§ 01 · The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
Nine trends. Hundreds of sites tracked. One rule that overrides all of them. The host has been watching where design money flows — and the patterns heading into 2026 are clearer than most designers expect.
Where the time goes.
00:00 – 00:18
01 · Introduction
Promise: nine trends spotted across hundreds of sites, patterns becoming clear.
00:18 – 02:06
02 · Trend 1: Barely There UI
AI-company minimalism spreading to all design: skinny sans-serifs, white space, data graphs, single-font palettes.
02:06 – 03:12
03 · Trend 2: Maximalism*
The counter-reaction that pulled back — big fonts, bright colors, visual chaos but restrained by AI minimalism dominance.
03:12 – 04:37
04 · Trend 3: Human Touch
Wabi-sabi design: hand-drawn elements, unpolished photos, paper textures, rough illustrations. Extreme variant: anti UX.
04:37 – 06:05
05 · Trend 4: Grade School Color Palettes
Neon fatigue drives shift to Crayola-era basics with interesting tints. Dominant color: warm orange with red lean.
06:05 – 06:52
06 · Trend 5: Spaceship Instruction Manual
Blueprint layouts with decorative lines, meaningless labels, lo-fi drawings, monospace fonts — strong for technical products.
06:52 – 08:29
07 · Trend 6: Democratized Fancy Animations
WebGL and 3D visuals now accessible via Spline, Unicorn Studio, Rive. Best use is storytelling, not decoration.
08:29 – 10:08
08 · Trend 7: Internet Nostalgia
Early-2000s web aesthetic driven by millennial decision-makers: custom cursors, blocky UI, ASCII art, old-computer experiences.
10:08 – 11:17
09 · Trend 8: The Tab That's Playing Music
Websites adding micro-interaction sound. Phones trained users to expect sonic feedback — it is spilling to web.
11:17 – 12:32
10 · Trend 9: Tech Bro Gradient
Purple/blue/teal soft gradients as the SaaS/AI startup uniform. Easy but becoming invisible — stand out by modifying combos or shapes.
12:32 – 13:00
11 · Conclusion
Reframe: the question is not which trend to jump on but what skills make every design decision serve the site and client.
Visual structure at a glance.
Named ideas worth stealing.
01:08
concept
The Fit Test
Before applying any trend, ask: does this fit the overall brand and goal of this website? Applied consistently across all nine trends.
Steal for Client discovery conversations or design rationale documents
00:18
list
Nine 2026 Web Design Trends
- Barely There UI
- Maximalism*
- Human Touch
- Grade School Color Palettes
- Spaceship Instruction Manual
- Democratized Fancy Animations
- Internet Nostalgia
- The Tab That's Playing Music
- Tech Bro Gradient
Named shortlist of visual patterns spotted across hundreds of sites heading into 2026.
Steal for Client trend briefings, design proposals, portfolio case studies
Lines you could clip.
07:54
"Just because you can do it doesn't mean you should."
08:10
"Our clients don't need award-winning websites. They just need sites that help their businesses."
12:32
"The question isn't what cool trend can I jump on, but what skills do I need to make sure that whatever I'm doing, I'm making decisions that serve the website or the client the best."
How they asked for the click.
12:32
next-video
"I've got a video that covers every skill that you need to be in the top 1% of web designers."
Soft pivot at the end — reframes the trend content as incomplete without skill-building, then points to another video. No hard sell. Effective because it logically follows the closing argument.
Word for word.
HOOK opening / re-engagementCTA the pitch
00:00HOOKIn this video, I'm breaking down the top nine web design trends of 2026. I've been tracking hundreds of websites and there are some real clear patterns that are starting to show up. So if you want your sites to stand out this next year, you're gonna wanna watch this one.
00:14HOOKAre you ready? Let's go. This first trend is happening because of where the money is flowing.
00:22Venture capital is pouring into AI companies, and every new startup wants to look like they belong in that club. So designers are naturally copying the big AI players, and companies like OpenAI and Perplexity, who are the big AI players,
00:36have gone hyper minimal. Everyone else is just kinda following suit, and I don't think money is going to be diverted from AI opportunities anytime soon.
00:45So this trend will definitely be extending into 2026 and probably get even more widely used as time goes on. I'm calling it the barely there UI. And with it, you're gonna see a lot of really skinny sans serifs, some stripped down layouts, and color palettes that are really dialed back.
01:02Now in some cases, there's a bit more going on with images and graphic elements, but it's still pretty reserved. One thing that they're definitely not afraid to display are graphs. They're putting graphs absolutely
01:16everywhere. If you wanna try out this first trend, you you gotta ask yourself, does this fit in to the overall brand of the business and the goal of the website? And that's really true for every trend that I'm gonna be talking about today.
01:28But if it fits, don't be afraid to dial back the amount of colors in a color palette, and and don't feel like you gotta have more than just one font family. That's all that you really need. And, of course, dial up the white space.
01:41I actually love this trend, and I love the fact that it's growing in popularity. I'm excited to see how it takes shape in this next year. By the way, make sure you like this video and subscribe.
01:50If you want a full layout of all the trends, the examples I'm using, as well as links to those sites, there's a link in the description to grab them. As we all know, in most creative fields, there's always a reaction to trends that are kinda like the antithesis
02:05of what's popular. So our next trend actually leans a bit in the opposite direction of the barely there UI trend. It's playful,
02:13super creative, and sometimes downright confusing. I'm calling it maximalism
02:19with an asterisk. And why the asterisk? Well, I thought maximalism
02:24would explode this year and even go on into 2026. I expected bigger brands to kinda loosen up, push some bold visuals, and maybe add a little chaos to their sites.
02:33But that didn't really happen, and it it looks like the AI hyper minimalism just kind of toned everything down. So maximalism is here. It's just pumped the brakes a bit.
02:42With this one, you're gonna see big bold fonts, bright colors, and in some extreme cases, way too many moving parts on any one web page. I think most folks are probably gonna dial it back a bit from that, but this is a trend I think that we'll continue to see in 2026. If you wanna try this one out, start with making your header fonts a bit bigger than you'd normally feel comfortable.
03:04Add a pop of color that stands out from the rest of the palette. Push the limits, but do it in the context of what serves the website and the brand the best. As AI continues to become a very real mainstay, this next trend is doing what it can to kind of push back against that.
03:19Have you heard of the Japanese aesthetic philosophy called wabi sabi? It's the idea that imperfections actually add beauty rather than take away. And you'll see it in their ceramics, their their gardens, and in other forms of art.
03:32And and the goal is to find a unique quality that makes that piece one in a million or altogether And this next year, web designers are gonna follow suit. They're gonna avoid anything that feels AI generated by adding a little bit of what I'm calling the human touch.
03:47And sometimes it's super subtle, maybe hand drawn arrows or or messy underlines under text. But it could also show up as photos that look unpolished or maybe shot on a phone. Textures that feel handmade like paper or ink.
04:01Illustrations that look like someone sketched them during a meeting. It's anything that signals, hey, a real person touched this. In some extreme cases, it looks like something I'm calling anti UX.
04:12Anti UX is another response to the obsession to make everything intuitive and perfect. Not everyone's gonna get that crazy. In fact, most websites just tend to kinda sprinkle in a bit of super creative, somewhat non intuitive elements, but it's definitely noticeable.
04:27If you wanna try this on your own site, add one or two imperfect handmade elements, a scribble, a rough icon, a little asymmetry. It shouldn't feel messy, just human.
04:37Now let's talk about some color trends on websites. At the end of twenty twenty four, neon was going crazy. In particular, there was one very bright extreme line that kept popping up again and again and again.
04:50I thought that was a trend that we'd see for a while, but it turns out that people get tired of really loud colors fairly quickly. Who knew? Not that these colors weren't done tastefully.
05:00A lot of them were super cool, but the Internet moves quick. We saw a bit of decline in neon palettes being used in 2025. So this year, folks are trading in neon green for colors that are a little bit back to basics.
05:12This is a trend that I'm calling the grade school color palettes. You'll see this trend play out in some nuance colors that kinda harken back to the days of Crayola coloring sheets. But even though they're basic, web designers are still getting creative with them.
05:25These aren't your kindergarten teacher's primary colors. No. They they have hues, tints, shades that give them an interesting flare to keep everything feeling new and fresh.
05:34One specific color that I'm seeing a lot of and we're probably going to continue to see in 2026 is this orange. And sometimes it's this basic orange, but sometimes it's got a bit of red mixed into it.
05:47But it's literally everywhere. Almost to the point that I actually almost gave it its very own place in the trends list. But to keep things simple, I'm I'm just including it in the grade school color palettes.
05:58So test out how you can play this out on your own sites. Don't be afraid to explore simpler, more grounded palettes. Basics are back.
06:05This next trend is one that I am seeing everywhere on the Internet and even in other design fields as well. It's a trend I'm calling the spaceship instruction manual.
06:15You got that blueprint style layout, lines pointing random elements, and tiny labels that don't actually mean anything, but they look important. Some designers are even replacing real images with lo fi drawings, almost like the product is taken apart so you can see the inside. And there's also a ton of monospace text or fonts that that mimic that instruction manual spaceship vibe.
06:37This look works great if your project is even slightly technical. If you wanna try it, don't overthink it. Add a few unnecessary lines, some monospace labels, and maybe a diagram style graphic.
06:48A little goes a long way, and you'll definitely see more of this in 2026. This next trend is something that was gatekept for a long time. You only used to see it on, like, really high end agency sites with a developer who lived and breathed JavaScript.
07:01But with the rise of some really cool tools, it's suddenly accessible to almost anyone with a laptop. I'm calling this one democratized
07:09fancy animations. Tools like Spline,
07:12Unicorn Studio, and Rive are are giving everyday designers the ability to add the kind of visuals that used to require a specialist. And as a result, I think we're gonna start seeing WebGL type stuff a lot more in 2026. If you're not familiar with WebGL,
07:27it's basically what lets websites display the kind of three d or interactive graphics that you'd normally see in video games. It's super powerful and now it's easier than ever to fake or recreate these with some new tools. You might see it pop up in in full blown immersive experiences where it feels like you're kind of walking through a video game rather than scrolling a website.
07:48But some of the best ways that I've seen it being used is to tell a story within the website.
07:55So the animations don't distract you, they actually add to what the site is trying to communicate. I've been adding Unicorn Studio and Spline Stuff to my own websites for a while, and honestly, it's a lot of fun. But here's the thing.
08:06Something you gotta know about this trend is just because you can do it doesn't mean you should. Think about how animations will fit in to add to the overall goal of your site. If they don't, then don't feel the pressure to do them just because it's trending.
08:22Our clients don't need award winning websites. They just need sites that help their businesses. And that might include animations
08:29and some of this cool WebGL stuff or it might not. Up next is a trend that I'm seeing show up just slightly right now. So it's it's not super mainstream just yet, but here's the thing.
08:39The trend is coming from folks who grew up in a season when the Internet was just being born, and all those people are starting to become decision makers in the industries that they work in. So this is a bit of a prediction, but it's one that I think we're gonna see more and more of over the next year, and it's a trend I'm calling Internet nostalgia.
08:58So Internet nostalgia plays out in website elements that look like they came straight out of the early two thousands. Very often I see this in custom cursors that do pretty cool things. This is one of those funny things about trends because just a few years ago people hated alternate cursor choices mainly because folks got really kinda carried away with them.
09:18Your mouse would turn into a unicorn head or or a rainbow. But now they're a lot more dialed back and way more tasteful. Less often I see it in UI tools that look straight out of a Microsoft Windows home screen.
09:29Everything's simple and very blocky because back in those days, modern CSS didn't exist and everything had to be designed in tables. Those were not fun days for web designers. You might see it in images made completely out of text characters or an experience that makes you feel like you're actually looking at a site on an old computer.
09:47Kinda cool. This design trend is fun, and it's gonna be fun to see how it plays out. And if you wanna try this, you don't have to rebuild your whole site.
09:54Just start small. Add one nostalgic moment, maybe a a fun cursor or a pixelated icon or a retro tool tip, if you will. Think of it like seasoning.
10:04A little sprinkle is gonna go a long way. This next one is a trend I was for sure that we were gonna stop seeing as much of. People have so much hate for this one, and and there's even a joke you've heard that directly speaks to this one.
10:18The joke goes like this. My brain is like an Internet browser. 19 tabs are open, three are frozen,
10:24and I have no clue where the music is coming from. I'm calling this one the tab that's playing music because yes, websites are adding sound more and more to their interactions. Sometimes it's full fledged songs, but more often it's little micro sounds, little interactive elements that click and beep in response to some interaction.
10:44And here's why I think this one isn't going away just yet. Our phones actually trained us to expect sonic feedback. If you tap on something on your phone and it doesn't make a little sound or vibrate, your brain goes, uh-oh, that that didn't work.
10:56Let me check this again. So that expectation is actually spilling into the web. We're starting to see more interactive sounds, not less.
11:02If you wanna try this on your own site, keep it tiny and tasteful. One soft click or hover tone is fun. A full soundtrack?
11:10Probably not the move. And better yet, let people choose if they hear the sounds rather than it being forced on them. This final trend is another color related one, but because I'm seeing it so often, it kinda warranted its own category.
11:22This is another callback to the tech space. Brands are trying to feel innovative and edgy, and they're adding splashes of these all over the place because it gives it kind of a future forward feeling. I'm calling this trend the tech bro gradient.
11:35And if you pay attention, you're gonna easily notice it everywhere. They typically show up on technology based or SaaS products, but I've seen those show up on all kinds of websites. These gradients are usually a soft mix of purples, blues, teals, sometimes a little neon glow, and they basically become the unofficial uniform of every SaaS company, AI startup, and developer tool trying to look like cutting edge software.
11:59This trend is likely sticking around and becoming even more prevalent in 2026 because it's easy and it looks good without having to try too hard. And, hey, I I don't judge. I love gradients and I actually use them on a lot of my own sites.
12:11But if you wanna stand out, you might need to find some unique ways to implement them. Maybe play with some of the color combos or even shapes. It doesn't have to be a sphere that fades in opacity towards the edges.
12:22CTABut be careful because no matter how cool the individual design looks, if it doesn't fit into the overall big picture of the website, it's gonna make the website worse, not better. So really, the question isn't what cool trend can I jump on, but what skills do I need to make sure that whatever I'm doing, I'm making decisions that serve the website or the client the best?
12:44CTAThankfully, I've got a video that covers every skill that you need to be in the top 1% of web designers and not just know what to do, but how to do it as well. So check out that video. Thanks for watching.
— full transcript
§ 05 · For Joe
Design trends are only correct when they fit the site.
WHAT TO LEARN
Every visual trend in 2026 has a legitimate use case and an equally legitimate reason to skip it — the decision hinges on brand fit and site goal, not what looks current.
- AI company aesthetics have made hyper-minimalism the new default starting point, which means every designer is now fighting to justify complexity rather than whitespace.
- The strongest signal of originality in 2026 is one deliberate human imperfection — a hand-drawn element, an unpolished photo — because AI-generated smoothness is now cheap and ubiquitous.
- Neon and loud color palettes peaked and collapsed within two years, a useful reminder that the internet fatigues visual trends faster than any other medium.
- WebGL animations and 3D visuals are now democratized tools, not differentiators — the differentiator is using them to tell a story rather than to perform technical capability.
- Sound on websites is growing, not shrinking, because mobile trained users to expect sonic feedback from interactions — designing without it may start to feel broken.
- The tech-bro gradient has become so ubiquitous that using it without modification signals a lack of intentionality rather than technical sophistication.
- The filter that survives every trend cycle is the same: does this serve the website and the person using it, or does it serve the designer's desire to look current?
