CATEGORY: Designdigital-marketing

2024 Design Trends

As a designer, keeping a finger on the pulse of the industry’s ever-shifting trends is crucial, now more than ever as 2024 marks the first year of major fast-moving industry change in the last decade. The growth of AI has flipped the design industry on its head with what's now seen as unique; making standing out of the crowd that much harder! 

Over the last 10 years we have seen the landscape shifting at a steady rate towards a more accessible & inclusive type of design, as well as the the rise of minimalism. Many of these principles are carried on in 2024, with that, new countertrends are born. 

 

Why is 2024 the year of change? 

Each year the internet gets bigger, filled with more and more content; but what happens when you inject millions of automated AI bots that never sleep and can work 24 hours a day into the picture? Exponential growth of the internet. As AI uses what's already on the internet to generate content & images, it can only learn from what already exists. This means human creativity will be key in the battle to stand out in 2024. 

 

Display Typeface 

Typography is set to take centre stage in 2024, designers are going to push the boundaries of what's possible with text. Prioritising impact & visual appeal over readability. The ideal for Thumbnails/headers, posters & social media posts along with other designs where being bold is key. Content may become less accessible in these kind of designs due to designs being more complex.

 

Alongside to display typeface we can also expect to see an increase in abstract lettering & the use of characters outside of the typical fonts, like mathematical symbols. 𝕏 (formerly Twitter) started a wave when they rebranded Twitter.com to X.com, this wave is set to continue. 

 

Maximalist designs

For years minimalist design has been skyrocketing in popularity, although this is set to continue this year, a contrasting counter trend has been born, a design trend that focuses on “more is more” in its designs. In a sea of minimalist designs, overloaded designs will stand out. Remember even though more is more, there should be a reason behind each of the components of your maximalist design. 

This trend is all about embracing the chaos, this design style wants to push the boundaries of what's possible! Every aspect of a canvas should be populated with strong colours, unique typography, and experimental elements.  

Touch of Vintage 

Fusing the old & the new is a trend that has slowly been creeping up over the last few years, the power of the 70s & 80s is back! Modern designers are taking principals from the past and creating new variants of what used to be. This trend pays tribute to when times were simpler, a complete countertrend to contrast the modern age. 

Hand Drawn Doodles 

As AI learns from what's already out there, most of what it learns text from will be other fonts. Which means unique one-of-a-kind designs will see an increased adoption. Ever improving tech now allows a large number of devices to join the design arsenal, drawings in applications like Adobe illustrator or Procreate will elevate text styles this year. Imperfect design is back! 

Hand drawn doodles often inspire a more playful feeling to the design. This would suggest that we will see designers move away from traditional corporate styles and try more experimental styles. 

 

Accessible design 

Inclusive design has thankfully been on an upwards trend as more designers educate themselves on creating accessible content. Content creators/writers are learning how to design using principles that allow people with dyslexia, visual impairments and more to be able to process the content in front of them. Those who focus on accessible design will stand out of the crowd of inaccessible content. 

 

80:20 Ratio 

Images, although powerful, are not the most accessible form of media. This year a ratio of 80% text & 20% imagery. Images are more often used to support text, instead of being the content itself. This means more and more designers will need to adapt to this changing trend & innovate their designs in different ways. Designing an email should be about the whole email, every pixel of content. How does your text look against your background? Does it go with the image? Does that go with the header? What about the next section? Use the full canvas to express creativity through design.  

AI Generated Images 

Welcome to the elephant in the room. AI brings a whole new type of design. In theory AI is powerful enough to design anything? Not quite. This year is the first-year designers will have full access to powerful tools like Midjourney 5, DALLE 3 and more. AI still cannot replace a human; our creativity is just not a trait that AI possesses. It generates content based on what humans have output in the past.

Using AI to design will vary on use cases. Designers learning how to manipulate AI Generated images to fit them for purpose will be key to get the most out of AI generated imagery.

3D AI generated images are able to bring 2D Images to life! This opens up the realm of possibility for hyper realistic 3D generations off a simple reference image! Anything which was previously represented by an Icon, now in 30 seconds can be turned into a hyper realistic generation bringing a whole new vertical to creative design. 

Futuristic Design 

Hearing the term “AI” every day, everywhere you go for the past year has sent some designers into the future. As AI is seen as the future, many designers have tried to fast forward that reality in 2023, this isn't set to stop anytime soon. As technological advancements gather momentum, more content will be created talking about future technology, further fuelling the futuristic content machine. 

To conclude 

This year is set to be filled with change, new creative ideas. Standing out of the crowd will only get harder as time goes on, so designers will need to adapt and find new innovative ideas to create creative content. AI will continue to evolve & improve which will impact the design landscape, following this space carefully will open the door to a variety of opportunities.