Micro trends: Graphic design aesthetics

We’re not interested in trends for their own sake. For many designers, the very word ‘trend’ is something of a taboo, conjuring up images of blind imitation of whatever’s hot at any given time, rather than encouraging genuine innovation and independent creative thought.

Rest assured, you won’t find any of that here. Rather than looking at seasonal, fleeting trends, FranklinTill focuses on longer-lasting movements that have genuine impact on creative professionals.

“This is a visual run-down of seven major visual directions currently manifesting within graphic design,” explains FranklinTill’s co-founder Kate Franklin. “It’s also an identification and celebration of the key designers and studios responsible for driving these emerging visual landscapes.”

In this Computer Arts Collection trend report we’ll be presenting the fruits of their labour: from naïve hand-drawn type to minimalist monochrome, Bauhaus-inspired shapes to retro nostalgia, this is your indispensable guide to the aesthetics that will be getting clients excited, and most importantly, what makes them significant. Keep it close by in the studio.

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1: The art of reduction

As a reaction to our participatory culture, in which we are always switched on, connected and increasingly overloaded with data, designers are exploring new and simplified ways of refining and simplifying visual information. They are experimenting with the art of reduction, discarding superfluous information and breaking down graphic artwork and typographic information into their purist forms.

Through his Exercise One project, Josep Roman explores the reduction of information into the most nominal form. The publication forms a biography of the Manchester band, Joy Division, a story filtered down to sophisticated infographic material, in which the line becomes the leading protagonist.

Reducing logos to their most simplistic form creates a solid and often authoritative brand identity. For example, brand design agency The Consult has created a playful, yet stripped bare, identity for London-based architectural practice stack. The effective monochrome identity visualises a stacked logotype and graphic icon, drawing upon a childlike representation of the profession.

A digital clock display has been simply reduced to pixel form by Japanese design agency E-Bird. The 1pxclock is an iPhone app conveying time ticking away one pixel per second. It’s made up of 24 squares, each representing an hour, which are formed of 60 rows of 60 pixels to represent seconds and minutes.