To kick off the new year many creative magazines, blogs and industry commentators try and get a handle on what trends might prevail over the next 12 months or so. Here are just some of the predictions that are tipped to have a big influence in the next year. It'll be interesting to see how many of these prove to be correct.
1. Colour
According to Pantone (a leading colour matching system used worldwide), next years colour is 'Mamosa' — or Pantone 14-0848. This is a bright and vibrant yellow — no doubt Pantone are trying to counteract the possible gloom of 2009 with this sunny colour. Clients may take some persuading, but if they want to be regarded as positive, bold and optimistic this may well be the right colour to go for.
2. Authenticity and 'keeping it real'
Kicking against the celebrity obsessed years we have recently experienced, 2009 will focus more on real people with attainable lifestyles. Realism and honesty takes over from the false and the fake. This has been a trend that has been gathering pace throughout 2008 and is set to continue strongly in 2009. There is no doubt that this has been fuelled by 'Credit Crunch' and people wanting to get back to what's familiar and trustworthy — a more simplistic and less materialistic attitude. This is evident in the fact that there has been a huge spike in the numbers of people growing their own vegetables or deciding to improve their homes instead of selling them. This shift in attitude will undoubtedly influence the style and the 'tone of voice' of marketing and advertising material over the next 12 months. Consumers and clients alike will want to read text and see imagery which warm, inspiring, perhaps even fun — but most of all genuine.
3. Blogs
Blogs have been sidelined a little with the increase in popularity of social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook and communication tools like Twitter. Ironically, many bloggers now spend more time on social sites than they do on their own blog but, as their online identities spread out further and further, in 2009 bloggers will re-center their online identity around their blog where they have complete freedom over the site structure, design, features and content. Blogs will be used to pull in social networking data like never before. Blog themes will powerfully integrate these in a meaningful and useful way — as a permanent record all bundled together in one place.
Bloggers will continue to redesign for wider screens to enable the display larger photos and large widescreen videos. Bloggers will crop their images to be widescreen format, rather than the standard photo sizes — appreciating the wide screen look more. New default templates that come with blogging tools will also finally be wider.
4. Website design and usability
In the fast moving and ever changing sphere of the digital domain it's no wonder that there are a myriad of trends predicted for 2009. These range from creating much more engaging user interfaces to the use of more white space and less (but more useful) text. Perhaps the most important though is the links that are starting to be made between websites, blogs, e-commerce, social and business networking sites — how they are used and how they relate to each other in a more meaningful way. These tools will allow far more user generated content to be available and will support the move from traditional 'Out-bound' marketing (my ad budget is bigger than yours!) to 'In-bound' marketing which is based on a collaborative, permission based techniques.
5. Logo Design
Each year Logo Lounge (an online forum) publishes what it sees will be the trends in logo design for the coming year. As Logo Lounge has subscribers from around the world it's quite interesting to see what's happening with logo and identity design on a globally scale.
The following general trends — or prevailing winds — popped-up all over the world:
- Less emphasis on sustainability or general "greenness" in logo design. There's plenty of natural imagery, but being "green" doesn't seem all that unique anymore.
- Colors are becoming more vivid. Desaturation has drained away, and the chroma factor pumped up.
- There's an overall move toward cleanliness - in type, in line, in color - as if ideas are getting more and more succinct. It may be an indication of the degree of seriousness with which branding is now regarded.
- Less is more common: less calligraphy, less Photoshop tricks, less artificial highlights.
- Finally pattern and illustration hang on in there. With a bottomless treasure chest of visual history constantly at the ready through retail collections and over the internet, it's a direction that's not likely to run its course soon, if ever.
