Stop the scroll with show-stopping designs: our favorite graphic trends 2024 has to offer As designers, we’re always on the lookout for the next burst of inspiration. While we know that creativity is a wildly unique thing, there are some visual trends 2024 is celebrating, and we’re excited to see them build as the year continues.
From new-wave 3D to mind-boggling psychedelia, we’ve scoured the web (and asked some of our very own designers) for a roundup of the best design styles that are predicted to gain more and more traction through the year ahead.
1. Advanced 3D Interactivity
Designs are leaping off the screen with the advanced evolution of 3D design. This trend is seeing a fusion with interactive elements, making it not just visually appealing but also engaging.
We’ve noticed this trend evolving into two branches: Complex 3D design and Interactive 3D Art.
Complex 3D designs are intricate, with detailed textures and lighting that create a sense of depth and realism. This style is being used to create immersive environments that draw viewers into the scene.
Interactive 3D Art involves viewers directly, using technology to allow interaction with the 3D elements. This could be through VR, AR, or simple web interactions that make the viewer a part of the design.
Ideas for how to apply this design trend to your marketing:
- Create 3D illustrations of your products and use them to showcase a new launch in your next social media campaign
- Incorporate this design style with trend number 3 for a unique outcome
2. Contemporary gradients
Simply a transition from one color to another, this year’s gradient upgrade sees blurred edges on modern, abstract shapes, as well as liquid-effect blends.
“The Contemporary Gradient style is a look we’ve seen quite often in posters and other digital materials. It started to gain popularity in the design world this past years, and will definitely continue to pick up as we move into 2024.” Says Nicollo Garcia, our Creative Director in the Philippines.
“It would be interesting to see this trend carry over into print as well. The right typography style mixed with the perfect gradient is a match made in heaven. It would be refreshing to see this style executed outside the screen and into real life through packaging, posters, and other out-of-home advertising.”
Here’s a great example, 3D and contemporary gradients from the presentation of the new iPad Pro launch in 2024.
Ideas for how to apply this design trend to your marketing:
- Add gradients using your brand colors as social media graphic backgrounds – ideal for quotes
- Experiment with wrapping gradients around packaging design
3. Chaotic Maximalism
Forget millennial minimalism, Gen Z are shaking things up with a more-is-more approach to design this year.
Think bold colors, lary fonts, and a mismatch of styles sprinkled with a touch of nostalgia from styles gone by –like 90s and folk. Noted as a form of escapism in a fashion context, we see this trend as a form of self- or brand-expression, leaving no stone unturned for exciting and lively results.
With years of being indoors restricting creativity, it’s time to let loose.
Ideas for how to apply this design trend to your marketing:
- Explore asymmetry and overlaying elements in your designs to build that chaotic (but beautiful) energy
- Experience with Shuffles from Pinterest to create engaging social media videos
Learn more about marketing for a Gen Z audience
4. Riso print goes digital
Creative Director, Sheena Villeta, based in the Philippines thinks “riso print is really interesting. I’ve always been careful to use colors in my designs, as seen in my work’s minimalist/sleek design. This year might be a good time to break out and explore the other side of this in a conscious way.”
And we’re seeing a digital shift with this 80s-born printing technique. Grainy textures, depth, and minimalist shapes come together to create an abstract but modern blend of old and new.
Ideas for how to apply this design trend to your marketing:
- Add more noise to illustrations and layer color fills to add depth to designs – great for stop animation
5. Mind-bending psychedelia
This is where design begins to get really fun, breaking the boundaries between the weird and the wonderful. With warped shapes, trippy subjects and acid-wash color palettes, the psychedelic design space captures all of the possibilities found in a designer’s imagination.
With inspiration from the 90s as opposed to last year’s 60s revival, we’re entering the realm of otherworldly landscapes and sensory experiences. Mix that with technological futurism and you’re left with an outcome that’s bold, intense, and confusingly engaging.
Hand-drawn illustration, bold graphic print and contorted typography all lend themselves well here, but the beauty of this visual trend, as with them all, is that designers from all specialities can truly make it their own.
Ideas for how to apply this design trend to your marketing:
- Distort reality and break the rules! This trend works especially well for packaging and large-scale advertisements –the more detail you can add to keep people looking, the better
So there you have it. 5 of our favorite graphic design trends 2024 has in store. It’s hard to narrow the list down, so here are a few more honorable mentions:
- Expressive typography is bending the rules of type: fluid shapes, connecting letters, and a new wave of text display brings customization up a notch
- Multi-media proves that anything goes: expect hand-drawn illustrations layered on photography, graphic shapes contrasting soft noise, and wacky 2D animation mixed with real-world videography
- Maximalism sees designers and brands alike ditching the dull in favor of more, more, more: bright colors, thick fonts and rounded illustrations make this style an instant hit
What are your favorite design trends?
If this design talk is leaving you craving a new direction but you’re lacking in the design department, let our teams do the groundwork for you to bring these trends (and your 2024 marketing goals) to life in 2024 and beyond.
