Feeling somewhat nostalgic and somewhat obligated – I decided  to write a ‘best of’ blog’ post that honored some of the most important breakthroughs in design from this past year. The trouble is – there’s only one.

Sure, you could consider web fonts being the coolest trend of the year – right up until you realize that embedding fonts into your website has actually been around since IE 6. The resurgence of textures, the romance of typography – all great, but any worthy internet marketing company will tell you – not as significant.

Then there’s this trend of website design and print design really “clean”. Tons of white space and big friendly type – it’s like a magnifying glass for content. Less, really is more. After decades of waiting, our moment in graphic design has finally arrived. Clean web design is the coolest design trend in 2011.

Let me take you back, to the dark ages of website marketing – 2009 – so that you can appreciate why this is trend is so significant.

As a website designer, I was a little nervous when I first heard the phrase ‘content is king’. At first – it seemed a little ‘convenient’ for those search engine optimization types to take over of the web. I immediately envisioned websites becoming endless dribble – similar to those early years of Twitter. Remember when newbies would tweet the most mundane moments of their daily lives ‘I’m eating lunch”, or “I’m breathing with my mouth open”? Really miserable stuff.

But an astonishing thing happened because of the emphasis on content – brevity became fashionable. The impact of communicating a message in its simplest terms meant, more effective copy – and as a result – more effective design. That very trend is happening on Twitter too – brevity, or 140 characters – is cool.

Happy New Year – from your favorite web design company. Cheers.