Helibo

From something I read a while ago, “Shiny and Glossy elements are now officially outdated!”, I see it now as a fact. However as a designer myself, I must admit I still do create these shiny and glossy elements, but one way you could look at it, is that this old web 2.0 (Shiny and Glossy) trend, has become a smoking addiction to many players of Adobe Photoshop.

In event to this, I took action only weeks ago where I made my final glossy design. Many people commented that it was nice, but those comments were only from other designers of this shiny and glossy web 2.0 trend. In result, I asked some of my old clients what they thought of it, amongst other designs that I had done to this style, and they’re comments were negative.

I didn’t ask why, I already knew the answer. The answer, is that the clients I did ask were corporate companies, meaning professionalism and usability was the key to there type of websites. So web 2.0 is not the way to go, for any professional sort.

But as we progress in time, I believe this current web 2.0 trend will be discarded sooner than you think.

I’m here to show you why we should bring back, the lost Grunge Design style that once was a huge hit for the web. If you didn’t know this already, then today you’ve learnt something new. Grunge Design was once, a massive trend for the global community of webdesign. And now, we have fulfilled ourselves as designers, with this crap…

Many websites today following the web 2.0 design trend, consist of multi-level bars in the background, and content in between each level. Where the heck has creativity been driven to?

Now let’s see something what should be the new web 3.0, or whatever else you want to call it to float your boat.

Grunge Design at its best..

Websites are meant to be clean, usable and functional. However, getting it dirty with grunge doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s not going to be clean, usable or functional. Take a look at Bart-Jan Verhoef’s blog presented below. Even though a number of elements in the design are not uniform, such as hand-drawn doodles and dirty marks, it doesn’t feel dirty or unpractical.

The use of photography, or watercolor in grunge design wouldn’t be considered as dirty, but instead subtle. Take Viget Inspire and Sundance for example.

The use of watercolor is considered as subtle, not dirty or overcrowded grunge design.

Photography is a great way of creating a subtle environment, everyone likes a bit of scenery!

Now in Fresh Brain, we have a combination of grunge, and hand-drawn elements. Which I would have to consider as a very good design, however there are elements on here which are not very pratical at all. Take the Help button for example, it’s very hard to find which decreases functionality. But that may be due to the use of grunge, making it more overcrowded.

Top Right of the website for the help button if you haven’t found it already.

So there we go, from here you should be able to determine how to create an accessible grunge design, and I hope the web will continue to grow on this style from now on.