As our world evolves under the weight of a global pandemic, following creative trends in photography, illustration, design, and motion become as important as ever as we spend more of our lives online (is that even possible!?) engaging in digital connection to friends and family, remote work, and online play.
Remember when we dove into our new Covid, work-from-home lifestyles? We embraced self-care, sweatpant sets, and new recipes. But the days were long and the coffee wasn’t strong enough–and now, people are looking for more. They’re longing for meaningful connection and the visuals to express themselves.
Adobe frequently scours content through Adobe Stock search requests, customer data, and major industry campaigns to forecast design and creative trends and themes for the coming year, and here’s their latest trends forecast:
Visual Trends:
- Powerfully Playful: Optimism and playfulness are shown with big smiles, bold colors, dancing, and animation.
- The Centered Self: Simone Biles much? Prioritizing our mental health and self-care isn’t going away any time soon.
- Prioritize Our Planet: Big 2021 natural disasters have brought a renewed focus on the climate crisis, and many brands are aligning with climate-friendly solutions. See how our client, Dynapower, is embracing a climate-friendly focus.
- In the Groove: Dancing bodies, swirling hair, and lots of dynamic motion. Because, honestly, most of us are just sitting here.
Design Trends:
- Soft Pop: Squishy, round, bendy-looking shapes with soft, candy colors like pale pink, yellow, blue, and pastels.
- New Naturalism: Black, white, and earth tones mixed with a minimal and clean aesthetic are driving designs in fashion and home interiors.
- Heritage Craft: Celebrating diversity and heritage with folk art, patterns, people, and nature themes.
- Otherworldly Visions: The popularity of alternative reality is showing up in themes with color gradients, optical illusions, high-tech 3D, and sci-fi themes.
Motion Trends:
- Metaverse Mix: We don’t even know what a metaverse is exactly, but gaming is definitely influencing the design world with digital effects, grids, and graphics that look like physical spaces.
- Get Moving: Movement, dance, and rhythm are fascinating to watch.
- Dimensional Delights: Backgrounds, 3D renders, and motion graphics are creating delight for the eye with dimensional shapes and bright colors.
Copy & Captions:
Using text overlays, captions, and subtitles is a must for 2022 video content, as many social consumers are viewing content with their sound off. Accessibility for the hearing impaired has also become a top priority.
Learn more about the 2022 creative trends.
