Design Trends...Should We Follow Them?

By Konstance Smith, Art Director

As creatives it’s important to be informed on current design trends. Viewing trends and the work of others helps stimulate our own unique ideas and pushes us to be more inventive, creative, and original. If we want to be the best, (and we do) it is vital that we know the current techniques used and the work that is being produced. We need to know what our competition is doing. Studying trends helps us to evaluate our own work to ensure that we prevent our designs and ideas from becoming boring and stale.

Advertising design must be exceptional to stand apart from the competition. If we use the same techniques and style over and over, eventually our work will blend in. As designers we want to “WOW” our clients. When my work is critiqued internally, I can tell instantly if it is good, fresh, and modern because I will get an immediate “WOW” response. If the team hesitates and needs to study the design to point out what is good about it...the design needs a lot of work and sometimes abandoned. We need our designs to grab the viewer at first glance. As designers it helps us to study and be familiar with current design trends, to see the possibilities of design and to push the envelope in our own unique direction.

With that being said, we never use a font, technique, color palette, etc. just because it happens to be a current trend. Design should be unique, the goal is to stand out, not to have your work look like everything else on the market. It’s about being informed, then taking risks and setting your own trends. It’s especially important to be cautious following trends when it comes to your brand. Trends come and go quickly. It is crucial that design reflects and is true to your brand and is not just based on a passing trend. Keeping your brand fresh is vital, but it’s essential to figure out how to have a modern look and feel without losing your brand identity.

Do you remember the Tropicana rebranding disaster from 2009? That is a perfect example of losing sight of a true brand and putting too much emphasis on changing and modernizing it. The packaging design was simplified and Tropicana’s iconic orange with protruding straw was discarded and replaced by a simple glass of juice. Instead of a successful rebranding for Tropicana, the result left the new packaging looking like what some described as generic, store brand, and hard to find on the shelf. The new packaging lasted less than two months and was then discarded.

So in summary do we recommend following design trends? Yes and No. Our advice: Be knowledgeable concerning them, and then exceed them. Set your own trends. Strive to be industry leaders, not followers. Figure out what works best for your client, their brand and gives them an edge against their competitors.