Does everything look the same?
This isn't just about trendy typefaces or the colors that are in right now. But let's zoom out and ask why we get these pockets of similarity. Recently Ashwinn posted a video about design trends, Elizabeth Goodspeed responded, and the discourse that followed focused mostly on consumer brands using typefaces like Editorial New.
But the more interesting conversation is: when should you adopt a trend, when should you violate it, and why? Trends are being reinforced and violated everywhere all the time, and it's one of the most useful tools in a designer's toolkit.
A trend is not just a pendulum swinging. Trends are powerful forces. They're aesthetic codes that can either place you in a group or signal your rejection of it. Graphic designers especially are obsessed with trends. Clients ask for them, and whether consciously or not, they steer work into certain established aesthetic lanes. The great clients will push you further, and talented art directors can make the most of an existing trend, or in rare cases, can violate it so effectively that they start a new one.
Trends are everywhere in design, from type to colors, to textures to compositions, to that guy who claims to invent dithering. Trends are present in fashion (obviously), industrial design, art, writing, even the naming of companies, product design, and social behaviors. Trends show up in mannerisms and slang, like my kid's current obsession with numbers that I won't be saying.
Choosing to join a trend, even as you push it forward, can help you in so many ways. It sends a signal that you adopt the values of a movement. It can signal authority and make novelty feel safe. Take Tesla. The earlier Tesla models adopted the basic aesthetics of existing luxury cars. The Teslas looked fine. They weren't exactly iconic. They gave early adopters novelty, but also safety in their choices.
Rejecting a trend on the other hand, can be even more powerful. Take the design of the cyber truck. This is a trend violation. It's extremely effective, love it or hate it. It's an iconic design and it hit the auto industry like a shock.
A more fun trend violation is Teenage Engineering's EP–1320 Medieval synthesizer. Synthesizers have a very default aesthetic that veers somewhere between sixties sci-fi and modern hardware design. But the iconoclastic Swedish designers of Teenage Engineering found a new aesthetic to mine: the Middle Ages.
Their design, right down to the Middle English on the buttons, rejected the aesthetics of modern hardware. It's delighted fans and provided totally fresh energy, even while evoking the aesthetics of scratchy wool cloth instead of polished aluminum.
When you're planning a project, it's useful to think critically about which trends you'll consciously or subconsciously adopt, and which ones you'll violate and why. Riding the wave of a trend, whether you're choosing to use it or reject it, it can be one of the most powerful early decisions that you'll make.
