The web design trends for 2019 are deliberate asymmetry, high-contrast colors and color gradients with unconventional proportions. Human illustrations are also in vogue. The whole thing is accompanied by the "mobile first" principle. This means that the web design is first geared towards smartphones and tablets and only in the second step towards the desktop view.

Web design trends 2019 do not come about by chance. Rather, they are developing in response to the constantly changing preferences and needs of your website visitors. In 2016, the web design trends have embraced the "screen medium" with very practical elements such as flat design, e.g. Google's Material Design or even Apple Design Resources and the user-friendliness of cell phone operation have rightly come to the fore.

In 2017, we saw the first web design concepts with bright colors and shapes that were intended to have a more emotional and dynamic character overall. In 2018, web design trends were then dominated by slanted, colorful gradients and flat design with targeted drop shadows. Today, I would like to take a look into the future and present the 10 most promising web design trends for 2019.

Web design trend #1: Strong color gradients

High-contrast color gradients will continue to have their raison d'être in 2019 and will certainly continue to grow. Gradients are now very advanced and are developing into more harmonious color palettes and a more subtle use than perhaps in their first version under Microsoft Office. On the Gradient Hunt platform, for example, you can create your perfect color gradient and download it as a PNG.

Gradients have been adapted and implemented by some of the biggest companies for some time now. Think of the Instagram logo from 2016 or Apple Music. Colorful gradients give illustrations and graphics on your WordPress website more dynamism and thus emotionality, which in turn are excellent sellers. There are now also entire CSS libraries that provide ready-made gradients for your WordPress website and are economical in terms of resources.

Web design trend #2: People

Perhaps 2019 will finally be the year we say goodbye to generically photographed, often cheesy stock photos of inauthentic-looking token office workers. The latest design trend of illustrating people uses exaggerated proportions and rather atypical human color schemes to create wonderfully unrealistic figures in the form of exciting illustrations. Regardless of whether the look is more cartoonish or cubist, creative interpretations of human figures are likely to continue to grow across the web in 2019.

Web design trend #3: Abstract geometry

Colorful 3D shapes, spots, building block sculptures and the like are now one of the predominant web design trends in 2019 and make you feel like you're back in kindergarten or art class. Web designers and agencies are now only too happy to stack and overlay geometric shapes in a playful, abstract way to create eye-catching websites.

This web design trend will spark the imagination of your visitors and increase the positive association with your WordPress website. Including more creativity and openness, especially for the digital economy such as agencies, designers and freelancers who earn their daily bread online.

Web design trend #4: Dynamic patterns

Although backgrounds with recurring patterns were very popular in the early days of the internet, they fell victim to flat design and increasingly minimalist layouts. However, smaller and colorful patterns are making a strong comeback. Both as dynamic graphics in the background of a WordPress website and as additional illustrations in entire graphics.

You can always find great examples at Dribbble.com. The platform is my personal first choice for getting inspiration and regularly dealing with the latest web design trends.

Web design trend #5: Isometric designs

With realistic perspectives and proportions, the isometric representation of your products or services proves to be an absolute eye-catcher on your WordPress website. These miniature scenes are an excellent way to create storytelling and build a sense of community.

The 3D models are a welcome change from the popular flat design and minimalist graphics that most websites make use of. 3D models express attention to detail while remaining abstract enough to be suitable for almost any type of branding or story.

Web design trend #6: Grid layouts

Gridded layouts and graphics reached their final acceptance in web design in 2018. In 2019, we will see even more grid layouts that play with the overlapping of individual areas in one place or another. If this looks chaotic to you, this is correct at first glance, but ultimately this is exactly the aim of this design. The rather atypical grid layout ensures that you spend more time with the content. Ergo, longer attention span and therefore longer time spent on your WordPress website.

Although various elements are not arranged symmetrically, the appearance is often anything but unaesthetic. Grid layouts combine brutalist tendencies, known as "web brutalism", with the familiar web design trend of minimalism. The shapes often harmonize very well with different page elements. They give a flat design more depth, for example, but also leave more room for the all-important white space.

Web design trend #7: Modern collages

Magazine and newspaper collages may be a thing of the past, but multimedia collages are becoming increasingly popular online. Abstract collages are elements from many other current web design trends such as geometric shapes, illustrations and color gradients and are more than just the sum of wildly thrown together graphics. They are a promising way to combine different elements and significantly increase the attention of your visitors.

You'll also set yourself apart from the masses if you've kept up with the current web design trends of recent years. Personally, it took me some time to get used to this mostly "wildly thrown together bunch". In the meantime, such collages have become a nice change in the web design uniformity that ready-made web construction kits like Jimdo or WIX unfortunately too often bring with them.

Web design trend #8: Mobile first

The term "Mobile First" is used to describe the overall concept for web design and the conception of website design. The mobile first concept envisages that a view optimized for smartphones and tablets is developed first and then successive additions are made. The mobile first strategy thus follows the trend that more and more visitors are surfing your WordPress website with a smartphone or tablet and not mainly with a desktop computer or laptop as in the past.

In the meantime, Google has also significantly increased the importance of mobile first since the world's leading search engine provider made "mobile friendliness" an important ranking factor in 2016 and later even made the "mobile index" the primary index(!). Instead of the desktop version, the mobile version of your website is now primarily crawled by the Google bot.

This means that the mobile first concept can have a massive impact, both positive and negative, on your search engine optimization, which you should definitely consider when redesigning your website. Newer elements such as voice search, i.e. search via voice input, and website speed, i.e. the performance of your website, are becoming increasingly important regardless of current web design trends. You should therefore consider these aspects when optimizing your web design in 2019.

Web design trend #9: Web brutalism

The brutalism style or "web brutalism" is a web design trend that has been around for several years now and, contrary to all assumptions, continues to gain supporters. As the name suggests, it is a particularly expansive form of design elements that are usually displayed in stark contrast to other elements on the WordPress website. An illustrative example would be the complementary contrast, which actually ensures that certain color combinations, such as blue-orange or red-green, harmonize perfectly with each other.

Brutal design, on the other hand, deliberately merges the least suitable color combinations and elements to create exactly this kind of "brutal design". There are now also larger start-ups and companies that are jumping on this 2019 web design trend to stand out from the broad mass of repetitive web designs. Even entire platforms, via well-known and not-so-well-known websites, are now easy to find on Google. Personally, I still can't quite get to grips with this form of web design, but I'm curious to see how important this design direction will become in the future.

Web design trend #10: Website speed

As briefly mentioned above, trends come and go year after year, whether in fashion or web design. In my opinion, this is a good thing, because it means our business never really gets boring! The performance of your WordPress website is a different story. It is now one of the most important ranking factors for Google - the search engine with the largest market share worldwide.

Google now openly communicates how important it is for your WordPress website to be displayed quickly in order to be listed high in the SERPs (search results pages). Accordingly, web design is only one of the necessary factors. In order not to go beyond the scope of the really big topic of website speed optimization and the pagespeed tests necessary for optimization, I recommend our 35+ page performance e-book with all our experiences as WordPress hosting specialist no. 1 as well as our WordPress hosting comparison with over 250 test results from real websites.

What do you think are the web design trends for 2019? I look forward to your feedback and other exciting ideas.