When Hamburger Menus first made their debut, their reception within the design community was mixed at best. Fast forward a few years, and these simple stack of lines now dot the internet landscape.

During this time, hamburger icon menus have evolved to reach a new level of refinement, especially in the area of animation. In addition to CSS3, SVG and canvas are also being enlisted heavily to create intricate, fluid transitions that heighten the entire user experience. Audio is also more commonplace and acceptable, providing an additional cue for when the user interacts with the menu.

The layout of hamburger menus have also greatly expanded in terms of complexity, increasingly being used to house more than just a site’s menu, but additional content arranged in complex layouts.

In this post I’ll show you 5 amazing hamburger icon menu trends we can expect more of in 2018 and beyond.

1. More than just Menu Links

I’m seeing an increasing number of hamburger menus being used to display additional information such as contact info, social media icons, etc besides the primary menu. This makes sense, as not only does it better utilize any unused menu space, it makes things like the site’s email and address easily accessible above the fold:

2. Tabs And Content Rows within Menu

Hamburger Menus when revealed typically display a full page menu. With so much real estate to work with, especially on the desktop, it makes sense to display more than just a single column of links. To that end a lot of hamburger menus now show multiple rows of content, or content arranged by tabs:

3. Audio Cues Inside Menu

The inclusion of audio as a navigation aid will always be controversial, but when done tastefully, it can help set your site apart from the pack. It’s perhaps with that mentality that I see more hamburger menus adding sound to the mix. Here is one such hamburger menu:

4. Fluid, Elastic Menu Animations using SVG

Animations in web design provide more than just mere eye candy, but contribute to the entire user experience of the site, whether positively or negatively. The trend when it comes to hamburger menu animations these days is fluid and elastic animation using SVG or the canvas element, which creates a more seamless, captivating experience:

5. Animating Background Menu

And finally, with a full screen menu, you’re often confronted with a lot of empty background area to style. More sites are choosing to utilize an eye catching animated background or even video to do the job. Here’s an animated background that will make you feel like you’re in the clouds when the menu is open:

Conclusion

The modern day hamburger menu is unpredictable- some fill up the whole page, others a portion of it when opened. Some contain just the primary site menu, while others surprise us with a wealth of secondary information. When it comes to the hanburger icon itself, the same unpredictable path is seen, with many an icon deviating from the standard 3 evenly stacked lines.

I predict the above 5 delightful trends for Hamburger Icon Menus to stay with us for some time. They represent the next iteration of hamburger menus that are sleeker, more versatile, and user friendly.

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