Working in the design field for more than a decade, I’ve seen way too many trends come and go. Sometimes it’s a selection of typefaces, sometimes it’s gradients and fluorescent colours, sometimes it’s art movements revived, like Brutalism. I might have occasionally followed along, but most of the times I resisted the urge to incorporate them in my own works. Why?
There are trends that have been created for a specific need in the design industry, for example, in app design there was a need for interfaces that don’t stress the eye during the night hours (we’ve all been there), thus the dark mode emerged to save the day. Dark interfaces have massively been used in the last couple of years and they are still hot in every ui/ux tutorial you might come across. This is a trend that had a purpose right from the start and it serves specific needs of the audience. So it’s safe to say that it’s a trend that will stay and designing dark interfaces can be a valuable skill.
But not all trends start like this. Origami logos have been a thing for some years, not because there was any certain need for that, but because they looked cool back then and it was the beginning of an era were logotypes slowly escaped the monochromatic palettes and gradients started to appear. You could implement gradients to create an effect of shadow, thus an origami design could look quite realistic. With the rise of the digital era, gradients in branding were no longer frowned upon and the origami trend came to combine the need for minimalism with this new fascination for the gradient. Fast forward to this day, origami logos look old and out of fashion. And that’s just one example.
Being a designer means you have to find a way to provide solutions both practical and beautiful. But what is beautiful? There is no rule for beauty, it’s a very vague and subjective concept. Some might say symmetry is one criterion of beauty, but that would make no sense for Jackson Pollock being that popular. So when you design something, especially for a great audience, you are on a limp there・how can you make sure it will be likeable? Following a trend that is currently popular, is a way of achieving this. When we see something often, we tend to accept it as more beautiful than something unusual that pops in front of our eyes for the first time. That sweet comfort feeling of the known, is often mistaken as beautiful.
If you think about it, how many ideas have you rejected before sleeping on them and finding them making more sense the following day? We are creatures of habit and habit is our comfort beauty zone. Anything that makes us uncomfortable is ugly and frustrating. Think, for example, when you start a diet or a workout routine. You hate it at first, but after a while you think how could you possibly live your life before? Same goes for design trends. We see them so often in a short period of time, we end up believing they are so cool and will always work well. We think they will always look pretty. This is where we’re wrong.
A design trend has an expiration date. It might be something like the dark mode interface, which will definitely be around for a long time and it’s actually practical, or it might be like the origami logos that came handy in a digital-transition period. But they all end sometime. So following a trend is quite a tricky path and you might end up improving your design or ruining it for the future.
Now, there are exceptions to this, for example advertising has to follow the trends, just because its goal is to attract the viewer the fastest possible. And in this digital/social media era we are, who wants to puzzle the viewer of an ad, when they will approve or reject what they see in 3 seconds? So trends can be a good thing for advertising, but don’t always work for long term applications. When our goal as designers is to create works that can stay out there for as long as possible, we need to be able to judge what trend is actually worth incorporating and if we risk creating something that will look so last summer after some time.
Before you dive into all those new “Design trends for 20xx” articles, take some time to find your unique style and likings.
