The importance of graphic design just can’t stop growing. 2021 has seen the rise of TikTok and other major visual platforms and if we have learnt anything it’s that image and video – in many types of formats – aren’t going anyway.
To get you ready for the year ahead, Wishu is here to help you fellow graphic designers predict the top five hottest graphic design trends for 2022.
Attention to Inclusion
Since the BLM protests of summer 2020, 2021 saw the hangover of realising the lack of racial diversity in media and the workplace which bleeds into fields including graphic design. While this bullet point is mentioned in our article about graphic design trends let us be clear: racial diversity is not a trend but something we hope will be included within all realms of art from today and forever forward. From Ariel Danielle’s illustrations of Black Womanhood to Chilean graphic designer María Jesús Contreras and her pieces on anxiety, there’s always room for stories from all corners of society.
Text Heavy Videos
2021 began with a four-month lockdown which saw an increase of time spent online. This saw the rise of TikTok and Instagram Reels which saw the further rise of video content. While 2020 saw many an infographic image carousel, 2022 will be leaning more towards the text-heavy video – much more digestible and often accompanied by music.
Muted Colours
Years of bright and bold colours seem to have passed and more and more people are opting for chicer, muted colours. Multiple large companies have referred to these colours, an example being LinkedIn, which abandoned bright blue tones. This has filled the platform of social networks with messages, which seem light and authentic. Aside from the above-mentioned effects, muted colours also give off organic vibes, which makes them suitable for health and wellness brands. Other representatives of top brands of the world will find out about the advantages of using muted colours in graphic design and start supporting a new trend soon. Another benefit of muted colours is that they blend well with text (a light or a dark one). When using these colours as a background, they make a text stand out on any Internet page or social media page.
Surrealism
2022, we hope, will be the last major hangover year of the pandemic, which means that surrealism is here to stay. This trend became popular in 2020 when we ended up drawn into a surrealistic world of science fiction due to the virus. Graphic designers were eager to reflect this new reality in their works by combining objects to form a weird mix, which at least seems vague to the senses. Although sometimes it’s a little confusing and looks creepy, such images can be disjointed by separating interwoven objects at the seams.
Psychedelic Design
This technique of graphic design originates from drug use and social unrest. With the rise in popularity of CBD and psychedelic drugs over the 2021 lockdown, many designers think that abstract psychedelia is about to come back in the new year. It will be presented with complex abstractions and a wealth of colours in graphic design. However, the use of grotesque and confusing images will be stabilized by symmetry while creating the view of order amidst the chaos.
