Trends and such?
During the last few days of the previous week, I was given the immense pleasure of doing some internet research on trends for 2010. And guess what? Nobody really seems to know what is going on. Everyone has an opinion, of course, but they are all very much different. Some say it’s back to the drawing board with organic, hand created material (hand lettering, pencil illustration) and others say the 80’s revival is still going strong. See the pictures of the Never Hide Ray-Ban campaign.
What I got from this, is to combine the two, creating psychedelically coloured hand drawn elements and collaging and juxtaposing all of this together. What I did agree with, was the come back of the grid system, especially in web design. Web designers are becoming increasingly more aware of the need to hierarchically organise elements on web pages, avoiding the cluttered nature of many web site designs out there.
This is why Adobe Flash is going to boom in the coming years and browsers such as Internet Explorer will have to incorporate that adventurous element, which they have been ignoring forever. This might be the case with the rise of html 5, which will be released sometime this year and will aim to reduce the need for proprietary plug-in-based rich internet application technologies such as Adobe Flash. I don’t think this is going to happen. Competition is always good, and Adobe will only aim higher with their next version of Flash.
Anyway, to come back to the trends, let’s talk about personalization. This is an interesting topic and one that many people have mentioned. People are becoming aware of the way we are loosing contact and touch with one another. This can already be seen in the sudden rise of markets such as good food markets and especially the super trendy Saturday hangout spot at the Old Biscuit Mill in Woodstock. Only the coolest of cool people go there and it’s probably the most dense concentration of snobs at any particular time ( I have been there, too).
It’s weird to mention personalization, because the company I just started working at is all about this, hence the name Personera (era of the person). People are all for getting back things they can touch, see and feel and products that are close to their heart, family and friends. We want to make the digital tangible again, and this trend will see the rise of many similar companies incorporating online media with offline, printable sensibilities.
Furthermore, the only other thing I could find, was the resurgence of the white space (it actually has a Wiki article). This is also referred to as negative space and is very important in especially graphic design and general information design. Your elements need breathing space mmmkay?
That’s that then for today. Do any of you agree with these trends? And do you even follow trends or do you think it is impossible not to follow trends?