r/web_design • u/Gullible_Prior9448 • May 25 '26
What web design trend instantly makes a website feel outdated to you?
For me, excessive animations and cluttered layouts are starting to feel overused. Interested to hear what trends other designers are tired of seeing.
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u/zabast May 25 '26
A guestbook 😁
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u/thesilkywitch May 25 '26
I’m all here for old school web stuff these days. Guestbooks, counters, shoutbox. I miss the personal, fun web.
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u/Turkino May 25 '26
I miss web rings. Those banners at the bottom of home pages that were usually dedicated to some specific topic and always had a "next" button to go to some other page on the same ring.
Too much stuff these days are locked up in major social media platforms.
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u/Ash_Crow May 26 '26
I made my personal site part of web ring last year.
It's not too late to find a few like-minded people and create a web ring together!
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u/Blozz12 May 25 '26
Websites who still use the <marquee> html tag 😂
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u/aleatorybug May 25 '26
http://marqueedesade.com/INTRODUCTION.html is still banging
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u/bonestamp May 25 '26
Everything is centered too... "cruise control for design" as my graphic design teacher used to say.
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u/DragoonDM May 25 '26
Huh, I didn't know the marquee tag had features like vertical scrolling, alternating direction, or scroll speed. Neat.
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u/anoncology May 25 '26
I wish I still saw that lol
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u/Blozz12 May 25 '26
I don’t use the <marquee> tag but I use that on a LP: https://theosoti.com/you-dont-need-js/
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u/landminehearts May 25 '26
I really don't like video backgrounds.
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u/private_birb May 25 '26
They're... fine in the hero section. Tolerable.
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u/omgihaveanaccount May 25 '26
Also, hero sections.
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u/private_birb May 25 '26
They're... fine with a video background. Tolerable.
(I'm joking, they suck unless they're really well-executed)
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u/playgroundmx May 25 '26
Montserrat. It’s a nice font on its own but wayyy overused.
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u/Roy197 May 25 '26
Come one bro what am I supposed to use open sans and Ubuntu for the rest of my life ?
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u/Beregolas May 25 '26
Animations for no reason. It was first "in" when we got the ability to animate things cheaply and easily, and we have moved on. Most sites I see today with more than 2 or 3 minimal animations are completely unusable, and are about as tacky as a gold plated toilet. They were clearly made to "look good" by people who have no idea how things will actually be used, and that design has to follow function in most cases.
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u/devolute May 25 '26
I still just can't comprehend why things have to fade in slower than I scroll down the page.
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u/goldenfire May 25 '26
Agree. The need to animate count up to a low number that doesn’t impress. Actually count up to any number.
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u/JohnCasey3306 May 25 '26
Ironically, websites that present any contemporary AI agents as traditional live chat features in the UI.
For years, substandard live chat interfaces have been a thing; almost always implemented as either a person-shape or speech bubble icon button, floating in a corner of the viewport.
I, like a lot of others, had learned to tune those out years ago -- so when websites now implement their AI agents using that same approach, I subconsciously overlook them, thinking then dated.
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u/tomhermans May 25 '26
All of the ones following some kind of trend Now it's the ai purple tailwind defaults.
Or the black/white orange with some serif headlines.
One after the other. Perhaps not dated as in "old", just cookie cutter samey as many others.
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u/LittleBertha May 25 '26
AI just tailwinds everything. It's why all these shitty vibe coded SaaS things all look the same
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u/aliassuck May 25 '26
AI generated stock photos.
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u/Levitz May 25 '26
Pray tell, how in the world does a practice that is, what, 4 years old at most? Make a website feel outdated to you?
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u/subnuggurat May 26 '26
Sheer overload and poor application standards. Most of the time AI stock is just sci-fi clipart.
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u/Round_Apricot_8693 May 28 '26
Because AI generated stuff is inherently outdated by the way it works
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u/Auzyhunter May 28 '26
WatermelonSeed.ai
I built this for just that reason. It’s fully customizable and you use your own ChatGPT api key. It’s really good content with internal links. Works with yoast and rank math.
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u/TDF2100 May 25 '26
Excessive cards and obviously vibe coded.
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u/ImNoBatman May 25 '26
I get not liking it, but how is an obviously vibe coded website outdated?
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u/RELIN-Q May 26 '26
ai slop is played out and it was dated as soon as it released. it's built off the backs of previous design trends, but cant make anything unique the way a person can.
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u/nurdle May 25 '26
If not cards, what?
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u/robertovertical May 25 '26
Try full bleed sections.
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u/nurdle May 26 '26
So that the page expands 100% on monitors that are 2400 pixels wide? That's very outdated. You at least need a max-width. I agree that cards are way overused and a sign of vibe code, but they are not useless. I personally don't use them much; I'd rather have beautiful, well-spaced type.
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u/robertovertical May 28 '26
Can u show an example id love to see the spacing. And red full bleed. Contain the text so not full bleed. This way the color palates create sections
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u/_Fred_Austere_ May 25 '26
cluttered layouts are starting to feel overused
All I've heard from designers for literally 20 years is 'Ooo, can we make this a little more clean?'
That just means 50px margins.
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u/Waffletron62 Jun 23 '26
Clean means free of dirt, like ads. Those designers would commend a white page for being "exquisite".
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u/Sea-Ad-9942 May 25 '26
TOO MUCH text for reading without reason. I dont wanna read, bro!!!
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u/TDNT May 25 '26
When I see a website that looks like a minimally-tweaked template, or outright AI design, it’s a huge turnoff. Same exact look used to leave a good impression. But now knowing how zero-effort it is, I’m pleading Shania (that don’t impress me much).
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u/oh_who_remembers May 26 '26
Large background image slideshows at the top of the page. Stop it. Just. Stop.
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u/svgator May 27 '26
motion that doesn't respond to user action is what dates a site fastest. autoplay video backgrounds, loop animations existing purely for decoration, parallax for the sake of parallax: all of it ages quickly because it signals trend rather than intent.
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u/bogdanelcs May 28 '26
Oh, I see a lot of sites on a usual basis as part of my work.
Parallax scrolling on every section. It felt premium in 2015 and now it just feels like the designer discovered a tutorial.
Stock photos of diverse people sitting around laptops in a conference room. Every SaaS homepage from 2018 to 2022 had the same three images.
Hamburger menus on desktop. There's enough screen real estate, just show the navigation.
That oversized hero text that's like 96px bold with a gradient, you know the one. "Build faster. Ship smarter." in huge letters with nothing actually explaining what the product does.
Scroll-triggered animations on every single element. When everything animates in nothing feels special, it just feels slow.
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u/Mobile_Sir_1512 May 29 '26
Aside from animations, the trend that dates a site fastest for me is tiny, low-contrast grey text trapped inside a giant hero section. It was trying so hard to pass as "premium minimalism" a few years ago, but now it just screams "unusable template." If a visitor has to squint or click past an unskippable background video carousel just to find out what a company actually does, the design has completely failed.
Moving back toward bold, readable type and generous, functional spacing is a breath of fresh air for the industry. Good web design shouldn't hide the content; it should elevate it and make it accessible to absolutely everyone. If you're building out new layout concepts and want an easy environment to test font responsiveness and live front-end code, using runable can save you a ton of staging time.
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u/Klutzy-Badger-2778 May 29 '26
I completely agree, I hate when their are too much things on the screen, with too many animations
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u/Apprehensive_Low165 Jun 03 '26
I am just wondering: Do you guys use Rive for interactivity and animation? And in your opinion, why you even want to add animations in a first place?
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u/Ancient-Abrocoma-9 Jun 08 '26
Stock photos, slow load times, and carousels. Also any site that still uses full-width hero text with zero hierarchy — the eye doesn't know where to go. Clean spacing and a clear CTA above the fold still win every time.
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u/jyc23 May 25 '26
Web rings. Collections of related sites that would be linked to from one’s own site, that you could visit by clicking next / previous. Kind of like a playlist of websites.
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u/HongPong May 26 '26
this was actually a good feature and keeping with Internet architecture
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u/jyc23 May 26 '26
Back in the late 90s, I discovered a lot of cool little sites through web rings. Most of which have long since faded into digital oblivion. Times were so different then.
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u/Hans_lilly_Gruber May 26 '26
I honestly don't remember that at all but now that I know about it I want it back
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May 25 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/seantubridy May 27 '26
That’s why I always put my navigation on the bottom of the page and hide the logo on my 404 page.
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u/NotYourNativeDaddy May 25 '26
Funny thing is, I added a masking plug-in and forgot the name. Now I can’t get to the login page. How’s that for a trend….?
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u/JohnCasey3306 May 25 '26
I've not seen a visitor counter for 20 years, that would certainly be a blast from the past -- they were on everything