In 2024, rising cultural movements are affecting the visual design space. From the shift toward post-cringe and post-quiet luxury to vintage tech nostalgia, new and revived codes are defining how we express connectivity, aesthetics, and functionality.
TREND 1: QUIRK-PILLED
The design world has entered a post-cringe era, now favoring nonchalance and playfulness over excessive polish. Quirk-Pilled visuals emphasize branded characters and handmade elements, fostering an emotional connection with audiences.
This aesthetic responds to the overwhelming nature of graphic designs in the digital era, which heavily leaned towards 3D modeling, AI infusions, and futuristic elements. Known for its approachable style, Quirk-Pilled designs are characterized by their embrace of everything handmade: from stickers and handwritten fonts to unrefined illustrations.
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GRAPHICS: DOODLES
Doodles are infusing visuals with whimsy and dynamism. They can appear as accents or serve as brand hero characters. This hand-drawn approach lends a human touch to these unique brands, fostering authentic connections with their audience. Graza is just one example of the many brands that are making doodles a central point of their visual identity.
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COLORS: HI-LOW CONTRAST
Quirk-Pilled designs tend to utilize clashing colors, playing with both low and high contrasts, and employing repetition to make a statement. An example of this is the Good Girl Snacks website, whose clashy color palette reveals and conceals features as you scroll through the site, adding a visual narrative to the design.
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TYPEFACES: THICK SANS
Heavy, bold typefaces are prominent in Quirk-Pilled designs. Soft curvatures and dynamic line accents add to the whimsy of this aesthetic. Some font options we love are Bollity, Golliga, and Malleik.
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IMAGES: QUIRKY COMPOSITIONS
Quirky still-life compositions are central to this visual style. This trend invites us to play with our imagination, exploring new configurations of what the real world could look like.
Plenty of quirky compositions can be found on the DTS platform, This photo is from 'Herbal Pioneer', now available to members.
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TREND 2: BIT-CORE
As our lives grow increasingly digital, we long for a time when technology felt less overpowering. Bit-core is a retro-futuristic aesthetic that uses lo-fi tech references to invoke a sense of nostalgic comfort.
Taking cues from the ongoing '80s revival, Bit-core modernizes the synthwave aesthetic with gradients, perspective angles, and prominent photography. It employs straight lines and shadows to create depth, inviting the audience to escape to a time that feels both modern and familiar. This aesthetic aims to reflect a somewhat forgotten sensibility around innovation, reminding us that technology can be created for us, not just happen to us.
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GRAPHICS: GEOMETRIC
The use of perspective angles and diagonal lines brings geometric forms to the heart of storytelling in the Bit-core aesthetic, creating immersive 3D scenes. Additionally, some brands and editorials are using repetition to create dynamic geometric patterns. This is seen in this cover of Wallpaper Magazine.
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COLORS: FLUORIZED GRADIENTS
Gradients have been trending in recent years, but they’ve completely flourished with the Bit-core aesthetic. By seamlessly blending bold hues from one shade to another, gradients give this visual style depth and dimension. The use of bold, fluorescent hues has given Bit-core its retro-futuristic flair.
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TYPEFACES: PIXELMANIA
Pixels have been appearing everywhere from fashion to product design. In 2024, Pixelmania has reached the world of typefaces, affecting both sans-serif and cursive fonts, as seen in this example.
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IMAGES: TECH NOSTALGIA
Bit-core utilizes bold photography to anchor its aesthetic in reality. Images portraying vintage-looking technology dominate this space; examples include vintage computer screens, keyboards, and mice, as seen in this Brewser campaign. Pro tip: look up 'MISC by Jelly Luise' to find images like these on the DTS platform.
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TREND 3: BOLD MINIMALISM
Timeless and purposeful does not have to mean 'boring'! Bold Minimalism is the utilitarian aesthetic poised to make waves in 2024. After an era dominated by maximalist design, bold minimalism strips away the excess, revealing the essence of your brand.
Bold Minimalism fuses simplicity with impact, employing text as a design element and playing with size to make a statement. It introduces bold colors, creating attention-grabbing contrast against clean canvases. Clean lines and highly functional design forms are also characteristic of this uncluttered aesthetic.
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GRAPHICS: UTILITARIAN
Brands employing Bold Minimalism employ utilitarian forms to generate trust with their target audience. These forms often draw inspiration from recognizable elements of day-to-day items, ranging from tools to manuals. Brands like Nogum and The Absorption Company took this to new heights by creating designs inspired by periodic tables.
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COLORS: B&W&B[old]
Minimalism’s signature preference for black and white designs is receiving a striking twist. Bold Minimalism infuses bold colors, a defining feature of the aesthetic’s high-contrast nature.
The paint brand Gush takes the utilitarian disposition of this aesthetic a step further, using clear packaging to contrast with the brand’s bold product tags, which nod to the vibrancy of their offering.
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TYPEFACES: MIX-UP
Experimental typography has been trending for a while, but Bold Minimalism has given it a more purposeful flair, emphasizing accessibility. Instead of creating new experimental typefaces, designers are experimenting with font combinations, merging sans and cursive styles within statement words.
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IMAGES: STANDOUT STUDIO
Standout studio images have embraced the Bold Minimalist aesthetic, showcasing standout pieces against contrastingly plain backgrounds. The 'Fantasy' series, available to members on the DTS platform, embodies this trend.
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