Design is the art of effectively communicating with people in a visual language via the use of image, space and type. But like every other visual media, it tends to follow industry trends and what might have been in fashion last year could be on it’s way out this year. So with the changing of year here’s what you should watch out for.

FLAT DESIGN

Flat design has been gaining steam since Apple’s iOS 7 update and is going to be king for 2015. Every other point on this list has been influenced by the industry’s adoption of this aesthetic.

Flat design takes it’s inspiration from several art styles including minimalism, the Bauhaus movement of the early 20th century and Swiss styles. Likewise material design is Google’s solution but it’s not just a simple style change, it’s also creatively thinking about design interfaces and interaction.

RESPONSIVE DESIGN

Responsive design is not new design in market. Designers have been using the responsive designs for the past 3 years but expect it to continue to gain momentum. With the increasing demand of smart phone devices, tablets and this year’s emerging wearable markets responsive design is also going to be even bigger in 2015.

CLEAN SIMPLE LAYOUTS

Gone are the days of complex web layouts. Web developers are far more interested in clean simple layouts that are extremely intuitive or, the best website is the one with a single button that does everything you want it to do in a single click. Expect print to follow this same trend in advertisement and magazine layouts. This is obviously a byproduct of flat design and a reversal to the 3D effects generated in the previous decade.

FULL SCREEN BACKGROUND IMAGES / VIDEOS

Full screen video and image backgrounds are in vogue and all the rage these days. In the past, old browsers couldn’t support the large background videos and images without lengthy load times but in today’s climate the latest web browsers can easily play everything seamlessly by using standardized protocols like HTML 5. In some ways, this is a bit a return to form of the early 2000’s obsessive use of Flash pages but regulating it to the background rather than splashing it front and center.

EMPHASIS ON TYPOGRAPHY

Many designers are also focusing on typography in 2015. You could always tell a good designer from a mediocre one by seeing their use of typography; so it’s nice that far more designers are spending their time to really explore the use of them. Expect far more clean and functional sans-serif fonts this year which is another byproduct of flat design being key in 2015. Web designers are also embracing the use of embedding fonts onto a websites outside of the standard web-safe fonts.

A FINAL WORD ON DESIGN

One of the keys to great design is that it’s surprising. You always want it to be intuitive to your audience and just because the trends are moving towards clean, simple and almost minimalistic designs it doesn’t mean you should stop experimenting with other schools of design thought.