What were the top graphic design trends of the year and how will these trends continue to affect you in the coming year?
Popular colors were meant to have universal appeal, without regard to gender or season.
As we wrote in our post Double Take: What Are The Popular Color Trends For 2016? Serenity Blue and Rose Quartz shared the Pantone Color of the Year honors in 2016. The Pantone Fall and Spring fashion line-ups continued to emphasize blues—Airy Blue, Island Paradise, Lapis Blue, Niagara, Riverside—and pink tones in colors like Bodacious, Dusty Cedar, Pale Dogwood, and Pink Yarrow. The lineup also included colors that evoke the serenity of nature—Greenery, Kale, Hazelnut, Lush Meadow, silver Sharkskin, warm Taupe—and are both soothing and perfect for multiple seasons and people. Greenery has captured Pantone’s 2017 Color of the Year honors.
Expect gender-neutral and multi-season colors to continue to influence the fashion industry and graphic design.
Shorter wavelengths on the color spectrum appealed to most age groups.
Blue was the favorite color of all age groups—0 to 18, 19 to 24, 25 to 35, 26 to 50, 51 to 69, and 70+—according Faber Birren in his book Color Psychology and Color Therapy and reported in our post Does Age Affect Color Preferences?
Green was also popular with those 50 and under, and violet appealed to those 19 to 69. The common denominator? All three of these colors have shorter wavelengths on the color spectrum, unlike red, yellow, and orange.
Expect the easy-on-the-eyes colors of blue, green, and violet to continue to be favorites with viewers of all ages.
Graphic design gave brands a personal feel.
In Pretty As A Picture – Part I: What The Trends In Graphic Design Can Do To Build Your Brand, we urged you to consider graphic design elements like shades of a single color, thick fonts, airbrushed graphics, gradation between images and text, flat images, and thick fonts to give your brand a personal feel.
Expect to only use the graphic design elements that reflect your message and your brand instead of trying to incorporate all the trends.
Mobile-friendly, responsive design was imperative.
Use of smartphones and tablets for viewing Web content continued to climb. As we mentioned in Pretty As A Picture – Part II: What The Emerging Trends In Graphic Design Mean For Your Brand, successful companies are telling their stories with high-quality photographs and videos that make customers feel part of the brand and they are making it even easier to swipe and tap.
Expect this to remain true.
Images were in high demand.
The use of pictures in content marketing skyrocketed. Instead of just producing logos and corporate images, graphic designers and marketers were also creating branded images, charts, infographics, maps, photographs, quotes in beautiful fonts, and sketches. We summarized what these high-quality branded images achieved in Graphic Design Trends You Should Try.
Expect the demand for exceptional graphic design and quality images to remain high.
If you haven’t yet incorporated these graphic design elements into your brand, call Tate Design at 610.725.0702 or e-mail [email protected]. Your marketing materials may be the first piece of information a customer sees about your company and we want you to have the sharp, current collateral materials that are vital to an organization’s success.
