From small businesses to sprawling online stores—having and maintaining a website isn’t just a bonus, it’s a necessity. In today’s digital age, each and every company needs to have a website in order to attract customers, recruit new hires, and offer information on their products and services. It’s no surprise then that the skilled professionals who create these sites are in high demand. In fact, according to Service Canada, the outlook for web designers is good.
Web designers use their in-depth knowledge of programs like Photoshop, Illustrator, and Dreamweaver to create fresh and cutting-edge sites. But that’s not all they learn during their training. Web design also involves knowledge of creative elements like composition, typography, and colour theory, as well as a keen understanding of new trends shaping the industry.
As you begin your adult education programs, you’ll develop each of these skills and more so that you can make a smooth transition to this in-demand career. Want to get a head start on some of your training? Here’s a look at some of the top interactive media trends web design students are paying attention to.
What is Interactive Design? What Adult Learners in Web Design Training Need to Know
Before we jump into the trends affecting interactive web design, it’s important to know what interactive design is in the first place. As you’ll soon discover in your adult education program, websites are all about creating a top user experience. That’s why interactive design—which is all about interacting with and engaging users—is an important part of creating a user-friendly website. Finding new and fresh ways to engage with users helps draw new views to the websites you create, and can even help some of your website’s content go viral.
1. Webgraphics: An Important New Content Tool for Pros with Web Design Training
If you’re interested in attending web design college, then you might already know that infographics have become a popular way for websites to share a lot of information in easy-to-read packages. These infographics have become a popular option for websites, because they’re easy to share on social media, creating even more buzz about a company’s website.
While infographics are still going strong, many web developers have begun adding a new twist to this old staple by making infographics interactive. Interactive infographics allow users to click on links to external sources, zoom in or out to get a different perspective on the content, view animations, and engage with the information their learning.
These new interactive infographics are called “webgraphics” and might one day be an important part of your career in web design.
2. Microinteractions: A Small Trend with a Big Impact
When it comes to web design trends, there are few that are currently more popular than microinteractions. Everything from the sound of your phone alarm to skipping a song on a playlist is a microinteraction. These tiny interactions get their name because they’re often small details like the ability to “like” a comment or log in to your favourite website. But while microinteractions are tiny, their effect on web design is anything but small.
That’s because together, each of these microinteractions help to enhance a user’s experience. If a user can easily engage with your website through intuitive and small microinteractions, they’ll likely stay on your website longer, or mention it to a friend.
3. Parallax scrolling: A Web Design College Graduate’s Tool For Engaging Viewers
As you might soon learn in your web designer courses, there are many different approaches to creating the layout of a website. You might, for example, decide to have a big hero image at the beginning of your site, which can draw a viewer’s attention quickly. Or you might opt for a card display, which helps you convey many different ideas or stories all at once.
One new approach that you might use throughout your career is the “long scroll” which, like the name suggests, is when a website is composed of just one long page that users can scroll through. To help make these pages feel more immersive, some web designers are opting for parallax scrolling. What this means is that as a viewer scrolls through your webpage, the background will scroll at a slightly slower pace than the foreground. This helps create the illusion of depth, and gives users a chance to feel as if they are interacting with their website in a whole new way.
Want to start your web design training?
Visit Academy of Learning College to learn more about our program or to speak with an advisor.