Happy Monday, hope you are rocking your week!!

Today in this post we will point out and illustrate some of the emerging design trends for 2021 and 2022. As 2020 comes to an end, we look at patterns dominating the end of year to forecast their effect on the next. The following 10 top trends will help reshape the design landscape and prevailing visuals in advertising, social media and digital marketing, as well as graphic, product, interior and fashion design. Their applications are universal.

1. Reinvented Retro – Leveraging Nostalgia

In art and photography we see a rise in reinvented retro aesthetic, straying away from perfectly curated visuals and merging mismatched playful coloring into letters and symbols. This pattern involves evoking the past and leveraging nostalgia to live present time. Reinvented Retro also serves as a means to escapism, to take consumers away from the current disturbing situation the world finds itself into and offer cheerful optimism. This trend emerges as a result of individual’s longing for comfort, simpler times, security, the mundane and a craving for past moments of joy in their pre-isolation life. To deliver this security and optimism, we see brands tapping into the retro phenomena of recreating campaigns and products that utilize nostalgia to spark joy and place this nostalgia in the context of close future.

2. True Authenticity and Inclusion

In the scope of social media, the heavily curated images and perfected visuals will have a significant further disruption. In 2020 we noticed the growth of TikTok, a platform notable for its candid and raw video creations. This will continue on in 2021, translating into other social media platforms and influencing the way digital marketing visuals are perceived by consumers, especially Gen Z and Millennials.

This authenticity also expands in brand transparency and innovation. Consumers demand for all-inclusive designs and diverse representations. These initiatives are reflected in the brands’ and designers’ brand mission, and such purpose-driven innovations will help abridge the social climate with brand perception. We see human visuals that shift away from unrealistic beauty standards and an increase in appreciation of real human beauty. Inclusive accessibly will be of main focus in interior and landscape design, and media will reflect an enhanced awareness in neurodiversity, with brands becoming more socially conscious and take bigger steps toward all-inclusive goals.

3. Sustainability: Back to nature

After a long year of reflection and self-isolation, we have identified a need to better our relationship with nature. In packaging and advertising we will see an increase of organic art, repositioning nature as the forefront in design, as well as composition. Brands will feel more inclined to invest in sustainable product designs and packaging, finding ways to become transparent in their processes of sourcing and production and utilizing that property in brand image, efforts in sustainability and integrate it throughout their business model.
Customers show longing for the outdoors, in a time that they should contain in self-isolation. Thus, the uprise of more organic and plant dominated visuals will prove to be impactful and successful in connecting and communicating to the customer’s wants.

4. Optical Illusions and Engaging Visuals

Optical illusions and fun mixed-media texture manipulations will reach an innovative peak. Inspired from the 60s, we notice spike in psychedelic graphics, offering absolute freedom to artists in line and color exploration. Most emphasis will be placed on bright colors, engaging 3-Dimensional artwork, print and digital advertising that simulate integrated sensory action. This will be key in 2021, when most advertising unfolds online and aims to provide a most holistic sensory experience to clearly communicate to the consumer.

5. Calming Breaks

A new emerging trend this year is the engineering of micro breaks, with the aim of amplifying consumer’s happiness. These micro breaks are often executed in the form of peaceful social media ads, utilizing visual and auditory ASMR techniques, relaxing products and slow-paced browsing systems. Consumers are currently seeking for a soothing break and will likely pay attention to such visuals as another way to momentarily detach from reality.

6. Connectivity

More than ever, people are in need for communication and connectivity innovations. The lack of frequent human contact has led to a new era of seclusion, causing for anxiety and depression rates to spike up. Consumers are experiencing mental challenges and feelings of loneliness in a level that was not reflected before the pandemic. This is the right time for brands to push their limits in innovation and provide products and services designed to connect and bring people together virtually. There will be a redefinition of community groups and local people-focused coordination. Projects, companies that promote human engagement, long-lasting connections and community bonding as a brand strategy will help consumers feel well understood. These projects will include progress in the field of XR (mixed reality) and VR (Virtual Reality), developing tactile tools to mimic human touch and interaction.

7. Eco Action

As emphasized by the Sustainability in the Third trend explained in this post, Eco action aims to push the ultimate change in the mass-market industry and radically change the production system. There is little time to take action and retrieve some damage that the consumeristic culture has caused to our planet before it is too late to save. That is why in the next two years, we will see an increase in environmental awareness, corporate social responsibility and clear action points. Brands that do not shift their values toward long term sustainable goals, will risk turning irrelevant. According to WGSN, Biodesign will be mostly favored in research and development, with a new chain of materials and processes to work in nature, for nature and with nature. Design will be altered into new concepts of removing humans from the center focus.

8. Home Comfort

While 2020 marked the most significant increase in working from home phenomena, we will see its effect for the next two years as professionals find ways to adapt and build the new normal. During this time, products and designs created to give ultimate comfort and encourage productivity will be of utmost importance. Brands will find solutions to evolve and morph around this new reality by being flexible, resilient and creative. Innovation in this scope will also include creating high security items in a time that consumers feel uncertain and concerned. Utility and adaptability will be key elements.

9. Optimism

In the end, after an extended period of fear, discomfort, and grief, consumers will be targeted with a myriad of optimistic campaigns, carrying undertones of hope and understanding. Brands will cater to consumers’ want for utility, adaptability and resilience, by offering products and services that strengthen their connection with customers, as well as demonstrating their willful partnership to stay by consumer’s side. In this case, brands will serve as allies, who find themselves in the same place as consumers.

10. Materials

Following the Global Macro trends, materials will include the following:

Copper, Minerals, Soft Fabrics, Silver, Translucent Glow, Matte Surfaces, Nature-inspired, Antique metals, Natural Pigments, Artisan Wood, Grainy Textures, Biodegradable, Psychedelic and Holographic, Mosaic Tiling.

This was our recap for our top anticipated trends in the upcoming year, most of which connect to consumer’s craving for an alternative to their current time, finding joy in the past mundane activities that are no longer happening, and reminiscing a pre-pandemic reality. We see imagination reincarnating into technological innovations and playing a key role as a coping mechanism as well as whimsical design structures that play between characteristics of quirky and eccentric. The human spirit stays alive, and so does creativity.

As always, we hope you are safe and healthy!

Sending joy,

Xoxo Lori / Design Land NYC

Our FASHION and CULTURE impressions shared with you!