2008 trends in the design field
Out with the old in with the new. I love being a designer. Change is the one thing that remains constant in our field, and because of that it never gets boring. So I did some research looking at new designs that haven’t really got that much attention, but were still very good design. This is what I came up and if I am wrong oh well. Here is my list of 2008 trends.
PLAID Let’s start with a long shot. As much as really don’t care for the idea I saw a lot plaid designs. I am laughing so hard right now, because I can’t believe I just said that. I hate plaid I never liked it. It is true though if you look you will see plaid in clothing and design. As I keep thinking about it the idea of reinterpreting plaid designs doesn’t seem that bad. You can’t think of plaid as the catholic school girl skirt, but rather brighter colors or more dynamic plaid design. I can come up with handful of ideas to recreate plaid, it could be very interesting.
WEB 2.0 I think we can all say this style of glossy everything is starting to fade. I hope. The web has become too saturated with this stuff. So much so that you find it being used in inappropriate places. Can it be replaced? YES by all means, but what is going to replace all those buttons? Well I have seen a lot of designers playing with the idea of creating objects and effects that relate to the actual website.
TEXTURE More and more designers are adding textures to there designs. The grunge look for example has attributed to this. I think we will be seeing this look in more creative ways this year. I wouldn’t be surprised if designers go back to their roots and start cutting and pasting objects. Seriously though, I have a feeling that designers will begin using the tools of old and adding them to the computer. We have already seen this in all of the new watercolor brushes for photoshop and I don’t think that it will end there.
COLOR Pantone has officially released the color they think will be popular this year. The winner is blue iris, this is what they have to say. “From a color forecasting perspective, we have chosen PANTONE 18-3943 Blue Iris as the color of the year, as it best represents color direction in 2008 for fashion, cosmetics and home products,” explains Leatrice Eiseman, executive director of the Pantone Color Institute®. “As a reflection of the times, Blue Iris brings together the dependable aspect of blue, underscored by a strong, soul-searching purple cast. Emotionally, it is anchoring and meditative with a touch of magic. Look for it artfully combined with deeper plums, red-browns, yellow-greens, grapes and grays.” Well other than all that emotional stuff I agree with them. If you look at the designs being pushed out now it is very warm. I think we are about to see a change with a very large range of cool colors this year.
CANDY With all of the downloads we have accumulated this year it would be hard to believe we did any work at all. Candy will we not be as popular this year as much as I want it to be (since I will be giving it away). I truly believe designers will start creating more and more of their own things for several reasons. One being you can’t download anymore candy because your hard drives are full. And secondly, I think designers really want to create their own work it is who we are, we design and create. That leads me to my final prediction.
DESIGNERS Get off your butts and get creative. One thing that has resinated throughout the year is how stale designers have become. I know it happens constantly and that is how we evolve to get to new things, but I think designers are copying others designers style constantly instead of creating their own. I believe and hope designers will start believing in themselves and their own work this year. Like I said before, we are designers and it is who we are, we design and create.
I’ll be glad to see 2.0 start to disappear. Too many simple, elegant logos have been 2.0′d to death.
I love textures and have actually started playing with scanning “cut and paste” objects myself. One place though that I’d love to see texture die is the grunge look on tshirts. Sometimes it’s great but too often it’s just overkill.
Thanks for your post but I think it will be better if you add pictures to it.
Plaid.. that’s a great prediction..let’s hope for that and also maybe Argyle… it seems to be a huge fashion trend.. someone needs to bring it to the web for sure. Great Post..
I may sound cheesy but a great place to look for designs and trends is the scrapbook paper section of your local hobby store. There is a lot of really bad stuff to weed through but also you will find diamonds in the rough. The larger sheets give you an idea of what the design will look like when used on a wide space. I saw a brown and blue argyle that I adapted for a project, grunged it up a bit and it turned out great!
Lisa-
I would really like to see the project post it to thepixlpusher flickr group.
http://www.flickr.com/groups/thepixlpusher/pool/
When talking about trends such as Web 2.0, I think a lot of designers start bitching too early about its overuse. Because we see it all the time, doesn’t mean the general public and clients are being over saturated with it. Why not take these trends, use them, and make some easy money!
And what is Candy? Is that an industry term for something, because I haven’t heard it, and I can’t figure it out from your post.
For anyone that hasn’t heard of candy I will give you a brief description. They are free illustrator/photoshop downloads like brushes, tectures, vector objects. Sorry if you didn’t understand what I was talking about.
Hi, Please change your permalinks to /%postname%/ or something related to post name. Like category and post name. The default permalinks structure you use right now is not appropriate for search engines.
Thanks
Bage.
Bage-
Thanks for tip and I have changed it.
I loved reading this post, but what would make it even better is example images and/or links.
sorry…. am i being naive…. whats ‘Web 2.0′…. also another trend to go has to be the swirly Filigree designs… everyone is using them…. surely the public/client must want something new…?
nice post… has inspired to really challenge myself this year and be a trend setter not a trend copier!
Thanks
With the economy acting very much like 1988, please keep in mind for all styles relying heavily on th 80’s - Showcase metallics and yes, PLAIDS !! My background in high end textiles for the home shows pastels as well.
Let’s continue this trend onto the walls. Our firm specializes in working with graphic designers to create designs for hotels and retail design chains. We work with people like Juicy Couture and Caesars Palace. Let’s create together. We are accepting applications to be on our host of websites and to be included in our brochures. We are looking for the avante garde baroque damask patterns utilizing vector drawings. If we sell the pattern for a job, we offer a percentage of sales. Contact Steven - steveabramsdesigns@gmail.com ..
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Blogs using texture (if done right) are a fav of mine. So, bring back grunge, bring back texture, bring back collages style design. Just not too much …