Design trends for 2019
Pantone Colour of the Year
Pantone’s new Colour of the Year is heading in a more therapeutic direction for 2019 with the selection of Living Coral PANTONE 16-1546. This new ‘life-affirming’ colour is not orange, and it’s not peach, but the colour of a vibrant sunset.
Colour is an equalising lens through which we experience our natural and digital realities and this is particularly true for living coral. With consumers craving human interaction and social connection the humanising and heartening qualities displayed by the convivial PANTONE Living Coral hit a responsive chord.
– Leatrice Eiseman, Executive Director of the PANTONE Color Institute.
According to the team at the Pantone Color Institute, Living Coral is “in reaction to the onslaught of digital technology and social media increasingly embedded into daily life” according to the press release, “[for those who] are seeking authentic and immersive experiences that enable connection and intimacy.”
Custom illustrations
Custom illustrations allow you to engage with your audience and represent your brand with a punch and dynamism not seen with stock content.
Bespoke illustrations enable you to convey your message while elevating your brand above your competition.
Complex gradients
Remember Word-Art? Well if you were to mention gradients, many people have the same reaction, but over the last two years, gradients have entered back into mainstream design.
Much of this can be blamed on Google and Microsoft. Yes really, as UX Planet reports, the introduction of Material design and Metro, Google and Microsoft’s design ecosystems respectively, limited designers to a suite of flat colours.
This meant that to ensure their products stood out, gradients are used by designers to blend colours, provide exciting experiences without completely breaking the flat design style.
What is a complex gradient? Complex gradients are endless, no longer from one colour to another across an axis, they’re gradients that don’t have limits. Our creative team can now extend your brand’s image with complex mesh gradients using the new mesh tool within Adobe Illustrator.
Isometric design
This method of design has been used by global brands and is especially prevalent within start-ups. Isometric design is relatively simple and no-doubt an effective way to showcase your brand.
More augmented reality
If your brand provides a physical product, delivers instructions to your users or you need to engage your audience in a complex message, then you need to be working with Augmented Reality.
This is genuinely mainstream, and consumers now expect brands to provide AR experiences driven by the rise of social media platforms using AR.
Ranging from Snapchat Lenses to enabling interactive CAD, if you haven’t added AR to your customer’s experience already, it’s vital that you explore this in 2019.
Fonts as a hero element
When everyone has a large hero image, how do you differentiate? Typography.
Typography is increasingly being used as a device to replace the traditional hero image. Global brands including Apple have chosen to make a statement by using typography as opposed to always using hero imagery.
Variable is the new responsive
The latest evolution of OpenType fonts, ‘variable fonts’ now allows designers to incorporate various typefaces into one package. In the world where digital experiences are expected to be ever faster, platforms are continually being pushed to include further features and content. This can cause for websites, apps and digital experiences to become bloated.
Adobe, Apple, Google and Microsoft have collaborated to develop a type file that can be split into editable sections, this allows designers to transition factors such as weight, width, spacing, slant, optical size and more, all from a single package.
Micro-interactions
Have you ever noticed the little animations when you like something on Facebook, or when you see a submit button transform into a loading icon? These are micro-interactions.
Small animations are used throughout websites and apps to create subtle visual effects that further engage the user, or provide additional context as to the interaction.
Microinteractions have been used since the days of Yahoo ‘You’ve got Mail’, but in 2019 brands now can push this further, improving the usability, storytelling and context of interactions on your website or app.
Custom made fonts
Want to ensure your brand really stands out from the crowd? Create a personal font.
This guarantees a unique experience for your users and has already been widely adopted by brands such as Netflix, Apple, Airbnb and Google.
Animate your brand personality
Animating your logo, brand device and other elements is an exciting, dynamic way to showcase your brand personality, within your brand identity.
Showcase your brand’s character and stand out from competitors as an animated logo guarantees originality.
3D illustrations
3D illustrated, and animated content is now attainable for less than it ever has been. Advancements in technology have allowed us to deliver 2D or 3D illustrations and animations at a quality only achieved in Hollywood 10 years ago.
