Last year was a wild one. No matter where you live, a lot of things have probably changed for you. The way that people interact with each other on a day to day basis is changing, and it’s likely that we’ve only just begun to see the way that design is going to change in response to the past year.
The sudden popularity of the simple social game Among Us that took the internet by storm last year seems to be a microcosm of the current trend: In the absence of our normal social activities, we’re looking for new ways to connect with each other.
what are the design trends for 2021?
So what are the upcoming graphic design trends for 2021?
retro-futrism
This year, we’re going to keep seeing the evolution of a trend that has been growing in popularity during the past year: the idea of Retro-Futurism.
While various “retro” or “vintage” styles have been cycling back around for years now, the most recent trend has seen designers take visual elements or inspiration from vintage sources and update them to embody a more modern design sensibility.
Image via Nathan Holthus
This has been especially prominent with typography. Many designers are using big, bold letters reminiscent of retro poster graphic design, but updating the fonts to be cleaner and more straightforward.
Another unique trend has been designers reimagining current pop culture topics with a vintage design aesthetic, like this crossover between current musical artist Phoebe Bridgers and famous horror author Stephen King’s 1980’s novel covers.
glassmorphism
If you’ve seen any other articles talking about design trends, you were probably expecting this one. It seems like a lot of people these days are moving their UI design towards this trend known as “glassmorphism”.
Image via Monika Mosur
Glassmorphism is a popular design aesthetic that most often found in UI design, where background frames or buttons are made to look like “glass”; blurring the elements behind them but still allowing some elements of shape, light, and color to show through.
If used well, these elements can create a very sleek, modern look. It helps the UI to blend into the background, and can give a sense of depth and immersion to the user. This style was popularized by the iOS7 design system, but has seen a recent resurgence since last year.
However, if used excessively or without careful consideration, they can make a UI design much more confusing; making everything transparent, blurry, and out of context. So just be careful not to overuse this technique.
Hand-Drawn Illustration
The use of hand-drawn illustrations to create a sense of familiarity, softness, and authenticity is a time-honored tradition. But over the last year we’ve seen more and more brands moving in this direction. Illustration has the capacity to communicate a great deal about a brand in terms of feeling and story. It can create a sense of mood and place that isn’t possible with other forms of graphic design.
Image via nickvector
Many of our Vectornator users rely on our platform for creating content like this. Our precision interface allow for unparalleled control over your lines, and our platform supports third-party pencils and tablets, like the Wacom Intuos Pro.
Black & White Design
We’re seeing more and more companies moving towards adopting a dark palette. Most apps have the option to switch to a dark mode color scheme as a preference in their settings, but many apps these days are defaulting to a dark palette, with some even simplifying even further to a pure black and white scheme.
Image via SeamusLloyd
There are a lot of reasons for this, but one of the main ones is that dark color palettes are much less harsh on the eyes. Especially since we’ve started spending so much more time on our devices this year, there is a huge need to minimize the eye strain that can be caused by too much exposure to blue light. A design schema with a dark background helps the text pop without causing too much strain on the eyes.
As we said last year, we think that dark mode will start to become the default setting for more and more apps and websites in the future
natural inspiration
One of the biggest sources of inspiration we’re seeing in the graphic design world is the natural environment. More brands are adopting design elements in their logos and graphics that evoke or outright mimic elements of the natural world, such as plants, mountains, rivers, and more.
Additionally, there’s also a current design trend that incorporates texture into various elements, especially things like film grain and other, more tactile examples.
Image via sandra.staub
We’re also seeing more use of muted design palettes; color schemes that use earth tones and soft pastels. This is related in part to the rise of vintage modern design aesthetics.
Maybe the fact that we’ve all been spending a lot more time inside has something to do with this fascination with natural elements integrated into design.
Tactile Design
On the topic of natural design elements and vintage designs being modernized, there’s another graphic design trend that has begun to gain more traction in the past year: Tactile Design.
Image via Natalia Kuzmina
This design sensibility has to do with UI and graphic design that you can almost feel. From Google’s paper-mimicking “Material Design” style, to the sleekness of glassmorphism, and to textured surfaces we’re seeing from designs inspired by natural materials, the digital world is becoming less ethereal and more hands-on.
There’s also a recent trend of 3D art becoming popular in design, whether digitally created or photographed artwork made from physical media.
This feeling of tactility, no doubt inspired in part by the growing number of digital natives in the tech industry, shares some design elements with the handmade guerilla zine culture brought about by the first commercially available copy machines in the United States in the early 1950’s.