Modern Graphic Design Trends
I’m all for modern design and changing how things are done, that’s what design is. Design is figuring out how to present information in a way that looks nice and makes sense. It should flow and be easy to tell what relates to what. It should be balanced and not cluttered. Good design has changed a lot over the years and decades but the basic elements always hold true.
Design always goes through trends until they change and the old way starts to look dated but that doesn’t make it bad design. Currently design trends are becoming more and more minimalist. Minimalist is fine as long as it is done well. There can still be various styles within a trend, not everything must look exactly the same.
For example, in the last few years owls have become popular. At the beginning I saw owls, drawn in many different ways. Most were cartoony but different styles. Some were sketchy, some were detailed, some were clean and gradated and others were flat. Some looked like barn owls and others looked like snowy owls. They all looked different, now I feel like they all look the same, everywhere I look I see the same style owl, the same shape, the same color themes, there is no variety within the style of cartoon owls anymore. It’s not like I’m asking for owls painted in the style of realist, cubist, impressionist… I’m just looking for something other than the one style that everyone decided is the one and only allowed to exist anymore.
I just picked the owl example because its easy to talk about but I see it throughout the world of design. Web design trends, logos, packaging, billboards, tv commercials. I was looking for a website template and I have looked at hundreds of designs and they all have the logo in the top left, a wide image stretching across the whole screen, text over the image with a button, the navigation is transparent over the image on the top right. There are always three icons under the image bar with text. I just described 75% of the templates. They are all exactly the same! They just put different placeholder images in and a diferent hipster font and call it a new template!
I feel like the minimalist trend in design is somewhat a cop out from designing anything with substance. If there is nothing in the design but one image and text and flat colored boxes there isn’t much to design. I tend to get lost on sites like that as there’s nothing to separate related and non related items, it just becomes one big clean sheet of scattered text. I’m just not into it. Just like the owl, it started as one style and was refined and refined and refined until no variety exists anymore. I think it’s because everyone copies and inmates everything else and is afraid to put their own spin on it. If they do put their own creative touch on it, their client may not like it and they won’t be hired for the project. They play it even safer and copy others that were playing it safe. It eventually becomes this watered down tasteless design that is indistinguishable from anyone else’s.
If you are an artist or work with an artist of any kind, be creative, come up with something new. Be that different company, the one that stands out because you weren’t afraid to try something that’s a little out there!
Here are a few of the template sites I was browsing. There are a few in there that standout as different but the bulk I can hardly find the diferences between.
https://colorlib.com/wp/multipurpose-html5-website-templates/
https://designscrazed.org/free-responsive-html5-css3-templates/
https://speckyboy.com/2015/03/26/20-free-html5-web-templates/
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