Metallic Finishing
A design trend that really interests me at the moment is metallic embellishments. I realise that this has been around for a long time, so whilst not exactly contemporary, it is still used often in design. I find that it is most successful when used in moderation, as using it sparingly can push design into luxury, but too much metallic finishing can seem gaudy and ingenuine. I particuarly enjoy its use in packaging design, or book cover design. Metallic finishing in packaging design is also shown to more effectively draw customers eyes, thus making it not only aesthetically pleasing, but also scientifically a better choice when selling products.
https://www.packagingstrategies.com/articles/94095-how-metallic-decoration-enhances-packaging-design. The example below and to the left is a book of mine that I have owned for a very long time, which uses embossing and metal foiling. I think it’s incredibly effective, and this design alone has pushed me into using metallic finishing on my own book cover designs.
Monochrome/Duotone
A more modern design trend is the limiting of a colour palette. Monochrome and duotone make for extremely inventive and aesthetically pleasing designs. Limiting the colour pallette means that colour doesn’t distract, but rather accentuates, espescially in duotone designs. The sanitary products from Yoni shown below are some that I own and find very compelling in terms of design. The logo itself is a fun nod to the body part it’s used for, but I more like how the tones are used. In real life, it’s much easier to see how the subtle shading on the box actually matches the accent colour. A particular part of the product market that is really embracing limited use of colour is alcohol packaging. I’ve noticed this trend whilst looking in the aisles in supermarkets (I don’t drink, but I think that alcohol design is usually at the forefront of design trends, espescially with canned drinks, so I like to peruse reguarly.)
Sustainability
Sustainability is a design trend that is gaining more and more traction as society becomes more conscious of it’s impact on the planet. This can only be a good thing. A lot of companies use their sustainable packaging as a marketing tool for younger, more aware audiences. There are even awards that are given out for sustainable packaging design, such as Bulldog’s revolutionary sugarcane based bottles for their products: https://www.cosmeticsdesign-europe.com/Article/2018/05/10/Bulldog-scoops-sustainable-packaging-prize . I often get targeted ads about sustainable products, such as this one that came up on my instagram yesterday shown below, advertising sustainable coffee pods and putting emphasis on their previous impact on the environment. I think that this trend can only be a good thing, as hopefully more and more companies will realise that it pays to be green, and younger consumers are more likely to buy their product if they think it is good for the planet.
Bold, Thick Lettering
It’s been a very noticable design trend in recent years for most logos and designs to ditch thin lettering and move towards bold. A particularly obvious example is fashion companies logotypes shifting, as shown in the image below. I think that this is a sign of the times in the fact that most of the time, logos are now shown in digital formats rather than print, and it’s easier to see thicker writing on screens. Also, in packaging design, it just makes more sense for writing to be more eyecatching and bold than it does thin, delicate and easily missable.
Authentic Representation
Designers, in my opinion, have not been portraying the world as it really is for quite some time. Espescially in markets such as fashion and beauty, as people obviously gravitate to impossible beauty standards. So the more recent move into authenticity is refreshing to me, across all aspects of design. Rather than pretending that everyone they’re catering to are the “default” straight, white, young, conventionally attractive people, brands are realising that being more inclusive can only spell out good things for sales and customer feedback.
Another trend is acknowledging social issues rather than just sweeping them under the rug, exemplified in the anti slave labour campaign shown below. Advertisers are often tasked with selling things as perfectly as they can, so seeing graphic design being used more and more for social change and real issues is a refreshing and important utilisation of the artform.
Minimalism/ Plain Backgrounds in Advertising
A very contemporary design trend is minimalism in advertising. If you think back to billboards in the 90’s or early 00’s, very rarely would you see something to blank and empty. However, designers have been embracing the fact that minimalism serves to bring focus to the important aspects of a design. Which in advertising, a lot of the time, is a product. I think that minimalism is extremely effective in drawing the eye and the attention to the most important thing in a layout, and I would like to utilise it more myself in the future, as I acknowledge that I tend to get carried away in my own designs.
Prosaic Vocabulary 