Everyone knows that the world of digital marketing and content creation is incredibly saturated. Brands need to bend over backward and do all that they can to ensure that they can grab the attention of their target consumers, especially in a digital sphere that is filled with content that’s trying to fight tooth and nail for views and engagement.
We cannot underestimate the value of excellent graphic design in business and competition. There’s a reason why the “graphic design is my passion” meme has become iconic; brands and businesses with terrible design earn the mockery of audiences, and they run the risk of not being taken seriously in their industry, especially by younger consumers like Millennials and Generation Z.
If you want your brand to get ahead of the race in 2022, you need to partner with the right marketing firm or SEO agency to step up your graphic design game. Here are some of the most anticipated, eye-catching, aesthetic graphic design trends this year.
90s nostalgia
Trends indeed come in a loop. There was a time when we enjoyed celebrating the vibrancy and culture of the 1980s with the rise of popular films and TV shows like Stranger Things and It. Still, since the pandemic began and perhaps even a year or two before that, there was a clear movement towards a return to the 1990s aesthetics. It began with the modern takes on slip dresses, brown lipsticks, and platform heels and reached fever pitch with the revival of distinctly ’90s teen flicks like She’s All That and Gen Z pop stars like Olivia Rodrigo co-opting the aesthetics.
Now, this retro trend will continue to dominate the mainstream, with fond childhood memories making a comeback through color blocks, Memphis design patterns, and beloved characters like Super Mario. If you want your brand to stand out and engage Millennials this year, make sure to incorporate this trend into your designs before it becomes overused.
Doodles
Another graphic design trend that began in the past year and will continue towards 2022 are daydream doodles, or designs that look meaningless at first glance but convey a deeper message. They might resemble a child’s doodles or what you would draw in your paper while your mind wanders during a boring meeting.
These daydream drawings can be incredibly personal, and the recent trend can be connected with poets like Rupi Kaur, who added doodles to her poetry books to add depth to her content. In 2022, these drawings can be a wonderful way to bridge the gap between the human heart and the digital tools we use. They might be the best way to make your brand appear more in touch with our human side and can appear more approachable compared to graphic design that a marketing professional more obviously creates. At the same time, these doodles don’t have to compete with digital design; they can even look so much more compelling when animation is added because they evoke the free-form nature of the entire process.
Anti-design
If you are tired of content that looks like it followed a step-by-step guide to excellent graphic design, then the anti-design concept or aesthetic might be for your next brand campaign—if it suits your brand identity and industry. If anti-design sounds like anarchy to you, it’s because it is: It’s all about throwing rules out the window so that you can create a unique, almost avant-garde look. It challenges conventional aesthetic principles and traditional design and uses asymmetry, bare interfaces, colors that are typically considered non-complementary, stark typography, and crowded spaces.
At first look, it may look ugly and messy. Still, when done right, it can champion an important message that says we don’t need to march to the beat of society’s drum and that we can be beautiful even if we don’t follow the standards that society constructed. It’s a subversion of what is typically considered clean and beautiful in the contents that brands typically churn out.
Whimsical escapism
Another trend that you might want to look into is escapism. Throughout these trends, there is one pattern; they all lean on the maximalist side, which is a drastic transition from the minimalism of brands like Apple. Escapism is all about creating different worlds for our consumers, especially when they need it most. Think Coraline, Tim Burton, and cute, nature-inspired creatures straight out of a Ghibli movie.
Step up your brand’s graphic design game this year and watch as your engagement grows. Good luck!
