Back in August 2008 I pondered what the future held for web design. We are just entering 2009, so what does this year hold for web design?

Here are some expert views on the year ahead in web design!

Smiley Cat has a great set of predictions. Including thoughts on; hand drawn websites (I don’t like them personally), mobile web design (very important!), social media, javascript libraries, online video, interaction design.

Here is an excerpt from the SmileyCat article:

In 2009 it won’t be enough to simply create a web site for a client. Web designers will need to implement a farther reaching strategy that includes the main social media web sites. For example, creating Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter pages for a customer or product.

A 14minute podcast (free to download) from Jim Degerstrom talks about web design trends for seo, content management systems, DIY web design, multimedia content, and the page width standard for 2009. Worth a listen whilst your working.

I’ve seen a few comments on the odd forum post as well but there aren’t many other comprehensive predictions for 2009 (sitepoint and others don’t have any!?). The few comments there are just cover the usual; web designers embracing SEO/SEM etc.

This blog is all about how web design affects success. So of all the predictions I am most excited about Interaction Design and also further embracing Online Video which users seem to love. Let 2009 unveil itself….

Image credit: mulad

One thing I can’t do is create good logos. They just never seem look professional and I’m never happy with the whole concept of the logos I come up with. However they are massively important!

A logo represents a big part of your whole website or ‘business brand’. Ideally they should remain with your business forever, with slight tweaks now and then.

Customers build up a relationship with your brand image. It allows the customer to instantly recognise you in adverts or new product launches. I still believe the majority of webmasters don’t spend enough time thinking about their brand – it is your identity so spend time on it!

So what are the best global brands at the moment? Interbrand has put together the best global brands of 2008. The list is of 100 companies and lists their country of origin, sector and brand value.

When working on your web design remember it is important to also think about your brand!

For more great posts about website identity and branding your business you can subscribe for free to our instant updates.

The web moves incredibly fast, the rise of websites like Facebook showcases just how fast! But what about web design, is that moving forward? Are we able to design better websites now than we were 5 years ago?

Web design software has got better, and more people ‘getting into’ computers, the internet and online business means more clever brains to come up with better design ideas. Many more webmasters also understand about effective coding. So in that sense web design has certainly got better and we are able to design better websites, look across the major websites – they are much nicer now than they were 5 years ago!

However, there has never been any great revolution of massive changes like there has elsewhere on the web. The biggest thing I’ve noticed is everyone going on about shifting from HTML to CSS, fair enough it  does have some great benefits, but it isn’t a big change, especially not visually.

Where I See The Big Changes Coming
Funnily enough I see the big changes in terms of web design are going to come as a result of the search engines (isn’t everything already?!). If they are getting better at reading flash then it will get used much more often, which visually is a very good thing. The fight between SEO’s and designers could be no more!

In January this year google also filed a patent for recognizing text in images, this would surely lead to more usage of images and changing the ways in which we edit and create images. So if Google can interpret flash and images very well the amount of text will drop but webmasters will still be able to get their message across, just in a nicer looking way!

What do you think the future of web design holds?