8 Exciting Website Design Trends for 2027

1. Typography Is Becoming the Design

One of the clearest changes is the growing use of enormous, expressive typography.

Instead of beginning with the traditional photograph-plus-headline hero, designers are allowing a handful of words to dominate the screen. Type can change weight, stretch, move or respond as the visitor scrolls.

This is sometimes called kinetic typography, but the important idea is simpler: the words themselves become a major visual element. Designers are using motion and unusual typographic treatments to direct attention to important messages.

For an association, business or nonprofit, this doesn’t mean every headline needs to fly across the screen. A restrained version might simply use a large mission statement—”Ending Hunger in Our City”—rather than filling the opening screen with another generic photograph.

2. The Perfect Grid Is Starting to Break

Bento-style layouts—pages composed of differently sized rectangular content blocks—have become extremely common. They work because they allow organizations to present several kinds of information while still establishing a clear hierarchy.

But an interesting countertrend is appearing: designers are deliberately breaking the grid.

Images overlap. Headlines extend beyond their containers. Sections are slightly asymmetrical. Some sites borrow from editorial design, posters or even the roughness of early websites.

The objective isn’t to make a website confusing. It is to make it feel less like it came from the same template as everyone else’s.

That can be especially useful for organizations with strong personalities. A contemporary art museum might embrace an unconventional layout. A financial institution probably shouldn’t.

3. Scrolling Is Becoming Part of the Story

Scrolling used to mean moving down a document. Increasingly, scrolling actually does something.

A diagram assembles itself. Numbers count upward. A photograph changes as a visitor moves through a story. A timeline advances from 1980 to 2027. A product gradually reveals its components.

Webflow highlights the Dropbox Dash/McLaren F1 experience, which even connects a speedometer to the visitor’s scrolling behavior, as an unusually literal example. Other sites use much subtler scroll-triggered effects to guide people through a process or story.

Imagine a conservation organization showing 30 years of forest loss and restoration as the visitor moves down the page. Instead of explaining the change in six paragraphs, the website lets the visitor experience the change visually.

That’s where this trend becomes more than decoration.

4. Websites Are Looking More Human

One of the more surprising reactions to AI-generated design is a renewed interest in things that don’t look digitally perfect. Hand-drawn illustrations, imperfect lines, grain, collage, scanned textures, vintage artwork and unusual photography are appearing alongside extremely sophisticated interfaces.

Webflow describes this as a convergence of art and advanced UI, pointing to examples such as Pencil.dev’s use of ASCII artwork and Rootly’s presentation of software interfaces against an impressionistic landscape.

The contradiction is appealing: advanced technology presented through obviously human visual language. For organizations accustomed to polished stock photography, this can create an immediate sense of personality.

5. Color Is Coming Back

The safe corporate website of the last decade often followed a simple formula: white background, dark text and one brand accent color. Designers are increasingly treating the entire brand palette as a working system.

Background colors change between sections. Illustrations introduce secondary colors. Interactive elements respond with different colors. Even conservative layouts can suddenly feel much richer without becoming difficult to use.

The lesson isn’t “make everything colorful.” It is that a brand with six carefully selected colors doesn’t necessarily need to build a website using only one of them.

6. Less Copy May Become a Design Statement

AI can now produce unlimited website copy. Ironically, that makes editing increasingly noticeable. Some contemporary sites are doing away with the traditional wall of explanatory text and using extremely short headlines, concise descriptions and strong visual hierarchy.

A homepage might say: “Find a Mentor” or “Build Your Career” rather than spending 150 words explaining the organization’s mentorship program before presenting the visitor with a button.

Webflow identifies this move toward radical brevity as another emerging design direction: when generating more words is nearly effortless, restraint can communicate confidence and clarity.

7. Designing for Humans—and Machines

One of the biggest changes heading toward 2027 may be largely invisible. Websites increasingly have two audiences: people and machines.

A human visitor needs hierarchy, navigation, imagery and clear calls to action. Search engines and AI systems benefit from meaningful page structure, descriptive headings, structured data, accessible markup and content whose meaning can be readily understood.

That means the beautiful 2027 website cannot simply look innovative. Its underlying content needs to be exceptionally well organized.

8. The Bigger Trend: Stop Looking Like Everyone Else

Perhaps the most interesting trend isn’t bento grids, kinetic type, animation or bold color.

It is distinctiveness.

AI and increasingly sophisticated website-building tools are making competent design easier to produce. The predictable result is an enormous number of competent websites that look remarkably similar.

That changes the challenge for organizations.

The question heading into 2027 isn’t simply, “Does our website look modern?” It is: “Could someone look at our website for five seconds and know it belongs to us?”

That is a much higher standard—and ultimately a more useful one.

At New Target, we help organizations answer that question by combining brand strategy, UX, website design and development rather than treating website design as a cosmetic exercise. The goal isn’t to chase every new visual trend. It is to identify the techniques that improve the experience, express the organization’s personality and help users accomplish what they came to the site to do. Contact us; we can help.