Typographic Chaos might be one of the most appropriate trends for the year 2021. It perfectly embodies the chaotic nature of the past year, but at the same time, provides beauty, creativity, and inspiration. This trend breaks all the rules, and we couldn’t love it more.

Experimentation

For designers who really want to flex their creative muscles, experimenting with typographic chaos is an opportunity to let your artistic flair fly. Experimentation and finding new approaches beyond traditional typographic systems is a creative way to see what moves your audience. Pushing the limits of communication by testing new ways of how an audience reacts to subject matter is truly a task for the artist.

“While clarity in design is imperative, sometimes it’s OK to put the cookies on the top shelf. Sometimes it’s OK to invite our audiences to reach a little. Their effort can reward them delight.” – Greg Breeding

Type Heavy

It almost goes without saying that Chaos Typography is well… type heavy! There may be photos or illustrations accompanying the type, but the chaotic nature of the typography’s design takes center stage. Whether disjointed, bubbly, 3D, or simply chaotic, the typography is the main focal point of the design, and it’s what draws the viewers in.

Breaking the Rules

The Royal Albert Hall by Alan Kitching

Typographic chaos throws classic rules of graphic design and typography out the window. Breaking the rules is part of what makes this design trend so fun – opening up your creative and artistic ability to design something so eye-catching, your audience will want to take the time to pause, deconstruct it, and take it all in. Chaos typography doesn’t stick to hierarchy, grid system or legibility. You can utilize a lack of text and letter alignment, mix the order of letters and words, and generally, break the rules as you go.

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Gold is timeless for branding, and the modern-day application of it is definitely not your grandma’s gaudy gold. We’ve consistently seen the rise of this trend over the years, and frankly, it’s not going anywhere. From delicate accents to elevate a brand’s sophistication to bold eye-catching metallics front and center, gold takes the cake. This versatile trend isn’t the easiest to implement, so Grandma, put your spectacles on and read carefully!

Gold, Not Yellow

Let’s start with the biggest pain point designers face – gold doesn’t mean yellow. Achieving gold in your branding isn’t an easy task, and we highly recommend professionals (ahem, nice to meet you) to take on this challenge. When looking through different examples of gold in branding, you’ll likely notice the heavy presence of photography, images and textures used. Recreating gold in design can easily turn flat and simply appear yellow, with no hint of metallic. If you’re desperate to try it yourself, we’ve found that a web-friendly version of gold can be achieved using the hex code #D4AF37 or RGB value of 212, 175, 55. You can check out some hex code examples here.

Read the Room

While we love to rave about the beauty of gold in design, it has to speak to your audience to work well. Gold has often been a signifier of wealth and extravagance, glamour and beauty, even optimism. Just as all of these attributes can be inspirational and eye-catching, if overdone, they can quickly be internalized as greedy, excessive, and materialistic. Finding that sweet middle ground is likely where you want to be. Particularly with the state of the world today – using gold in an understated and delicate fashion will likely land the best, but of course, it all depends on your audience.

Less is More

Using gold sparingly might be the single best advice we can give. An overuse of gold can actually cheapen the look of the design, and ultimately your brand. Pairing delicate lines of gold with muted and modern palettes and graphics will give a timeless and luxurious feel, without taking things too over the top. A small dose of gold is a fantastic way to give your products a little extra-something-something (you know what we mean). One of our favourite examples of branding and packaging we created for a client is The Haven Project. You can read more about the luxury & modern branding we did here.

What Goes with Gold?

It’s not just a question for your wardrobe, but understanding how to mix and match gold is imperative to graphic design. First and foremost, it depends on what type of colour scheme will guide your project. Here are some examples:

• Complementary – This type of colour scheme would use the complementary colours of gold: blues & purple blues, greens & violets. These are what we would commonly refer to as jewel tones, a highly popular colour combination with gold.
• Monochromatic – Using a monochromatic gold colour scheme can use the entire range of pale gold to dark, antique gold to create an entirely gold colour palette.
• Duochromatic – An extremely common colour scheme with gold is duotones, utilizing gold and a secondary, muted colour such as grey.
• Triadic – A triadic gold colour scheme includes red and blue, as they are equidistant from gold on a modern colour wheel.

If gold speaks to your brand, but you don’t want to get into the intricacies of designing it – let us do the leg work! You can book your hour-long, complimentary consultation here. 

Duotone and Colour Monochromatic designs have become more and more popular in recent years, and we’re loving the resurgence of this throwback. This style of branding is creative, eye-catching, and customers love it. But does it fit your brand? It’s more versatile than you may think, so if you’re looking for a style that creates impact – read on.

Futuristic

If your brand is edgy, forward-thinking, and creative, duotones specifically might be your answer. The best and most common example we can point to is the branding done by Spotify. Their duotones create eye-catching and visually stunning graphics for artist picks and playlists. Brighter, more neon colours for high-energy playlists, and cooler, calming colours for mellow beats. The colour truly sets the mood.

Gradients

Whether you’re going strictly monochromatic or using a duotone format, the use of gradients allows you to create a sophisticated and soothing effect with these palettes. This is ideal for natural brands aiming to portray a calming effect with greens, blues, or yellows. The simple colour palette, combined with the soothing visual of gradients, creates a sense of harmony and is ideal for brands who want to portray this as a key part of their brand identity.

Simplicity

A simple palette means more time to spend on illustrations and complex graphics. The duo and monotone trend has partly been influenced by the desire to have more complex graphics in branding and design. Coupling highly detailed illustrations with a complicated colour palette can be overwhelming for the viewer. Using duo or monotone colours combined with intricate graphics is easier for the viewer to digest what they’re seeing. For the designer, this provides more time to spend on the illustration and less time on the palette. A win-win situation if you ask us!

Eye Catching

If you’re going for the wow factor – duotone and colour monochromatic palettes are certainly eye-catching. The simple palette creates a striking and strong presence for viewers. So whether you’re looking to create a futurist and edgy identity, or represent a natural and earthy brand, duotones and colour monochromatic can work in your favour.

Curious if your business can benefit from incorporating duotones into your brand strategy? Book a consultation at Cloud9 Marketing today!

Socially Conscious Design has been one of the most powerful design trends in recent years. This design trend focuses on showing solidarity and support for social, environmental, and justice issues through graphic design. Essentially, it is artists using their talent and voice to promote the betterment of society. The need for social and environmental change has reached a tipping point, and creators and brands have stepped up to the plate to show support and create awareness. There are some key attributes that are important when designing for change, but let’s start with possibly the most important of them all.

Authentic & Representative

Authenticity is the underlying attribute that must be present in the design and the promotion for socially conscious design. Some of the largest protests in the world have been powered by social media, and that wouldn’t have happened if the messaging was inauthentic or misplaced. Authenticity not only means being true to oneself but the person identified. It’s important that when designing for change, a designer takes their own preferences out of the situation, and designs with the community’s voice in mind. This might mean a fact-finding mission of gathering feedback, research, and learning cultural norms about the community or cause you to wish to support and design with this top of mind.

Informative

Design for Change generally always has an element of information embedded in it. Whether it’s in the actual graphic, or a description in a social media post explaining facts related to the design, it’s there. In socially conscious design, it’s common to see info-graphs or bold, informative text in graphics. It’s crucial to convey messaging when trying to inform people about social justice issues, particularly when the messaging is spreading the word about a march or protest. A great example is the graphic below by Liza Donovan, created for the Women’s March on Washington. The Women’s March on January 21, 2017, resulted in over 7 million protesters worldwide. This was arguably one of the most successful protests in history, organized and spread through social media.

“Hear Our Voice” by Liza Donovan, created for the Women’s March on Washington.

Evoke Emotion

“Design creates culture. Culture shapes values. Values determine the future.” This quote by designer and author Robert L. Peters is commonly quoted, but for good reason. He said this during a speech, and to put it into context, he was addressing the idea of trying to design a better world for future generations. But design won’t have an epic impact unless it is bold, evokes emotion, and genuinely creates a pause for reflection and thought. Finding creative ways to elicit an emotional response is crucial to the design process. Whether the message is hopeful or heartwrenching, make sure it connects with the audience powerfully and authentically.

Colours & Typography

Colours and typography do vary from cause to cause, but generally speaking, they are both bold and attention-grabbing. Again, using the above example of the Women’s March poster, if you were to look at a collection of their posters, you would see that the colour pallet and typography are similar across all graphics. While it might not be common to view social justice causes as brands, the organizations and their designers are savvy enough to know there should be consistency across messaging, typography and colour pallets. Their causes are crucially important to them and the people they represent, so having an impactful and consistent design is vital for the recognition of their causes.

We hope this gave you insight into the powerful world of Socially Conscious Design. For more design inspiration, check out more of our blog for the latest design and marketing trends. 

Natural design originally made its way into web design via eco-conscious brands. However, it has made its way into the top trends of 2021 since growing in popularity across different industries. The natural imagery, calming colours, and soothing fonts aren’t just for eco-friendly companies anymore. Due to the pandemic, the past year resulted in more of us spending more time indoors and on screens. It’s no wonder we wanted a more soothing and natural user experience online, bringing the outside in. 

Graphics

One of the key elements of natural design is the presence of natural landscapes in graphics. Actual landscape photographs, hand-drawn mountains, and lifelike foliage are key attributes of graphics. This type of imagery projects a whimsical, yet realistic (or sometimes abstract) vision of what we see when looking at nature. Natural themes also tend to utilize nature-inspired textures to add depth to graphics. Using the grain of wood, tree bark, and veins of leaves are great ways to accomplish this. All of these elements are inspired by nature, which is what we all need a little more of, right?

Colours

The outside world provides a rich and deep range of colours that inspire the natural design theme. The colour palette of natural design primarily focuses on earth tone colour schemes. Some of the common colours used are softer greens, muted turquoise, and warmer colours like faded pinks and oranges. The softness of whites, beiges, and grays tie it all together. If you’re looking to incorporate natural colourways into your design, a good rule of thumb is asking yourself if you see it in nature. 

Fonts

The fonts that accompany natural themes tend to be ones described as organic, soft, simple, and in their own way, powerful. Similar to the traits of graphics used in natural design, you’ll generally see a lot of fonts that appear hand-drawn. Some of the fonts will go as far as to take on the appearance of leaves, vines, or the texture of tree bark, actually using natural elements to make up the composition of the font. These highly stylized fonts will generally be accompanied by simple, clean fonts. 

Who’s Using Natural Design?

While natural design was originally used by eco-conscious brands, this has greatly expanded over the years. Other industries using this style are health-conscious brands, self-improvement, and sustainable fashion. However, it has reached beyond the scope of health, and industries that are traditionally perceived as high-stress are taking on a natural theme.  For example, real estate and financial companies use natural design as a way to counter stress and create a soothing online experience for their customers. What better way to get your customers to sit down and stay awhile on your site than create a calming visual experience for them? 

Curious if your business can benefit from incorporating natural design into your brand strategy?  Book a consultation at Cloud9 Marketing today!