“What did you find most memorable about the world of web design in 2011?” That’s the question I posed to some of our industry’s shining stars last week. One word cropped up more than any other (can you guess?) and everyone had plenty to say. See for yourself after the jump, and let us know what rocked your boat in 2011!
The Contributors
A huge thanks to everyone who gave up their time in contributing to this article. We’ve collected commentary from Authors, Designers, Developers, UI & UX Architects, Speakers and Community Experts from all across the globe. Here they are, in no particular order.
Jump to any Section of this page quickly by following a link below:
- Steve Fisher Yellow Pencil
- Sarah Parmenter UI Designer
- Vitaly Friedman Smashing Magazine
- Paul Irish Google Chrome
- Harry Roberts CSS Wizardry
- Jonathan Snook Web Designer and Developer
- Janna Hagan .net Young designer of the Year
- Paul Boag Headscape
- Veerle Pieters Duoh!
- Aaron Weyenberg UX Lead, TED Conferences
- Eivind Uggedal mediaqueri.es
- Peter Gasston Top10
- Aarron Walter MailChimp
- Lea Verou Front-end Web Developer
Steve Fisher
Yellow Pencil
The web is not fixed width. Responsive design has helped us really understand that.
For me 2011 was the year where I feel like the web industry finally came to grips with its medium. The web is not fixed width. Responsive design has helped us really understand that. Not only that, it has helped our clients, the people we make these wonderful websites for, understand it. Abstracting our content, understanding its message, and informing our design decisions through that lens transforms how a website is created. I’ve never been more excited about web design as I have been this year.
Steve Fisher
web: hellofisher.com
twitter: @hellofisher
dribbble: hellofisher
Sarah Parmenter
UI Designer
I’m hoping responsive design isn’t so much a buzz word in 2012 but becomes entirely part of what we do.
The rise of responsive design and content strategy has been most memorable to me in 2011. It’s been a big year for both of these assets this year, and one that I’m entirely behind. I’m hoping responsive design isn’t so much a buzz word in 2012 but becomes entirely part of what we do, and that we see more people understanding why the content of our websites is important, and to stop designing with “Lorem Ipsum” text.
Sarah Parmenter
web: www.sazzy.co.uk
twitter: @sazzy
dribbble: sarah
Vitaly Friedman
Smashing Magazine
we are getting better at working on the core of what design actually means
Most memorable for me was the growing acceptance of Responsive Design in the community. The times have changed and this year we started to completely rethink and reconsider how we approach Web design and how we find solutions to the new challenges caused by the myriad of mobile devices.
I feel that right now we are getting better at working on the core of what design actually means: communication and problem-solving. And it’s exciting times to be a part of it. Seeing how responsive mindset is getting established in the various part of the Web design — be it audio/video, forms, navigation, ads etc. – is just intoxicating. I am sure that 2012 will bring us many new techniques that will benefit end users and improve the experience of Web users. And I am looking forward to those times! :)
Vitaly Friedman
web: smashingmagazine.com
twitter: @smashingmag
google+: vitaly
Paul Irish
Google Chrome
The ecosystem of tools has blown up in 2011
On a scale from blogs to webapps, there is a lot of grey area of how our best practices best apply to enhance the work. A clearer understanding of the inner-workings of browsers helps identify the best techniques, and thus creates the best possible user experience. Meanwhile, the ecosystem of tools has blown up in 2011: things like Sass & Compass, CodeKit, LiveReload, and ImageOptim are not only doing work for us, but can also solve browser support issues on our behalf. I’m eager to see what 2012 has in store to help create the most ideal authoring experience.
Paul Irish
web: paulirish.com
twitter: @paul_irish
google +: paulirish.com/+
Harry Roberts
CSS Wizardry
Pure CSS logos (yak!)
For most people, 2011 has been a year of responsive design, CSS experiments, pure CSS logos (yak!) and parallax scrolling.
For me, 2011 has been a year of powerful, pragmatic and performant front-ends. What some might see as the duller end of the spectrum I’ve been seeing as a more challenging, interesting and useful side of web development. As UIs get more complex, we need ways of keeping their code simple, as devices begin to vary, we need ways of keeping code performant. Whilst most people have been burying themselves in media queries and CSS3, I’ve been going back to the drawing board and working on modular, scalable, good ol’ normal CSS and front-end development.
Harry Roberts
web: csswizardry.com
twitter: @csswizardry
dribbble: csswizardry
Jonathan Snook
Web Designer and Developer
We used to have a very singular perspective: the 1024 pixel wide desktop.
What I’m finding most memorable is the shift in how we think about and build web sites. We used to have a very singular perspective: the 1024 pixel wide desktop. It has taken the explosion in mobile and tablet devices to force us to think about how we design and serve our content in better ways.
Jonathan Snook
web: snook.ca
twitter: @snookca
flickr: jonathansnooka
Janna Hagan
.net Young designer of the Year
It’s exciting to see the different directions this industry can take.
Most memorable for me during 2011 was the rise of responsive design with HTML5 and CSS3. It’s exciting to see the different directions this industry can take and how quickly technology can change within a year. This kind of change is inevitable and we must be able embrace it as creatives.
Janna Hagan
web: www.jannahagan.com
twitter: @_jannalynn
dribbble: _jannalynn
Paul Boag
Headscape
2011 has to be the year of mobile.
2011 has to be the year of mobile. We have seen a continued explosion in mobile web usage and the emergence of responsive design as a solution to the challenges this presents.
It is now possible to adapt any website to work better on mobile devices without excessive expenditure. Best of all, new builds can be constructed from the ground up to function across almost all devices (both present and future). This can be done at a fraction of the cost of previous solutions.
From my perspective this is a huge step forward.
Paul Boag
web: headscape.co.uk
twitter: @boagworld
podcast: boagworld.com/podcast
Veerle Pieters
Duoh!
2011 has changed my way of thinking when designing for the web.
Up to a certain point, 2011 has changed my way of thinking when designing for the web, because of the ever emerging mobile web. While designing I try to keep in mind that a mobile version of my design is possible. Depending on the type of site/project, and a few other parameters, it could go as far as creating a fully responsive design. When this is the case, my usual thinking path needs a lot of adaption, because I tend to forget boundaries and limitations for a bit when I’m in the middle of my creation process, because it has lead me to my most creative and successful designs.
Certain basic criteria are easy to keep in mind at all times, even in the middle of my process, but smaller obstacles are kept as a CSS challenge for me to try to solve later on. This way I also force myself to think more creatively during the coding process, and I try to push boundaries as well. With a fully responsive design, I need to keep more of these boundaries and limitations in the back of my head, and so it makes my typical way of designing that I’m so used to much harder. The challenge lays of course in finding the right balance between keeping some basic limitations at the back of my head, while still giving myself enough freedom to try to create a unique design. The fact that we also can add a level of animation in our designs is another factor that plays its role in this way different way of thinking.
Veerle Pieters
web: veerle.duoh.com
twitter: @vpieters
dribbble: veerlepieters
Aaron Weyenberg
UX Lead, TED Conferences
..you can’t avoid it..
Most memorable to me in the web design in 2011 was the rate at which responsive design is being adopted by the design and development community. Over the last year there have been more tools, plugins, resources, tutorials and conference talks on this approach to web design than any other topic I can think of.
I’m still not convinced on the long term practicalities of this technique, but you can’t avoid it — everyone should be competent enough in what it is and how it’s done to decide if it’s the right approach to any given project.
Aaron Weyenberg
web: aaronweyenberg.com
twitter: @aweyenberg
dribbble: aaronweyenberg
Eivind Uggedal
mediaqueri.es
More and more web designers choose fluid grids in favor of fixed grids.
The growth Responsive Web Design has seen during 2011 was something I never imagined when I launched mediaqueri.es in January.
Not only has the amount of sites that are suggested to me risen, but more and more web designers choose fluid grids in favor of fixed grids. We’ve also seen several high profile sites like The Botson Globe and Barack Obama being relaunched with responsive or adaptive designs.
eivind_uggedal
web: uggedal.com
twitter: @uggedal
github: uggedal
Peter Gasston
Top10
If you make your living from building the web you can’t fail to be heartened by this flourish of new life
I’d say that Microsoft’s announcement of IE10 was the biggest surprise of the year; not only did it come on the heels of the release of IE9, but the previews showed it to be fast, standards-compliant, yet still experimental in the right ways. And not only that, but it would be used as the basis of the Windows 8 tablet OS – a real mark of trust in open web technologies by Microsoft, and a sign that they aren’t ready to concede defeat. I firmly believe that strong competition around open standards is a great win for the user, so this was definitely the most memorable moment of 2011 for me.
I think it’s been a really exciting year for our industry; the explosion of web browsing away from the desktop, HTML5 beginning to prove itself as the best option for cross-platform development, the newly-resurgent Microsoft making good browsers again… if you make your living from building the web you can’t fail to be heartened by this flourish of new life. There’s been a great appetite for discovery of new browser features, with lots of demos being made using cutting-edge and experimental CSS, HTML and JavaScript, so the curious amongst us have had plenty to satisfy us.
Slightly less pleasing was that the combination of the web explosion and the appetite for new features has led to making some people impatient, and leading to cut corners: people stating that they’re not going to support legacy browsers on their websites, or making demos and examples that provide no fallback for non-supporting browsers (and are not maintained when those browsers do implement the relevant features). So here’s looking forward to making the web work well for everyone in 2012.
Peter Gasston
web: www.broken-links.com
twitter: @stopsatgreen
book: The Book of CSS3
Aarron Walter
MailChimp
2011 was a year of design.
2011 was a year of design. Google redesigned Gmail, Reader, Maps, Search and many other web properties, and for the first time it appeared that designers not engineers were shaping the direction of their interface. Facebook acquired a great deal of design talent, and gave an impressive preview of their new story-based profile pages at their F8 conference. No doubt their acquisition of Gowalla will influence the design direction they pursue in the new year.
And the loss of Steve Jobs in October has so many of us reflecting on the role of design in the world. It stirs our passions and inspires innovation. Design was on our mind a great deal in 2011, which has set the stage for some big things to come in 2012.
Aarron Walter
web: aarronwalter.com
twitter: @aarron
book: Designing for Emotion
Lea Verou
Front-end Web Developer
The best is yet to come.
During 2011 we saw many advances in our field. Responsive web design evolved from a cool extra touch to being a necessary part of every website, CSS gradients became popular and were pushed to their limits, CSS and JavaScript preprocessors gained traction as “the new workflow“, new layout techniques finally became somewhat viable, new APIs made things possible that used to need plugins or server-side code…
However, what I consider more memorable is not the individual technologies and techniques but the bigger picture. We’ve always had cool new toys to play with and make our work better. I think the last few years, especially 2011, will be remembered as the first time in history when browsers are fiercely competing for the attention of web developers, not against each other but towards the common goal of supporting open web standards.
If we tried to describe our times to the web designers of the past decades, they would have a hard time believing us. Let’s stop complaining for a moment and acknowledge how far we’ve come and how much better we have it now. Even better, the best is yet to come. Fasten your seatbelts, fellow webbies, because the train of progress is moving into high gear!
Lea Verou
web: lea.verou.me
twitter: @leaverou
github: LeaVeroue
Your Turn
So, what was most memorable for you in 2011? Let us know in the comments!
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Hopefully being featured on this blog…….on it’s way – honest! :o)
We truly have leaped forwards massively this year – from some awesome new advancements in CSS and browsers slowly coming to become more like on another to the great news that the ancient behemoths – IE6 and IE7 no longer have to be supported any more – this is great, as IE8 is an essentially usable browser, and as more people move away from Windows XP, we’ll see more people with IE9, which, whilst it’s not as good as them moving to another browser altogether – it’s a start – I’m actually quite fond of IE9 (!) and with IE10 supporting some features we’ve been wanting for a long time, we’re coming to the point where most browsers are very similar. The year has not been without ‘controversy’, however, with the removal of the in favour of – thankfully, this is resolved, but it certainly has been a rollercoaster of epic – my highlights are hardware acceleration and more recently, the ability to use getUserMedia to get the users webcam! No more flash needed. The exciting part about the web is that it’s always moving, and I expect 2012 to be just as good – if not, better.
I agree with the statement “The best is yet to come”. 2011 was the year of web design, but now focused on mobiles, tablets and a very large spectrum of platforms and devices.
Are you still thinking about a 960 grid as a standard? That’s old news, my friend.
The case of Boston Globe, an amazing and ambitious work by Filament Group, lead by the tenacious Ethan Marcotte show me the path. It’s the way it’s going to be.
Design focused primarily on the content, then thinking of the platforms that will be targeted.
The Verge show me another thing. San Francisco based web firm Code and Theory brings back the eye- candy feeling to web design working solely for the content. In this case, design gives this elegant atmosphere to the Josh Topolsky’s vision on tech news.
Thanks to pull this article. I admire and follow some of these great talents every day. Sorry for my lame english…
I wish you all the best for the new year!
D. from Argentina.
Great roundup from some of the big names in our industry. 2012 looks promising, now if only the economists and politicians can sort out the world’s faltering economy. *Sigh*
I think HTML5 and CSS3 was huge this year and will take over in the next few years. Flash is being tossed more often then not and usability is HUGE now.
I think for me, the most exciting thing to happen this year was the introduction of ‘Google Panda’. It has changed the way of thinking for everything SEO related.
Also, having two live news feeds on Facebook was very exciting in terms of deisgn!
I’m sensing a trend in responsive design…
2011 was the year of rethinking how I build and design sites in general.
Mobile first and responsive / flexible designs became my default along with doing half of my designing in the browser. That increased my design time significantly.
Much cleaner and interactive designs really began to stand out this year. Very liberal use of whitespace and engaging CTA’s. And thank goodness Flash is slowly on it’s way out.
For me 2011 is a good year for Web Techies, but for my homeland it’s the saddest year ever since it’s history. The typhoon that hit our city, last Friday, take many lives of the citizen living there… it is also the saddest Christmas and New Year of Cagayan de Oro City…
Webx Technology is complete custom webdesign, development and web promotion company We work on open source PHP MySQL, WordPress, Joomla, Ajax, JQuery, HTML5, CSS3 and advanced next generation technology We provide Search engine Optimization services and Social Media Services to our clients.
For me, 2011 was the year of the #hashtag.
what rocked my boat === hobolobo.net
The Year 2012 is coming 3D website. Coming Year we all see more effective any creativity with advance designing part.
Long Island Design
I can not disagree with the crowd here! While working on a project that needed both fluid layout and two fixed sidebars on the left and right, I found so many complications while resizing the browser. So, to solve that problem, I searched on the web and discovered responsive web design. It was just awesome, it was so easy and the results were fascinating with so many possibilities.
Also, I enjoyed using CSS3 more than ever this year! It has brought the use of images almost upto 80% in my websites, since I now need images only for photos and some exceptional cases. I’ve also been trying HTML5 for some time now and it’s proving to be fun. The possibilities and the scope of web has expanded a lot this year, that is the thing that makes me more happier. So many new things to explore, experiment and conquer! 2012 is really gonna be awesome!!
I have been sold on responsive design for quite a while now. It seems the contributors are similarly enamored.
ProtoFluid, my brand new web app, aims to make responsive design prototyping simple, cheap and easily shared.
http://protofluid.com
Thanks for gathering these opinions on the subject :)
Aaron Weyenberg said: I’m still not convinced on the long term practicalities of this technique [responsive design]. Fair enough but, personally, I don’t see how any other approach is practical. Unless I sipped way too much kool-aid, responsive design is the present and the future of web design.
nice article regarding web development services.
I’m still trying to figure out if “yak!” about pure CSS logos was intended to be a positive grunt, a negative grunt, or an animal…
I think we can safely assume it was negative :) There are no Yaks where Harry comes from..
I think UI, UX was huge in 2011. Look for it to become key in the next few years more and more!