Influence of Covid on Design trends

More often than not, design is influenced by what we experience around us in the world. Our surroundings play a crucial role in defining design trends, from product to architecture and brand identity design, each design sector evolves and grows into something more meaningful for the prevailing times, consumer needs and behavior. While today we are slowly transitioning into a post-pandemic world, the design trends around us are more focused on giving an opposite of stress, anxiety and isolation the world has gone through during the pandemic and lockdowns.

Read more: How metaverse is going to change the way you design things

We bring you a few design trends that capture the changing times and reflect on how covid has been a strong influence on design;

Optimistic design

With a constant bombardment of negative imaginary and news across globe, design addressed this by bringing to people happy, vibrant, colorful, uplifting and even humorous design that was need of the hour and relevant, even today, to lighten the mood that the pandemic, social and political inequity soured people with.

Packaging design, poster/ social media creative design, interactive web design are some design spaces where this was seen more prominently. Brands like Woop introduced a light blue packaging and smiling sun imagery on the cover.

Environment/ nature inspired design, focused on sustainability

Lockdowns led to the world having a newfound appreciation for nature and outdoors. Craving for secluded locations for work-cations, taking more walks in parks, treks, riding bicycles and gathering outside to feel a sense of belonging to break the monotony of home became popular.

Design captured this only in terms of nature-inspired hues and color palettes, but also organic shapes, more raw approach to design like hand-drawn illustrations, DIY techniques that help emulate and create an outdoor experience at home.

Product designers, packaging and brand identity designers played a crucial role in defining this particular trend. Many start-ups built on the concept of promoting themselves as a vegan friendly, recycled/upcycled concept made sure their brand identity design, product design and consumers interactions with the creatives were focused on also bringing out the message of sustainability.

Read more: Top trends shaping the UX design industry

Nostalgia (80’s to 90’s / Retro Vibe)

No doubt that when the world came to a stand still being stressed inside their homes, appreciation for the past came into picture. A reflection on the pre-pandemic world was a common conversation among various age groups as people started reminiscing about the good times and seeked a sense of comfort and peace from that thought.

In the design world this was seen in terms of retro typography design and color palettes, patterns that took a viewer back to a time where things seemed simpler. Netflix’s Cobra Kai and Stranger Things series were seen to have brought back 80s nostalgia with their take on the series posters. Many brands also took on simple emojis, sketchy illustrations, dripping slime and more aspects of the 80’s and 90’s.

Transition from 2D to 3D ( with AR and VR tech)

The upward trend in 3D design continues to evolve and establish itself further in the design world. It offers designers unlimited room for creativity to build realistic 3D visuals that help to blur the line between digital and physical elements. Metaverse design is one fine example of this. Many brands are using interactive game play in 3D to build unique UX/UI for their websites and applications. 3D characters are the new it thing of the industry and designers working to make these 3D characters interact with users to enhance their experiences. AR and VR technologies are some of the important disruptions that are helpful in this transition.

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Expressive, artful typography

In addition to the general want and desire of more optimistic design, use of more playful colors and interactive 3D mediums – typography design has been seen to lift the spirits of the people as well. With its playful and expressive nature, designers are working with typography in spirited shapes, geometric designs and making it even more unique.

This shift has been seen from the minimal sans serif that today seems to be rather cold and rigid when the time today calls for a more warm, authentic and personal approach to help form a connection with the viewers.

Holographic design

Known for its high-gloss and multidimensional pastel highlights, holographic design helps to define high-tech and more futuristic approach in design. With holographic design, even the static image highlights will give the impression of movement, making it appear similar to a 3D design. For this effect 3D designers have been known to love this design trend. In the world of fashion, stationary products and packaging design, this trend is really making waves, leading further to web realms, apps, brand identity design and animation.

Also Read: The new AI-driven tools to help designer’s work

Other notable influences of covid in design are the technological disruption in design, the pandemic and work-from-home culture pushed the use of AI, AR, VR and other tech innovations into our daily design work along with remote collaboration tools helping designers work as a collective team. Today there are strong AI tools that help from building storyboards, wireframes to posters and much more that are aiding work for designers and helping them to focus on core tasks at hand.

We can conclude that design helps us process our feelings while also giving a voice to those feelings. This helps in making them more manageable and enjoyable. Today, the world as a collective is growing and moving forward, design will continue to evolve and new trends will emerge to offer people a new sense of hope, desire, interaction, perspective, fun and playfulness – all essential to process the world we live in.

If you are set on becoming the next generation designer, Strate School of Design is your ideal choice. Strate’s core offering is in building a student skill set that helps them in adopting the current trends with ease. Strate will offer you learnings on the latest of market disruption, innovations in design sector and one that influence design with live workshops and curated masterclasses.