Over the coming year the typographic car-crash style of design pioneered by RayGun magazine in the 90’s will make a bit of a comeback in response to the crushing tedium of web 2.0 design tropes. Seriously, look through the sites on commandshift3 (web design Hot Or Not). I spent a good 10 minutes clicking and was pretty much unable to judge one from the next in most cases. Part of the probelm is obviously that a web site’s success, design wise, is determined largely by functional considerations (usability, accesiblity, legibility) rather than purely aesthetic ones. But still the degree of similarity was quite astonishing, all the sites tend to look totally professional and utterly uninspiring. Gradient fills, rounded corners and Helvetica, your time is up. Except maybe not Helvetica.

Also I’d like to see the end of all those superflous JS driven transitions. But I suspect that’s only going to get worse for at least the next couple of years. I don’t mind the small ones so much, but I hate the revealing of huge chunks of hidden content and functionality.