I review theoretical expectations for the probable appearance of galaxies during their formation phase, placing particular emphasis on the uncertainties in these ideas. Recent models suggest that formation may occur relatively recently, but that young galaxies are less spectacular than previously supposed. They may be analogous to recently discovered high red - shift radio galaxies, and indeed they may have been observed directly in faint galaxy counts. I summarise several other lines of evidence which suggest that galaxy formation may have been a recent process. Finally I give preliminary results from a detailed analytic study of the observable properties of young galaxies in a Cold Dark Matter universe. Predictions are given for faint galaxy counts and redshift distributions, and for the galaxy luminosity function.