The emphasis on designer collaboration has arisen in part from the massiveness of the web and mobile apps we’re building these days. Better collaboration between designers, and between designers and developersĪs design has taken a greater and more influential role in shaping businesses, more and more attention has been paid to designers’ collaboration with both their fellow designers, and their developer colleagues. We expect to see this conversation continue across 2017, but look forward to it becoming a productive dialogue that never loses sight of the heart of our design work: the content. Many designers feel that the flat design trend has taken the “soul” out of design. Of course, as Newton’s third law states, for every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction. That’s one reason for the shift away from skeuomorphic design toward “flatter,” more minimalist design approaches, as seen in Google’s Material aesthetic, and really, across the web and our various devices. Designers worldwide have realized that people visit websites for their content - whether it’s raging tweetstorms, thoughtful long-reads, or the latest “user-generated” meme - and that design’s ultimate role is to present content in an intuitive, efficient, and “delightful” way. Design has shifted from a late-in-the-process “optimization” stage where designers swooped in to sprinkle on some “pretty” like mystical fairy dust to a real competitive advantage.Īnd a fascinating element of that evolution has been the shift back toward a focus on content: the meat on the bones of the web.

The last few years have seen a sea change in how people view design’s role in business.

Layouts that let content shine The arrangement of design elements within a given structure should allow the reader to easily focus on the message, without slowing down the speed of his reading ‍Sergie Magdalin, Chief Design Officer at Webflow 1.

Best tools for web designers 2016