As the stormiest year has come to an end, we’re all excited to welcome the new year with new Graphic Design Trends in 2021. The creative communities have started navigating the year ahead. And one has to keep looking forward in anticipation and optimism to make the best of graphic design trends in 2021. Predicting what’s coming is of course not in our discourse. But let’s see where the discipline of graphic designing is heading. If you are also excited about what the New Year 2021 has in stock for graphic designers, here are the top graphic design trends post COVID:
- Sustainability
Making our relationship with our environment more sustainable is expected to be one of the biggest graphic design trends in 2021. Especially when we were locked down and spent most of the time in isolation in the previous year, the value of plane-free skies and wide-open spaces has multiplied subsequently. Here are some of the most visible sustainable transformations that are bound to gain momentum in 2021:
- Positive packaging – Positive packaging that inspires for a greener world is one such endeavor. Brands are focusing on the packaging that can decompose to reduce environmental waste. Many others are using recycled materials or stress on producing their own electricity.
- Connecting with Nature – Reconnecting with nature is not just good for our planet, but for us ‘the people’ too. Embracing an organic and humanistic approach is easily visible in the rising preference of designs like handprint techniques, organic shapes, and brush strokes, which also have a calming effect on our mental health.
- Practical Action – The realization of social responsibility has made business owners more mindful and globally aware. Words like ‘eco-friendly’ and ‘plastic-free’ are pulled out from the dictionary and put to practical utility. What’s interesting is that it also helps save them on their operational or manufacturing costs.
- Retro Aura
Another prominent thing that the previous year has taught us to look back. No wonder the feeling of nostalgia has taken over all of us at some point or the other. This has paved way for retro-themed fonts and color palettes, and they are acting as a comfort blanket for graphic designers for the past few months. The trend to outsource graphic designing is also becoming more and more popular as the Indian graphic designers are adept at offering retro and vintage designs at almost 70% lesser costs.
Retrofuturism:
Retrofuturism, the sci-fi visions of an old era, is appealing for the dramatic ways in which history got it wrong. By now, we were deemed to have flying cars and ray guns, etc. Alternately, we have Roombas. But completed the ages, retro-futurism as a visual style has prevailed due to its bold imagination with a surprisingly accurate outlook—at least more so than our modern concepts of doom in movies like Black Mirror. The retro-futurists believed in personal progress, to the extent that still scary green Martians in flying saucers would be no match for scientific ingenuity.
- Playfulness and Optimism
After the prominence of darker vibes in 2020, the arrival of vaccines has made us hopeful and optimistic for the New Year 2021. This is uplifting the creative industries and elements like playfulness, positivity, vibrant patterns. Color splashes have become one of the most popular graphic design trends post-COVID. People are becoming excited about seeing uplifting art and design like refreshing 3D and kinetic typography, or witty illustrations and animations
- Honesty and Authenticity
Feeling cynical and frazzled in the previous year, people are no longer in the mood to see empty marketing campaigns. Many people used many of this year cooped up bounded. That would go twice for designers who might have encountered their work lifestyle begin to resemble solitary confinement. Thus, the graphic designers are all set to involve an honest and authentic approach in their work in the coming year. Speaking to the audience through impeccably touching work and rebelling against perfection is going to be one of the many amazing graphic design trends in 2021. The consequence of nature symbolism is to impart peace, renewal, and growth—all of which we’ll be breathlessly awaiting in 2021.
- Authentic Representation
The Black Lives Matter campaign draws an original watershed moment of global protest. Designers remain faithful that it is simply the beginning of a re-examination of systemic racism and that its influence will remain to ripple through every business in 2021, including graphic design. We have previously seen designers perform efforts to jettison models in favor of genuine and different people in illustration and stock photography. Designers believe that this will go still further in 2021, exceeding mere inclusivity to the celebration. We saw designers of color uplifted in the immediacy of the BLM protests. And the result was the portraiture of black men/women in powerful and inspiring settings and as well as the poses.
- Comics and POP Art
Similar to an arch-nemesis, the layout styles of the past never truly expire. So this year, the graphic designers are resurrecting grainy shades, the heavy inking, and the action lines of vintage comics. Born of an era of primitive printing technology, comics often used halftones, or obvious dot shading, to describe color. However, web designers can develop the network with slanting boards and skewed shapes to generate a sense of drama. Also, This trend is a condition, and we expect to see it further and further as the tool of option for designs with a Darkside.
- Wrapping Up
Now let’s see what all of these trends add up to. It’s very evident that the design community is pretty excited about the coming year. And their work is expected to get more profound, surprising, and compassionate. The will and passion of the graphic designers to make people feel something. And striking a connection with their audience is at an all-time high. Maybe this is why the business owners are highly motivated to outsource graphic designing & save cost, i.e., for a fresher and more humane approach. So, let’s keep our fingers crossed and our eyes and hearts open for a positive cultural shift and a splendid year!