One of the challenges you may experience in the marketplace today is how to keep your brand image current and fresh. Current design trends are bursting with energy and are more dynamic and expressive than ever before. Incorporating some of them may be just what a brand needs to refresh its image and bring it up to date.
Current Trends in Graphic Design
Knowing all the latest graphic design trends doesn’t mean you should use them blindly. They shouldn’t dictate to you but give you inspiration to experiment. All the different design trends have their own characteristics and style elements. Decide which ones you should use to reflect your brand personality and appeal to your target audience.
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Bubble Writing Revival
Bubble text has been slowly coming back, especially in combination with 3D animation. The bubble-like typography brings a playful personality to designs. Social media graphics and posters can create more of a connection with the use of playful bubble text. For smaller businesses, a lot of a brand’s identity may lie in its story, and bubble text can lend itself to storytelling. It offers some light-hearted fun and an escape from dreary monotony. Brands with a fun and carefree personality can use bubble text to make messages pop and capture a fun-filled approach to life.
Ultra-Vibrant Colors
Unexpected color clashes, neon hues, and hyper-saturated colors are replacing muted color palettes. Fluorescent blues, greens, oranges, and yellows are making a vivid impression and can tell a powerful visual brand story. A graphic designer can create eye-catching marketing materials and packaging using bold and bright colors.
Websites for music or clothing brands are making great use of hyper-realistic 3D designs. They combine life-like elements with vibrant hues, daring typography, and abstract shapes.
Bento Box Layouts
Traditional Japanese Bento Boxes inspire Bento Box layouts. Arranging boxes of various sizes to present information and graphics creates a visually engaging and cohesive layout. The grids provide a structure that helps to unify information in bite-sized portions that are neat and easy to digest. This presentation style is one of the valuable ways to re-organize a cluttered website in a website redesign process.
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Utilitarian Design
Utilitarian design is one of the graphic design trends that focuses on functionality and takes usefulness into account above other elements. It involves removing any unnecessary elements from a composition to simplify the user experience. Everything has a use and purpose rather than just being created just for aesthetic value. Graphic designers find innovative ways to incorporate utilitarian design elements, such as user-friendly navigation and search, into their projects.
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Quirky Serif Fonts
A swing away from the elegant serif fonts of the past to using sans-serif fonts has been a tendency for many brands. Sans-serif is being seen among more modern graphic design trends. It even became a meme that brands were giving in to this trend and losing their identity.
Now, some brands are ditching mundane sans-serif fonts and using quirky serif fonts instead to add character to their designs and dominate the branding sphere. They are experimenting with how far they can push the boundaries while still maintaining legibility. You should always use this graphic design trend wisely, as you should never sacrifice clarity and legibility.
Maximalism
Maximalism is a graphic design trend that rebels against the minimalistic design that has been so popular for a while now. It rejects all the rules about keeping design simple and paring it down. Layered images, vibrant color combinations, and bold typography attract immediate attention. By juxtaposing textures, images, and patterns, compositions are deep and encourage viewers to want to explore.
All these elements work together to create a visual feast that can evoke strong emotional reactions. A maximalist composition can work well for event posters, fashion design brands, and music albums. In a crowded marketplace, maximalism provides a way to create a distinctive identity that comes across as confident and bold.
Mascots and Cartoons
The graphic design trends for using mascots and cartoons can make your brand seem less impersonal and more human. A brand using an expressive logo mascot is more relatable. This trend is ideal for educational materials and kids’ brands. It is also popular in social media marketing. The food and beverage industry is also making good use of the mascot and cartoon trend. People identify immediately with this type of representation of their brand in the form of colorful characters they can relate to easily.
Hand-Lettered Logotypes
Hand-lettered logotypes offer an authenticity that can be difficult to achieve using standard fonts. They can reflect your brand’s personality and overall aesthetic per graphic design trends. This adds a personal touch and makes your brand more memorable. Artisanal industries that need a human touch can use this trend well. It creates a sense of warmth and connection that will resonate with an audience. Hand-lettered elements are a reminder that design can be spontaneous and free rather than rigid and tight.
’70s-Inspired Elements
With all the talk about AI, another graphic design trend takes a nostalgic look back at the 70s. Graphic elements from the era include retro stripes, faded colors, and floral or funky patterns. Designers would create their own fonts and imagery with freely developed letter design styles. The decade was primarily associated with disco but also saw a developing punk rock music scene. This translated into edgy fonts with smudged inks and collages of letters and small graphics.
Artists like Elton John and David Bowie inspired bright colors and character or persona-driven graphic design.
Geometry
Geometric shapes of all colors and sizes are appearing in branding, on websites, and in packaging for a bold, modern look. These shapes enhance the hierarchy of a design but also leave space for creativity.
For a project that needs an advanced modern look, floating 3D shapes such as spheres, cylinders, or squares can work very well. Geometric shapes can create eye-catching visuals and showcase facts in an easy-to-understand way.
The brand logo for the Olympic Games reflects this trend.
Microsoft’s four-paneled window is another well-known example of the use of shapes in a logo.
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The Future of Graphic Design
Understanding graphic design trends and emerging ideas is critical due to the dynamic nature of the field. Using cutting-edge technology like artificial intelligence (AI) is changing classic notions of graphic design. AI can help to recommend design choices that align with a brand’s personality and values by analyzing market trends and user preferences. With the use of AI tools it’s possible to improve advertising and its graphic design, to make it more original. It can also examine the use of various brand elements over time to offer a more data-driven approach. Designers can receive valuable feedback that enables them to make informed decisions.
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AI can analyze demographics, user behavior, and preferences. This gives graphic designers access to valuable insights and inspiration. They can create personalized designs to appeal to target audiences and make a connection with them.
Graphic designers can use AI tools as collaborators in the design process to streamline designs and meet the needs of specific clients.
A creative wave of visionary design lies ahead as designers explore new concepts and push their creative boundaries. This opens up a new level of visual communication that doesn’t even require words to get a message across.
AI tools are speeding up designers’ workflows. Automating repetitive tasks frees up more time for the creative process. Projects that would usually have taken weeks are significantly shorter with the use of AI tools.
- As mobile device use proliferates, the demand for responsive design keeps growing. Designers will have to create visuals that can seamlessly adapt to varying platforms and devices. AI can help to optimize layouts and ensure that designs are visually appealing across devices and platforms.
- Websites are likely to become increasingly responsive and user-friendly. They will take user behavior and preferences into account to offer more customized user experiences. For example, the website interface may dynamically adjust the layout or color scheme based on a visitor’s preferences. This makes the user experience (UI) more immersive and fulfilling.
- Businesses increasingly need to communicate complex information in easy-to-understand ways. Data visualization skills allow designers to create infographics and other content that serves this purpose.
- Trends in web application design are making web app designs more usable and interactive. Web apps like Dropbox, Zoom, and Gmail focus on making the user experience (UX) dynamic, intuitive, and visually appealing. For example, the use of animated elements can make modern web apps more fun to interact with.
- Virtual reality (VR) is likely to play a larger role in graphic design in the future. It is already starting to reshape how people interact with digital environments.
- With the use of AI, designers can make designs more accessible. For instance, AI can analyze color palettes and make suggestions for color combinations with sufficient contrast for individuals with reading difficulties.
- With the rise of accessible AI, humans inevitably want to experience authenticity and the human touch more than ever. They want handcrafted designs and graphics made by real people. Many brands are going for professionally handmade illustrations.
Outsourcing has many advantages, such as giving brands access to top-tier professionals with a diverse range of skills and expertise.
The increasing use of outsourced graphic design today helps brands meet their demands in an efficient and budget-friendly way. Graphic design can meet all of a brand’s graphic design needs, from website illustration to ad creation. Brands are even outsourcing UI/UX design and product design.
Duck Design: Graphic Design Keeping Pace with the Times!
It’s crucial to fully understand the importance of graphic design in overall business success:
- You need designs that visually represent your brand’s personality and values. Every element, from the color palette to the typography, should work together to create a cohesive impression and a strong connection with potential customers.
- The professionalism of the designs will help to establish credibility and trust in consumers. It will ensure your brand message is understood and help to increase brand loyalty.
- Your designs will play a crucial role in your brand marketing efforts, enhancing your reach and effectiveness. A digital design that you can adapt for different marketing channels is essential. It means your brand presence across all the channels is cohesive.
Duck Design can help you stay current with graphic design trends. Its outsourced graphic designers have a wide variety of talents and skills. Their distinct designs will help consumers form a favorable first impression of your brand and continue to impress them throughout their journey with it.
Conclusion
Information about design trends can help you ensure your brand image inspires your customers and creates trust and brand loyalty. Your designs need to change as trends change if you want your brand to remain relevant and have a strong visual identity. Your brand design should help you attract customers and maintain a competitive edge in your industry.
