Tuesday, March 12, 2019

Design Trends for 2019

2019 is here! Let's explore the design trends and their techniques to use in our own creative projects.


Colours


1. Living Coral

First up, let's look at colours. Pantone has picked Living Coral, an orangey-pink as their flagship for the year. Which is still very reminiscent of the Millennial Pink trend of recent years. It's a safe bet that Living Coral will pair nicely with Millennial Pink in the fashion world. Living Coral is probably going to harmonize with all that mermaid merchandise that's so popular right now too.

Pantone Colour of the Year : Living Coral

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Design Element Trends


1. Asymmetry

Asymmetry brings in so many possibilities for your designs. You can section out your layouts with block of color, large images and patterns. Balance is still important but remember do away with floating your content in one seamless sea of colour. If you are using large photographic images, converting them to black and white will prevent them from overpowering your information but still providing an interesting background.






2. Lineless & finelined illustrations

It's time to master the shapes and colours in your illustrations and keep the line work to a minimum - heavy clean lines are not the rage this year. Either use no key lines at all or use fine feathery details that have a hand drawn quality.




3. Isometric Drawings

This style of drawing gives me nostalgia for 90's games like Landstalker and Diablo. It's a great way to give your illustrations some depth without needing overly detailed 3D rendered pictures. Use limited colour palettes that harmonize with the rest of your design and don't forget a little bit of gradient for depth.

4. Gradients & Duotones

Gradients and Duotones are still hot.

5. Metallics & Sparkles

Get out that shimmer and shine. Glitter is back! Fashion, cosmetics and everyday items are getting a touch of magical shine. Gold leafing and foiling for your art projects and print design is a definite yes. That sparkly lipstick and face glitter you've been hiding for 15 years? Bring it out! I would like to personally thank the current unicorn trend for making this stuff cool again.


6. Short Animations

To be honest, it's been a while since I did any animation for a website as it started to become tacky and annoying beyond simple button rollovers. Now that flash is dead, what does everyone use to animate?

7. Chromatic Aberrations 

Chromatic aberration is usually something you want to avoid in photography however this technique has been gaining popularity in illustration and animation. I've noticed quite a lot of anime use this effect to create visual interest in their linework. Instead of the lineart being all color, it is being multi-colored to imitate chromatic aberrations from lower quality photos.


References