. Initially a 90s interior design trend, Frasurbane is all about beige and earth, softened elements that focus on muted colours and larger-than-life fonts. With the nineties and Y2K aesthetic already drawing focus to the possibilities of the past, it’s no surprise that Frasurbane is coming back as a design style – or that it lends itself so well to so many different brands. Add in the sudden turn towards natural and earthy design, and Frasurbane can inspire a lot of comfort to consumers looking for a brand that speaks to them. 

 10. Claymorphism

Life, larger: it’s a key component of design thinking in 2023. We’ve already mentioned 3D imagery, shifting gradients, and micro-movements. 

Here’s another. 

Claymorphism. 

Think of the corporate design aesthetic from a few years back: the rounded shapes, the featureless faces. Now, make it 3D. 

Claymorphism is pastel. Claymorphism is rounded. Claymorphism has depth and shadow, and it looks like it’s moving when you look at it. Web design in 2023 is seeking out movement and colour, and claymorphism is the best of both worlds: an aesthetic that both appeals and inspires. 

11. Memphis Design

Here’s another blast from the past. 

Memphis design originated in the 80s: the decade of cartoons, bright pops of colour, and repeating patterns. However, it’s not quite the same as what we’re used to seeing: it’s evolved into a sleeker, sharper version of itself where the colours are deeper, the contrast sharper, and the choices made more deliberate. 

According to Sorina, “Memphis is much more than just a design trend, it breaks the typical norm and encourages freshness, creativity, and uniqueness through the design. Also, it motivates boldness and bravery, not just in design but in life, and reminds us that our time on this earth should be fun. Thus, it can actually help you deliver the best impression.”

2022 had plenty of reasons for us to stay understated. 

2023 will not be the same. 

12. Visible borders

For something completely different: realism. 

But not for imagery. 

Borders. 

Websites exist in a virtual space, and that is an unavoidable fact. However, adding borders irons the website down flat, giving it an easier, smoother look for the easily-scattered consumer. The shrinking attention span we mentioned earlier? It’s aided well by borders and shapes that guide the eye along. 

A lot of what happens on the internet doesn’t feel real to us. Borders are a way to help combat that unrealism and make the viewer more present. 

Conclusion

For 2023, we’re looking at movement and our childhood, up in lights.

Design is past and present and future.

The trends we mentioned today aren’t the only trends you’ll see in 2023. 

With so much of the world spending a growing amount of time on the internet, it’s no wonder that the internet we see now has started to resemble what we were used to when we were young. Nostalgia is powerful. For many, the web is still a place of comfort, even with the negative press around it. 

Design trends will always reflect that. 

The post Web Design Trends 2023 appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.

It was inspiring. A 3 days marathon of intense inspiration. And, like all respectable artists with full impostor syndrome and thousands of self-doubt sessions a day, I decided to participate at OFFF Festival to get some answers to my questions. But, like all great things in life, OFFF Festival, wasn’t an event in which I found answers to some specific questions, but rather it gave me a new set of questions to be mindful about. 

And for that I am grateful.

What moves you?

Gmunk (Bradley G Munkowitz) is a multi-platform visionary whose creativity and invention have placed him as one of the world’s top visual and design directors. His unique style is enigmatic, atmospheric, and metaphysical, combining science-fiction themes, psychedelic hues, and practical in-camera effects. The artist may be best known for his collaboration with Oblivion, Tron legacy or Windows 10, an image that all of us had at some point on our desktops.

At Offf Festival, I had the opportunity to find out about Gmunk’s behind the scenes process – like the fact that everything that he does is mostly in the offline medium (playing with visible or invisible light, wood boxes or patience while filming a time-lapse of wondering fog), but besides learning, I had the chance to feel.

Like feel, feel. 

His work is full of emotion, passion and curiosity that it is impossible to remain a stranger to his artwork. For this year’s title sequence for OFFF Barcelona, Gmunk presented his short film,“Decima”. The artwork explores themes of transmigration, empowerment, soul passage, and illumination, a subject that emerged into his life after his dad passed away in 2015.

This made me think:  how do I deal with my emotions?

Do I hide them between a rug of anger? Do I transform them into art? How do I stay present in the moment and curious? How do we all deal with the losses that we recently experienced as a society? COVID-19? War? Our dearest ones? 

What is your fear?

Rick Banks is the co-founder of F37®, a Manchester-based studio that specializes in branding and strategy, typography, art direction, and packaging. Rick presented some of his work through a collection of 10 pieces of advice. 

At point number 5 and 6, bells were starting to ring in my head. 

“Don’t be afraid to fail” and “Feel the fear and do it anyway” went straight to my heart and took me to a flow of questions. 

Rick Banks suffered from dyslexia as a child, but after reading “Dyslexia is my superpower” by Margaret Rooke, he found a way to spin the negative. This is how personal projects like Clubbed (a visual history of UK club culture), Football Type (a book celebrating the rich history of football and typography) & I Belong To Jesus (a book that pays tribute to a disappearing football tradition — the undershirt goal celebration) were born. Rick Banks approached the world in his own unique way – through images. Because, as Saul Bass once said, “Design is thinking made visual”.

This made me think about my fears, as well. 

What are my hidden superpowers? What am I hiding from the world that it is so beautiful, yet I don’t believe in it yet?

How much attention do you pay to details?

Musketon must be one of the first illustrators that I discovered when I started in this industry. Bert Dries likes to play with vector shapes in a very detailed, bold and colorful way. He brings into discussion topics about pop culture and its impact on human behavior. His artworks are poignant, powerful, satirical, and sometimes nostalgic, but always fun, and full of little surprises that are waiting to be discovered after a closer look. 

After zooming in, but like really zooming in, “The Last Supper” artwork has a series of elements which are either funny or awkward and were taken from real-life events: Maurizio Catellan’s banana auction, a scene from Up, Trump’s bleach, Facebook’s intrusive presence, his ex-girlfriend reflected on the teapot and a pair of Nikes with a scene of Adam and Eve in Eden.  

If I had to describe Musketon as an artist, I believe I would call him a “hard working guy from Belgium”. When talking about work, there are no shortcuts for him. I was impressed to find out that in order to build his 2D illustrations, he first builds in Cinema4D the 3D version of his desired object and then he traces it using Illustrator. I mean how more invested can you be? 

In order to build the “Netflix in the ‘90s collectible” he first built his 3D model and then he used that to trace it and to make a 2D illustration out of it. 

This made me think about how much I pay close attention to the little joyful moments in my life.

Am I living every moment with a “stay in the present” mindset? Do I always have the ability to really zoom in and see all the little details that make my life funnier or more colorful as Musketon’s illustrations? 

What is the definition of success?

Thierry Brunfaut is one of the co-founders of Base Design, an international network of studios that are based in Brussels, New York, Geneva, and Melbourne and are dedicated to strategy, branding and digital. 

Instead of choosing to present a showcase of his studios’ best works, Thierry chose to talk about the way in which you can create a successful studio culture. Coming from a background of being friends with the notion of control freak, long after work hours, eating in front of his keyboard, and defining the core of his company through stress, Thierry chose to start a major shift in himself and in his company in order to change the definition of success. 

Now, success for him doesn’t stand in the ability to have an opening at Moma, but in having a truly healthy company. 

For that, he changed the structure of the company. No more division between the management and the creative team. 

He took time to learn to say ‘No’ and to inspire others to be mindful of their boundaries as well.

He created team rituals. Every week has to start with a meeting in which every team member shares their challenge of the week. Every Wednesday, they met for a creative meeting in which the inclusion method was applied (1. What is my energy today? 2. What has happened since last week? 3. What are my expectations? 4. What will be my contribution?). 

Every Thursday they had lunch together and 2 people from the team were responsible for cooking for the rest of the stuff. And every Friday they had the opportunity to give the feedback of the week and revise the Monday’s challenge. 

He implemented the 4 day work week. 

And he held one-to-one interviews with each member of its team to find out their motivations:

1. The desire to learn everyday
2. The need of ownership over the projects they were involved in
3. The wish to have mixed teams between management and creatives
4. The necessity to have more autonomy in terms of timing

This made me think about my definition of success.

Thierry’s talk made me grateful for being part of the Switch family. I mean how similar are these internal rules? 4-days work week? Being empowered to take care of my boundaries and have a healthy work schedule? Having no clients/work-related talk meetings (Bacon hint for the insiders)? The transparency of the management team regarding every decision, even the financial ones? The no division feel between the design studio and the management one? 

All these goodies, and many more of these, have been a real help in my healing journey towards my relationship with my work and my self-esteem. A big cheer and thank you for that, Switch!

Who are those people in your life that you are grateful for?

Malika Favre, a France and Barcelona-based illustrator, is known for her deceptively simple style, which has graced the pages of publications such as The New Yorker and Vogue. Her art is instantly recognizable, with clean, powerful graphics and exquisite geometry.

Malika takes a unique approach to the design discourse at OFFF Barcelona 2022. Rather than presenting her artworks one after the other, she chose to immerse us into a journey of gratitude towards the people in her life that were key points in defining her career, “because whether you work with brands or individuals, you’re working with people,” she says.

From Nat, Fred, Alex, Paul, Françoise, or Henri, all of these names made me think about the people in my life that without their presence I wouldn’t be where I am today and to which I am deeply grateful.

Who are the people in your life which were iconic points in your career that you are grateful for? Making a call or sending a hug emoji on social media wouldn’t hurt in these hard times that we are going through as a society, right?

What do you do with all this data?

After 3 days of intense inspiration, I left OFFF Barcelona Festival with a lot of insights, revelations and questions. 

In other words: a lot of data. And one of many questions that I had while interacting with this experience is what should I do with all this data?

Refik Anadol was there at the right time for me to help me find at least one answer. Refik is a new media artist and designer. His artwork is based on data-driven machine learning algorithms that have the ability to create abstract environments. 

Refik takes a huge amount of information and transforms it into art. He has the ability to transform, for example, research with a lot of hard to read information into a beautiful artwork that can move and transport you into a dream-like world.

This is what I decided to do with my questions as well. 

Let them sink in me, and hopefully, in the future, will be able to breathe into their own life, just like Refik’s artwork that was presented at the closing party of the festival – Living Architecture: Casa Batlló.

The post A Collection of Question Marks from OFFF 2022 appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.

In less time that it takes to get your Wolt delivery, the Burger King identity that a lot of people grew up with went from this: 

To this: 

Smoother. Flatter. Less of that primary colour ‘tell us how you grew up in the 90s without saying you grew up in the 90s’ glow. Overall, a ? from us and our design team. This also, naturally, included their packaging: 

A month after Burger King rolled out their redesign, McDonald’s announced their new packaging rebrand: 

And, well, we have some thoughts. 

To rebrand or not to rebrand?

You own a brand. 

It’s a well-known brand. Customers know your logo. Your slogan has become part of public memory. Your colours are easily recognisable. 

Maybe you’re a massive corporation, like McDonald’s, where billboards globally glow red and yellow. Or maybe you’re smaller – an innocent, clean lines and white packaging, easy to pick out on supermarket shelves – or localised – eCabs, unfamiliar anywhere but in the streets of Malta. Regardless of what size of corporation your brand is, you have a logo and a colour story and a visual identity that, over time, becomes embedded into public awareness almost more than anything else you can do. 

A brand is a combination of everything that it stands for – its behaviour – and the way it expresses itself. So why rebrand? Why would a brand change its stripes?

The list of reasons is endless but usually it is one of, or a combination of, the following:

1. Reputational issues. The brand made some serious mistakes and is now repositioning itself, along with a total overhaul of its visual identity
2. A fundamental change. The brand stood for something and now stands for something else so it is addressing its visual identity to suit its new character and beliefs
3. It looked great a while ago. Like scented gel pens, low-rise jeans, and the candle salad, some things just go out of style and won’t come back until Apple makes them out of chrome. Time to get with the times and look like the brand belongs in this decade.
4. The times have changed. What made you unique at the start is now vaguely racist/misogynistic/bigoted/anachronistic/too-far-right or too-far-left/etc. When the last dinosaur in the boardroom bows out, the team rejoices and rebrands.
5. The marketing team needs to justify its presence. This is not a good reason to rebrand. PepsiCo, Google, we’re looking at you.

Rebrands aren’t a bad thing. 

Rebrands are (often) necessary. 

Like everything else in human history, sometimes we look back on something we’ve done already and think, ‘maybe let’s not do that again’. With corporations, the same rule applies. The only difference is making sure that you remain relevant enough to your old identity to keep your audience. 

The Case For Burger King

Burger King’s rebrand actually went back in time and revisited a logo they’d used primarily throughout the 1960s-1990s, before their 1999 blue, red, and yellow logo became their primary identifier. In 2015, Burger King packaging scaled down again to recall brown-bag lunches, and phased out the Mr. Clean white and primary colours for more down-to-earth and natural colours. 

Now, in 2021, their latest rebrand seems to be combining the best of both worlds: retro 70s whimsy and their late 2000s naturalism,creating a hybrid identity that manages to both stand out and blend in. See it on the side of a billboard or delivered in a flyer, and Burger King looks good, slick and nostalgic the way Netflix makes nostalgic (i.e. in high definition and with the gloss of the modern). 

It also looks appetising. This is important for a chain that primarily sells junk food. 

Out of the three colours Burger King’s identity originally had – red, yellow, and blue – only two made the cut. The introduction of a bright green helps to tie back to one of Burger King’s new, primary values: better food using fresh ingredients. Flame-grilled, maybe not good for you, but tasty and better than the fried alternative. 

Our conclusion: it’s pretty. It’s modern. It makes you hungry. It still looks like Burger King. 10/10 for the King. 

McDonald’s

McDonald’s didn’t touch their logo or their overall uniforms. What they did change was their packaging. 

Their last packaging update, in 2016, went hard on the bright white and day-glo colours. Boxer, their then design agency, kept the more traditional red and gold McDonald’s built their identity on, but worked in bolder colour choices: dark purple, sea-foam green, bright orange. The overall aesthetic flattened. The text grew bigger. 

Cue 2021. 

In with the simple, flat shapes, out with the random colours. The McDonald’s redesign isn’t as in-your-face as the Burger King redesign, but it does showcase the products in a way that makes it impossible to mistake one thing for another; more importantly, they look good enough to eat. It’s fun. It’s bright and childlike and colourful, even if it isn’t necessarily something that will stir the appetite. 

The problem with the McDonald’s redesign is this: there’s nothing to distinguish it as a McDonald’s product. 

Omit the text and the Golden Arches, and it could be any burger place, especially considering that the flat illustration trend has been slowly absorbing industries since 2006. While the same can be said for Burger King, their redesign tied in elements they’d previously used. 

Crucially, the rebrand fails a swap test. Swap out the McD logo for any other logo and there would be nothing to let an audience know that the packaging is McDonald’s packaging.  This is a fundamental flaw in identity and packaging design.

The main difference between the redesigns is this:

Burger King’s redesign keeps to their brand values. 

McDonald’s redesign seems to thwart theirs. 

Opinions

We asked our design team what they thought. 

Our Head of Design, Andrea: “Burger King’s redesign is interesting because it actually acknowledges that you are not the mass-market brand that McDonald’s is, but the counterpoint is that they can actually have more ‘fun’ with their brand. The organic type gives me the impression that their food is ‘closer to being handmade’ than any other fast food restaurant that goes for, or went for, the standard Helvetica. The groovy and happy-go-luckyness of the brand refresh is obvious, and all the type also gives the feeling that the letters are melting, maybe because the food is nice and hot?

Meanwhile, McDonald’s has succeeded in telling a very succinct story through their packaging. Having over 30k+ stores in multiple countries, language barriers generally require different packaging designs, and McDonald’s have managed to really depict the contents of the product through simple graphic elements, with no real need for text. I’m not sure if it was intentional, but showing a ‘box full of chips’ only when I’ve eaten all the chips makes me want to go get another serving.”

Conclusion

There’s a growing trend among company redesigns: no matter the brand values, the brand will ‘modernise’ its image. Usually, this means they turn to flat illustration. While it works for a handful of brands, and certainly it’s a beautiful style to use, having every brand turn to flat illustration creates the problem that brands become hard to distinguish from each other. 

With big corporations, a loss of identity isn’t a big risk. 

With smaller entities, it is.

The post Rebrand Showdown: Burger King v. McDonald’s appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.