Category Archives: Trends

Many have said that Design is communication. Typically designers are trying to express elements of a brand’s values, or communicate a device’s functionality or proper method of use, or weave a narrative about the relevance of the object in a person’s life. Sometimes, “because it looks cool” is as deep...

In Fashion, style is mostly cyclical (with repeating themes currently on a 25-year cycle). In other design categories, however, the wavelength has been a bit longer. Roughly 150 years ago, some clever folk called the Victorians set about changing the world with their Industrial Revolution and, among other things, their...

Form has traditionally been one of the most creatively stressful parts of the design process. Designers, marketers, and consumers put such a premium on unique, iconic, and novel forms that a disproportionate part of the creative process goes into exploring and refining them. But in the last few years, designers...

Traditionally in design, an object’s form takes priority. Once a form is finalized, then it is subsequently broken up into pieces for production, via parting lines, panels, segments, or assemblies. With the Paneled Surfaces trend, the construction methodology becomes the aesthetic: arrays of discreet panels interlock to define a surface,...

As colors go, orange (specifically Pantone O21c) has had a good run in the design world. Despite taking a back seat through antiquity to various golds, blues, reds, and whites, it would seem the visual merits of the color were finally recognized in the mid 20th century. As the legend...

The halftone pattern has been a staple of the graphic and print disciplines for over a century. It is typically defined by a repeated geometric dot pattern that fools the human eye into perceiving a gradation of color or value. In its purest use, the halftone pattern is meant to...

We are surrounded by objects that are constantly fighting for our visual attention. From consumer electronics like TVs and smartphones, to consumer packaged goods like cereal, detergent, or soda, from fashion to furniture, the products we depend on in our lives are always shouting “Look at me! Pay attention to...

In keeping with the Reinterpretation theme’s principle of modifying a single aspect of a design, the Form Reinterpretation trend focuses purely on…FORM! This general stylistic mode seeks to present familiar cultural icons back to the consumer in fresh ways that create both a sense of familiarity and surprise. In these...

Some aesthetic themes arise purely as a counterpoint to an established visual mode. For decades, we’ve surrounded ourselves with increasingly polished, seamless, perfect objects; from smartphones to automobiles, the stylistic vector has been ever towards shiny, sleek, rational, and technological. Made by machines, with all hints of an artisanal human...

The interplay between the organic and the geometric is at the heart of the Geo-Organic category. This trend is very closely related to Geometric Form/Organic Matrix, but inverts the relationship between form and structure. Whereas the previous theme employs highly rational, primitive, geometric forms supported by a chaotic cellular internal...