The Most Important Thing About Graphic Design Trends 2022

I’m sure you’ve heard about graphic design trends in 2022 from various different sources. I’m talking about graphic design blogs or even fellow graphic design YouTube channels. Now that’s all well and good but how should you make use of these trends or should you even care about them at all. I’m going to explain exactly how I’m personally going to use graphic design trends in 2022 and when I’m basically just gonna leave them alone.

Branding projects are quite tricky to navigate if you don’t know what you’re doing I have a handful of regular clients who might need me to create brand elements in 2022.

For example, it could be something along the lines of a billboard design for a specific brand. Would utilizing a graphic design trend and working that trend into a design be okay, so to speak. Yes, it would if you also keep elements of the brand identity within the design itself. Now the prime example of this that you might know about would be Nike. Back when duotone was a very popular and trending style in the design world. Nike made use of this and created designs that appealed to that trend. But also which kept things on the brand so to speak.

You can see the logo on the design you can see the minimal approach. And also how the red dark tones of black finish the design. This is all on brand for Nike.

But in terms of 2022, I’m going to look at incorporating retro imagery from the 90s matched up with experimental typography into a lot of my design briefs. And these trends have spilled over into society as a whole and they’re not just recognized by us designers this is why they’re good to use on media that people in society are going to interact with.

However, when it comes to logo designing I’m going to totally ignore trends in 2022 and also beyond. a logo design is one aspect of a brand  identity the logo should be

• Recognizable
• Memorable

And stand the test of time. But of course, you know this anyway if you watch my post.

If the logo follows a trend it’s going to become too similar to everything else and become untrendy or distasteful in one to five years.

A good example of this bad approach to logo designing would be those minimal kind of logo designs that you see for breweries coffee houses or hipster style businesses.

Those types of designs were so trendy at one point some years ago. You could see them everywhere and that’s pretty much the problem. At a quick glance could you ever pick out one business from another just based on the logo. Probably not and they aren’t very brandable, because they appear too similar and on top of that the design itself has become outdated.

Social media is a great place to flex a graphic design trend. For me, I don’t really take social media that seriously in terms of running in my business.

Now, why is that you might ask?

Well, firstly I get so much traffic from youtube that I don’t need to leverage things like Twitter or Instagram and so on.

Secondly, it’s a matter of time it’s time that I don’t have to work on really maintaining a social media presence.

I have tried to hire people to help organizing social media and taking control of it. But the people I’ve hired over time never really truly understood the importance of the aesthetics of social media posts from a graphic design point of view. In 2022 however, I am going to aim to make social media more important into my kind of workflow. And this is how I’m going to use graphic design trends.

It’s important to keep a running theme throughout your social media artwork. Just like when creating designs for a brand strategy, you want to keep core elements the same so that people can recognize the design is affiliated to your brand or social media accounts.

For me that would mean mainly using oranges or warm yellows matched up with black on white. Those are my main colors for my brand. I also get so many questions about a specific font on my youtube thumbnails. That typeface is a basement grayesque.

Now basement gray test is a modern urban and impacting typeface. It did fit in well with the kind of vibe or design trend of 2021. And that’s why so many people were asking me about the font id. Because they just wanted to go and download it themselves and use it on their designs.

So sprinkling little elements of design trends into social media artwork is a good thing. It helps keep your posts relevant. And also relatable to everybody else.

Now one thing I won’t be doing in 2022 which I feel like many designers are going to do. And that is when they have a specific graphic design project to work on. They might think of the design trend first and then secondly the design itself.

I personally am going to work in the opposite way, I’m first going to look at the brief and the research to understand the design I need to make. And then I will question whether or not a design trend can or should be used. Often a design trend won’t help to communicate the message that is intended. But other times it could really help reach the right people than it needs to.

For example, one proposed design trend of 2022 is the Y2K or 2000 nostalgia.

In the 2000s technology received its initial boost. And the media or the artwork back then used oversimplified interfaces low poly CGI neon colors and holographic textures. If a design is mainly targeting people who grew up in that time period such as myself.

So kind of ages 30 to 40 then it might be a great idea to make use of this trend to tap into nostalgia and engage with our audience. Then again the brief might call for a different approach.