2017 was the year web design got bolder. After several years of muted color palettes, restrained typography, and template-driven minimalism, designers began pushing back with louder, more expressive choices. Asymmetric layouts replaced predictable grids on many sites. Saturated colors returned. Typography became downright theatrical. At the same time, deeper technical shifts, particularly around conversational interfaces and progressive web apps, hinted at the more interactive web that was just around the corner.
Looking back, 2017 marked a transitional year between the clean minimalism of the mid-decade and the experimental design language that would dominate the late 2010s. Many of its hallmarks still feel surprisingly current.
Bring 2017-Era Sites Up to Date With AAMAX.CO
Sites built around 2017's bolder aesthetic often hold up visually but suffer from outdated performance, accessibility, and SEO foundations. AAMAX.CO provides modernization services that preserve a site's character while upgrading the underlying technology. Their website design team is skilled at evolving brands rather than reinventing them, keeping the visual equity intact while delivering the speed and accessibility today's users expect.
Bold and Expressive Typography
If one trend defined 2017, it was oversized, opinionated typography. Headlines stretched to fill entire screens. Variable weights, condensed serifs, and even hand-lettered display fonts appeared on commercial websites. Typography stopped being a vehicle for content and became content in its own right. The shift was made possible by the maturation of web font services and the willingness of designers to treat type as the dominant visual element of a page.
Asymmetric Layouts and Broken Grids
2017 was the year many designers grew tired of strict twelve-column grids and began experimenting with asymmetric layouts. Overlapping elements, off-center hero sections, and intentionally imbalanced compositions gave sites a more editorial, magazine-like quality. Done well, these layouts felt artistic and confident. Done poorly, they confused users. The trend pushed designers to think more carefully about visual hierarchy and reading order.
Vibrant Colors Make a Comeback
The pastel palettes and muted neutrals of 2014 to 2016 gave way to saturated, energetic colors in 2017. Brands embraced electric blues, hot pinks, and acid greens. Gradients returned with renewed enthusiasm, often combining two or three vibrant hues in dramatic transitions. Instagram's logo redesign in 2016 had foreshadowed the trend, and by 2017 it was everywhere.
Custom Illustrations and Hand-Drawn Elements
Generic stock photography lost favor in 2017 as brands sought more distinctive visual identities. Custom illustrations, often with a slightly playful or hand-drawn quality, became a popular alternative. These illustrations communicated personality and made brands feel more human. Investing in original artwork required more website development coordination, but the payoff in brand differentiation was substantial.
Conversational Interfaces and Chatbots
2017 saw the first widespread adoption of chatbots on commercial websites. Live chat widgets had existed for years, but advances in natural language processing made automated conversations more useful. Brands began experimenting with bots for lead qualification, customer support, and product recommendations. While early chatbots often disappointed, they planted the seeds for the more sophisticated AI-powered assistants that would emerge in subsequent years.
Progressive Web Apps Gain Momentum
Google had introduced the concept of progressive web apps in 2015, but 2017 was when major brands began launching them at scale. Twitter, Forbes, and others released PWAs that delivered app-like experiences directly through the browser. Offline support, push notifications, and home-screen installation blurred the line between websites and native apps, expanding what web design could deliver.
Animated Logos and Brand Marks
Static logos started giving way to animated versions in 2017, particularly on landing pages and during page loads. A subtle bounce, rotation, or color shift made brand marks feel more alive. The technique required careful implementation to avoid distraction, but when done well it added a layer of polish that static logos couldn't match.
Cinemagraphs and Subtle Motion
Cinemagraphs, those still images with one small element in motion, captured the imagination of designers in 2017. Steam rising from a coffee cup, hair gently moving in the wind, or water rippling in a glass added subtle motion to otherwise static hero images. These looped videos consumed less bandwidth than full background videos and felt more sophisticated than animated GIFs.
Micro-Animations Become More Sophisticated
Building on trends from 2015 and 2016, micro-animations grew more refined in 2017. Buttons, form fields, and navigation elements responded to user actions with carefully tuned animations. The best examples felt invisible, providing feedback without calling attention to themselves. The worst examples felt like decoration for decoration's sake.
Cards Evolve Into Modular Components
The card-based layouts that dominated 2015 and 2016 began evolving into more flexible modular component systems in 2017. Designers thought less in terms of pages and more in terms of reusable blocks that could be combined to assemble any layout. This component-driven approach laid the groundwork for the design systems that would become standard practice in the years that followed.
Voice Interfaces on the Horizon
Although voice search and voice interfaces wouldn't fully arrive until later, 2017 was when serious conversations about voice-first design began. Forward-thinking brands started optimizing content for natural language queries and exploring how their websites might integrate with smart speakers. Custom web application development teams began building APIs that could serve both visual and voice interfaces from the same content base.
What Endured From 2017
Several 2017 trends became permanent fixtures. Bold typography, custom illustrations, vibrant gradients, and chat-based customer interactions all remain common today. Asymmetric layouts have softened into more balanced, intentional compositions, but the willingness to break the strict grid lives on in modern design.
Final Thoughts
2017 was a year of confidence and experimentation in web design. Brands stopped playing it safe and started using their websites to express personality. Many of the era's bolder choices have since been refined and absorbed into mainstream best practices, while a few faded as quickly as they arrived. The lessons remain valuable for any team thinking about how to balance trend-chasing with timeless design.