Graphic designers, web designers, and content creators brace yourselves for the hottest trends shaping the design landscape. From 3D masterpieces to the pixel comeback, our listicle highlights the 17 graphic design trends that will define the creative scene in 2024.
Let's dive into the world of bold minimalism, playful doodles, and captivating gradients – it's time to elevate your design game!
What is trending in graphic design in 2024?
Graphic design is not only about visualizing your brand’s identity; it’s also about educating, informing, and pursuing your potential audience by communicating your brand’s message and policy through visually appealing images, typography, form, and colors.
Here are some of the graphic design trends you should keep an eye on and implement in your creative work in 2024.
3D design elements
If you ask any graphic designer in 2024, “What are the current trends in graphic design?” The 3D design will be one of the names that will always pop up. It has been one of the most popular graphic design industry trends for years now.
Adobe Illustrator launched a new feature “Inflate” in 2023, and since Illustrator is one of the widely used graphic design tools the newly launched feature has made it easier than ever to transform your flat designs and fonts into 3D.
Since Adobe and other graphic design tools have simplified the use of 3D elements, even novice designers can incorporate this design trend for 2024 while creating designs. Not just web designs and social media posts, but you can even create modern fonts to create a full-blown 3D masterpiece.
As the graphic world embraces realism, it is no surprise that 3D design has slowly tiptoed into VR and AR technologies, opening up many new possibilities for graphic design to evolve. Is there any better way to get your audience's attention?
Geometric shapes
Geometric shapes are hugely popular, especially in brand logos like Adidas, YouTube, Spotify, Instagram, and even the Olympic Games.
Consistency is one of the rules in graphic design that never changes, and consistency is one of the most significant advantages of geometric shapes.
You can use geometric shapes to showcase data facts and display content to create easy-to-understand copy and eye-catching visuals.
Natural aesthetics
In 2024, nature-inspired aesthetics are trending in design. As the world is moving towards sustainability and eco-friendliness, the organic beauty around you can be a great inspiration in creating visuals that connect deeply with nature's serenity.
For designers who do product package designing, create cleaner and earthy designs and showcase eco-friendly materials for mock products. Use eco-conscious palettes to weave visual narratives that engage conscious consumers.
This graphic design trend emphasizes a harmonious blend of aesthetics and ethics in your graphic designs.
Minimalist design
Minimalism is one of the recent graphic design trends that still has a lot of steam left in it. The traditional approach to minimalism prioritized using dark-colored text on a light background or vice versa and including only the essential design elements.
However, the modern wave of minimalism focuses on contrasting colors, for example, black and white. Designers now employ neon colors and muted palettes, combining bold fonts and simple gradients for balance.
This helps you target different demographics, neon hues attract younger audiences, while muted tones appeal to baby boomers.
In web design, minimalism simplifies the user interface, emphasizing user-friendliness, increased white space, limited color schemes, bold fonts, and the absence of unnecessary elements like textures and extra buttons.
A well-executed minimalist web design not only looks sleek but also enhances website responsiveness, ensuring a focus on the product or service. However, improper implementation can result in an unfinished and lackluster appearance.
Symbols
Have you heard of the design principle less is more? Symbols let you do exactly that. They communicate your brand’s message without any lengthy and descriptive copy involved.
When you see the McDonald's logo, you instantly think about fires and burgers; that is how their simple "M" symbol affects your brain and triggers emotions (in this case, hunger). A good design with a symbol makes your audience instantly think about your brand.
Symbols are a universal language that overcomes all language and cultural barriers. Multi-billion corporations always use symbols in their logos to communicate their corporate identity.
Pixels
To make your brand scream modern and innovative, consider tapping into the pixel trend. Nowadays, pixels aren't just for retro video games; they bring a unique mix of nostalgia and modernity to web design, animation, illustration, and branding.
Go beyond the small size – scale up those pixels for a surprising aesthetic twist in your projects.
Typography
Creative images, bold fonts, and long text were heavily used in many campaigns, creating a big creative mess without a distinctive focal point.
The good thing is that this formula is changing, and now designers have decided to focus on one visual element at a time, applying the principles of minimalist design.
This year brings focus on bold and custom typography.
It’s simple: when the bold font is used, it should take center stage in designs. They quickly capture the viewer’s attention and make them involved with your story.
The need to stand out in the highly competitive business world pushes designers to go above and beyond. That is why big brands are now enhancing their authenticity by creating custom typefaces.
Monochrome or duotone
One of the new trends in design that is certainly catching popularity in 2024 is designers creating image layouts using monochrome and duotone effects in search of the true brand layover identity.
You might think that the duotone trend is outdated and is “so last season”, but you are mistaken. It evolved with time, and now with the return of the gradients, you can see its true potential. Duotones are slowly taking over the role of whites and blacks and creating visuals that feel colorful and futuristic.
On the other hand, monochrome effects have also become increasingly popular. The creation of monochrome effects can't be more straightforward; just use the monochromatic filter, and you are good to go.
Vibrant fluorescent colors
In 2024, dive into this great graphic design trend by embracing vivid and energetic color palettes. Whether it's web design, branding, or print materials, infuse your creations with vibrant colors for a lasting impact.
Think fluorescent yellows, blues, oranges, and greens – let your designs speak loudly, telling powerful visual stories that leave a memorable mark. It's all about making your designs stand out in a fresh, modern way.
Hand-drawn illustrations
Since this is the era of minimalistic graphic design, authentic and simple design stands out. Hand-drawn illustrations help you incorporate unique visual assets into your brand’s identity.
Any hand-drawn design is complicated and hard to imitate, so you can be sure your hand-drawn illustrations will stand out no matter if someone tries to replicate them.
Data visualizations
Infographics are a great way to simplify your data and present it in a reader-friendly way to your audience.
Data visualization is trending in design because it grabs viewers’ attention by using simple pie or bubble charts. You can even spice things up by creating visually appealing infographics.😉
Doodles
Doodles are hand-drawn, often whimsical, drawings that do not follow the rules of graphic designing; that’s why they are so personal. Hence, doodles are a great way to add a personal touch to your designs and authentically deliver your brand’s message.
This trend reflects the charm of handcrafted styles in a digital era, emphasizing the spontaneity and engagement of design. Embrace the unpretentious and endearing world of doodles, where every stroke is a unique expression of imagination and character.
Photography
Staged photography that is too polished, professional, and clean is something people don't like to see as much as they once did. It seems like there was a saturation point that designers needed to break, and they did that by using genuine and authentic photos.
Give up trying to find the perfect-looking picture for your content, and focus on finding the photos that are unique, authentic, and feature a semi-pro look.
Viewers love seeing good amateur photography on-brand campaigns. This way, they see how their favorite brand pays attention to their users and gives kudos for their efforts and feedback.
Slide decks
Customize presentations with social slide decks for engaging content. This graphic design trend is ideal for platforms like Instagram and LinkedIn since these decks can transform your blog posts into visually appealing, condensed formats, boosting attention.
You can even create videos or images for fun and simple summarizations to enhance audience engagement.
Gradients
Gradients have been a popular web design trend and in graphic designing, gradients are making a roaring comeback.
Seamlessly blending colors, they create mesmerizing transitions for added depth and dimension in your designs. Gradients are versatile – use them in backgrounds, typography, or logos.
Instead of plain background colors, spice things up with gradients. Their strong visual impact makes them recognizable, even a key element in your brand identity.
Whether it's a subtle fade or a striking shift, expect gradients to add an extra layer of visual intrigue to your design projects this year.
Collage
In 2024's graphic design scene, collages emerge as a standout trend, seamlessly blending images, shapes, and textures for visually stimulating compositions. They offer freedom from traditional constraints, allowing designers to express unique visions.
Whether digital mosaics or handcrafted cut-and-paste pieces, collages bring raw authenticity that aligns with captivating visual storytelling. Designers will continue to weave collages into their work, blending the old and new, showcasing a timeless allure in the digital age.
Mixed media arranged into collage layouts brings a distinct and appealing aesthetic to the forefront of graphic design trends.
Generative AI
Since the launch of text-to-image generative AI tools like Dall-E and Midjourney, many more AI-based tools have come up that enhance your graphic design process. These tools automate elements like backgrounds and textures, adapting styles quickly.
AI makes it easier for you to personalize your content by optimizing layouts, suggesting color palettes, and generating unique fonts. It synthesizes realistic images, aiding in dynamic branding and diverse content creation.
It’s time for key takeaways
As you can see, graphic design industry trends constantly evolve to meet modern consumerism's demands and the ever-increasing need to simplify and optimize the user experience.
Finding a professional graphic designer can help you stay on top of the current trends in graphic design. However, it's not an easy task. You need to assess various designers, constantly stay in touch with them, wait days or weeks for the delivery, and in some cases, pay even more if you need revisions of your designs.
ManyPixels can help you out.
Get your designs within 48 hours and that too at a flat monthly fee. And did I tell you that no extra charges no matter how many revisions you ask for?
So, what are you waiting for? Let’s have a quick chat and get you started on a new (and trendier) chapter for your organization.
