Category Archives: Trends

ANGULAR FRAMEWORK

Many industries have relied on forms constructed of rigid angular geometries for ages. From bicycles to bridges, designers and architects know the value of the inherent strength and economy of resources that characterize this method. In recent years, designers in many other categories have adopted Angular Frameworks in fresh and...

Read more

RATIONALISM

We humans like to make our mark on the world: building structures, manufacturing products, creating systems both physical and virtual. When not a purely artistic endeavor, these works of ours usually bear the signs of a rational thought process, as opposed to the more organic evolutionary structures preferred by nature...

Read more

MACRO PATTERNS

Up until recently, adorning entire surfaces with subtle repeating textures was only found in specific textile-based industries, such as handbags, footwear, and other fashion accessories. Seeing the luxurious visual properties inherent in a material like diamond-quilted black patent leather (as on the classic Chanel handbag), designers in other industries took...

Read more

MATERIAL REINTERPRETATION

The Reinterpretation category is all about manipulating a single visual attribute to achieve something both familiar and fresh at the same time. In this instance, Material Reinterpretation generally maintains all aspects of an iconic object’s form, proportions, and surfacing, but introduces a completely new material or production process to the...

Read more

RAINBOW STRIPES

Although rainbows have been a frequently occurring visual theme in modern culture (kid’s characters, hippies, the GLBT community, Mork), in recent years they have been increasingly present in the Product, Fashion, Furniture, and Architecture categories. Possible reasons behind this resurgence are many (these colors are particularly vibrant against today’s prominent...

Read more

BONE LINES

Many aesthetic themes represent designers’ attempts to replicate natural organic structures in man-made materials. Bone Lines have been used heavily in Automotive design to bring tension and structure to a car’s sheet metal skin. Ideally, these subtle fading ridges that flow along a surface are actually caused by an underlying...

Read more