This is a submission for the 2025 New Year Writing challenge: Predicting 2025. This article was initially posted on Substack before I learned about the New Year prediction challenge.
What can we expect in 2025 as web developers and designers?
Which new trends can inspire us and improve our daily work?
Visual Trends vs. Customer Requirements
Although we are often bound by corporate design and conservative expectations, trend spotting can be fun and inspiring if we don't take it too seriously. My subjective outlook features colors, technology, and legislation relevant to web design and web development in 2025.
2025 Web Design Trends and Colors
I spotted several new ”colors of the year 2025,” especially in the interior/home decoration market, like the pale dark purple ”Future Dusk” (#4F5277).
Future Dusk and Rebeccapurple
Rebeccapurple (#663399) was added to the HTML and CSS web color palette ten years ago. In 2024, the web design community voted for a new CSS logo in rebeccapurple to honor Rebecca Meyer and the ideal of ”the ability just to connect to each other and help each other as a fundamental aspect of the web.” (Eric Meyer)
Purple has been part of recommended color palettes for some years now. ”Very peri” was Pantone's color of 2022. Lavender was also featured in their recent trending color palettes.
Mocha Mousse, Boring Beige, and Organic Colors
Pantone's color of 2025 is called ”Mocha Mousse” (Pantone 17-1230, #A47864). Influencers used food and fashion to show possible combinations, mixing green, brown, and purple shades to create a savory and organic look. Critics mocked Mocha Mousse as ”mocha mouse” or as yet another variation of "sad beige” (”Peach Fuzz, one shade darker, then slapped on the mocha branding to make it seem luxe”). Despite the earthy and gloomy color prediction, we can also expect shades of orange, green, aqua, and yellow in alternative ”colors of the year 2025” palettes.
We can also see different font styles used to visualize what 2025 might bring design-wise. Some claim to know already, ”diving deep into over 50 different typography trends that are shaping the design world right now.” I'll leave that to my designer friends and show just a small screenshot as a teaser for creative artwork that might shape our upcoming websites.
Clarity, Legibility, Yellow and Aqua Colors
Trying to merge color and font predictions, I wonder about the bright yellow used in at least two prediction post images and the fonts used in the Mocha Mousse captions. Maybe yellow, aqua, and purple will outshine mocha, beige, and brown.
Accessibility, clarity, and legibility will trend in 2025 and beyond, as will AI assistants and low-code software for non-tech-savvy customers.
Pros and Cons of AI-Assisted Web Services
Vendor lock-in, false claims, copyright issues, and increasing ownership costs are among the downsides of the convenience promised by all the shiny new services.
Stand out as Creative Human Beings
Using open-source software and standard technology to build websites has never been easier, and despite advanced automation, designing and building individual websites and apps will become more important to stand out as creative human beings with a purpose in times when humans are constantly challenged to prove they are ”not a robot.”
We must control our content and business strategies instead of relying on generated content and third-party tools, many of which will turn out to offer low quality for a costly price only when it's too late.
Virtual Assistants and AI Image Generation
This is an illustration created by DALL·E 3, the image generation AI currently used by chatGPT to show a slightly androgynous person in a preppy library fashion style working on a laptop computer ready to consume a mocha mousse dessert garnished with sprigs of lavender.
The caption has been written and added afterward without any AI assistance: ”Predictions for 2025: web design trends and colors, hype vs. customer requirements, islands architecture, accessibility act, AI for inclusive climate action”.
More thoughts and examples about what's wrong with generative AI and how to find ways to use it anyway in 2025 can be found in my recent blog post Imperfect Sketches vs. High Gloss Images
2025 Legislation and Software Trends
While the EU's Data Act will provide a binding direction for future laws from September 2025, the European Accessibility Act (EAA) will finally force businesses and website owners to comply with strict accessibility standards in 2025.
European Accessibility Act, German BFSG
Accessibility (a11y) and accessible web design and development will receive a noteworthy boost in 2025 when the European Accessibility Act (EAA) will take effect in Germany, which is still a significant market area, as Barrierefreiheitsstärkungsgesetz (BFSG) by June 28, 2025.
Islands Architecture against Rebound Effects
The recent 2024 State of JavaScript survey results show many competing software solutions, their rebound or "boomerang" curve of rising popularity in an initial hype phase and their decline towards rejection and obsoletion.
Source: StateOfJS 2024: Libraries: Changes Over Time
Astro is a trending software framework popular for its Island Architecture open to integrating multiple other tech stacks like React and Vue, so there is hope for more choice and collaboration instead of fighting against each other's technological preferences.
Global Tech Trends Beyond Web Development
AI will continue to buzz, as it did since ChatGPT, Gemini, Codepilot, DALL·E, and Midjourney introduced new ways to use technology. Hopefully, users and developers will eventually fix AI's biases and hallucinations and reduce its wasteful energy consumption.
AI for Inclusive Climate Action
Impact Hub Berlin released a more global view of tech trends beyond the web dev bubble towards the end of 2024. Their hopeful headline: AI for inclusive climate action.
What are Your Wishes?
It should be clear that some of my predictions are more likely, while others might better be part of a personal wishlist.
Beyond my predictions for 2025, as a web developer, I wish for more stability and fewer breaking changes in software development, more open source and sustainability, and more web performance (loading time, efficiency, and usability) and accessibility.
What are your wishes, predictions, and intentions for 2025?
Further Reading
New Front-End Features For Designers In 2025 by Cosima Mielke for Smashing Magazine
Top comments (3)
This is it for me too. Things are volatile enough. Breaking changes from library vendors are the last things you want to try coping with.
AI tools sound helpful, but they’re still too unpredictable for serious projects
boring 90s earth tones and 90s climate hoax propaganda are back xD