Blog design trends in 2009
Goodbye Web 2.0?
The big-text-shiny-rounded-gradient “Web 2.0 designs” will start to fade in 2009 and seem a little dated. Here’s my predictions for blog design trends in 2009.
Back to the middle
Blogs have been sidelined a little with social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook and communication tools like Twitter. Many bloggers spend more time on other sites than on their own blog but as their online identities are spread out further and further, bloggers will re-center their online identity around their blog where they have complete freedom over the site structure, design, features and content. Blogs will be used to pull in social networking data like never before. Blog themes will powerfully integrate these in a meaningful and useful way - and as a permanent record all bundled together in one place.
Tweet, tweet!
With Twitter starting to really hit the mainstream, Twitter will be much more tightly integrated with blogs. See my post on Mashable with 10 ways this will impact blog design in 2009 - including Tweetbacks, Tweet Comments and more.
It’s black, it’s white
Simple, classy, black and white blogs with lots of white space are the new trend. Who needs color and clutter getting in the way when you have lots of large gorgeous photos on your blog to steal the limelight?
Made by me
The handmade and crafted look took off in 2008 and will continue to be popular this year. Look for more blog designs with handwriting, collages, paint strokes, doodles, sketches, paperclips, stitches and material.
Organic, local, sustainable and green
Even blogs will be going green and not just in color. See textures such as wood, dirt, hessian, earthy browns rise even more in popularity. Notice more fresh fruit and vegetables, insects and flowers. Designs will feature more original, ethnic and local elements rather than trying to appear completely global and vague in origin.
Stretching out
Bloggers will continue to redesign for wider screens to enable displaying larger photos and large widescreen videos. Bloggers will crop their images to be widescreen format, rather than the standard photo sizes - appreciating the wide screen look more. New default templates that come with blogging tools will also finally be wider.
Is that you, really?
Wordpress, Expression Engine, Drupal and other blogging/community tools will be used in ever increasing creative ways - to the extent that a casual visitor will be surprised to learn what the site is being run by and impressed at the ease of updating such seemingly complex sites.
your thoughts
Blog design trends in 2009 | cre8d design: blog designer
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Moah
Good predictions.
Honestly, I am very glad to see “big-text-shiny-rounded-gradient ” web 2.0 going out of style. It can’t go fast enough. I love the flat look you have here but I think we will be seeing even more minimalistic designs, like you said ‘black and white’.
One trend I could foresee is blogs using bigger fonts, similarly coming from the same source of people having wider screens and larger screens in general. But blogging platforms may just provide dynamic and platform-aware font sizes as default.
Another trend I have noticed is blogs having less columns. Wider single column looks are going to be more popular due to the rise in mobile browsing.
Regarding pulling in content from social networks and different media feeds, I hope we will be seeing that type of content cohesively integrated into blog content rather than sprawling out all over.
Lee Stacey
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head there.
I have a funny feeling that the blog will be more popular than ever too.
I think blogging will go back to its informal non ad supported roots too.
Zach Dunn
I’m more than happy to see the days of starburst graphics and “beta” sites fade away. If your predictions hold true, we’ll have a much classier internet in 2009!
Chris
@ Moah Good point about font sizes. Perhaps because the aging baby boomers prefer the larger fonts?
I like the white space. Lends itself to such easy navigation. And the organic textures? Sign me up!
tim
You’ve got some great predictions. I hope you are a prophet. At the very least, people should take what you’ve written here into consideration. I like how you have modeled some of these ideas into your own blog.
I agree that we’re moving to more white space and simpler functionality. A lot of that can be linked to what Apple does. Seems they are a bit of a trendsetting organization when it comes to design.
I also believe that 2009 is the year for Twitter. It’s going to go crazy here. Thousands of people joining everyday. But I don’t think the pressure is on the user. It’s on Twitter itself. Will the Twitter folk be able to construct the right infrastructure to maintain the phenomenal growth it’s about to see?
We’ll see.
Roz
I like what you’re suggesting. I’d love it if you would do a quick non-functional example of what a blog designed according to these trends might look like. Idea-stimulating eye candy — that’s what we want!
Anne Wayman
I’m not exactly sure what “big-text-shiny-rounded-gradient ” but if this blog is an example of what’s next, I like it… now, is it time to change my blog? Not sure I can stand it this week, maybe next.
Anne Wayman, now blogging at http://www.aboutfreelancewriting.com
Rachel
Roz - let me hunt out some examples.
Anne - thank you, glad you like my newly redesigned blog!
yamgnos
Moving simple functions and white space, i agree with this. Simple can attract many other person who are not good at IT but they like to talk.
David MacGregor
Thanks for your post. Sounds like a drift back to basic design principles, rather than the stylized genre we have become familiar with.
David Hutchison
Perhaps a blending of twitter-like posting and larger images. i.e. Photoblogs with twitter(ish) length captions and no other post content.
links for 2009-01-08
[...] Blog design trends in 2009 | cre8d design: blog designer An interesting read; good to see that the author agrees with me that all the 'loose sheep' (twitter, facebook, brightkite, friendfeed, et al) will begin to coalesce and come home to the blog, which will return to being the main point of contact and web presence. Tip of the dusty Akubra to Darren Rowse for his tweet to this (@problogger) (tags: web2.0 twitter design facebook blogging blog trends contact 2009 presence) [...]
isayusay max
The organic trend is good since photos with people will touch on the privacy issue.
Rachel
isayusay, I’m not sure what you mean?
The future trends in blog design « The Hip And The Square
[...] such, the above preamble is the necessary text required to accompany this great article I stumbled across by Rachel Cunliffe at cr8d design who runs a number of award-winning blogs in New [...]
Ivan Storck
I love that you mention Organic, Sustainable and Green as a design trend. I am admittedly a little bit biased, because I own a green web hosting company. I would encourage customers interested in these trends to walk the talk and support other businesses in the green economy. We are also a great WordPress host.
Freddy
I recently just changed the look of mine. I’ve been going to different sites about 2009 trends for inspiration. Those are some good predictions. The widescreen format is something I should play with.