Thursday, July 15th, 2010...12:30 am
Designer Roundtable – Let’s Get Trendy
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How important is it for a designer to follow the trends?
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How important is it for a designer to follow the trends?
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Reference Articles For Discussion:
2010 Logo Trends – Bill Gardner, Logo Lounge
Web Design Trends for 2010 – Jacqueline Thomas, Web Design Ledger
Designers Predict Design Trends for 2010 – Little Box of Ideas
Design Trends (Predictions) in 2010 – Web Designer Wall
I think it’s very important for a designer to follow trends while at the same time making the “trend” his/her own. You don’t want to look like every other designer out there, but you do want your work to have a current look & feel. Individuality in design is a great thing in my opinion and really what makes a designer more desirable to clients.
There are also different types of trends when it comes to design. There are aesthetic trends, which tend to change more frequently and then there are developmental trends which change the foundation of the design itself. I tend to lean more towards following developmental trends (CSS3, HTML5, etc.) rather than aesthetic trends, simply because I don’t feel I should change my style because “pink is the new black” or whatever is going on at the time. That being said, I do peruse the web quite often to see what people are doing different with their designs (i.e. rounded corners, bold typography, vector vs. photo-realism) and then adapt my style to that as best I can.
Fortunately in design there is no true right or wrong… It’s simply a matter of taste.
Thanks for getting us started Justin!
You’ve been in the design business for quite some time. Could you tell us how a designer can decipher which is an aesthetic trend vs a developmental trend? Are there typical features that define the two?
Aesthetics are what you see on the outside (rounded corners, hand-written fonts, etc.) while developmental trends are things that happen in the background like HTML5 video for example. Visual trends are easy to spot because you’re already looking at them, while development trends are somewhat hidden. You have to be resourceful and poke around in the source code to find them usually. Browser extensions like FireBug will help with this as well.
Thanks Justin! I see you actually have a current trend in your avatar – bokeh. What drew you to using it as your background?
I’ll throw my tuppence worth in too. I have always loved design in all it’s forms. I have visual tourettes, I can’t help but look at something and work out how it was created, why and how it works for its purpose. I love looking at logo design and because of this you do notice the trends more often.
Rounded corners, vectors, reflections etc.
I think trends can inspire but quite often they can date very quickly as Justin pointed out. It would be great to be a trendsetter and Apple have been a major influence in a lot of design.
Someone wrote an article once about how Photoshop filters sometimes drive a lot of design processes so you see lots of bevels, drop shadows, gradients – all good if done right. Nowadays design is so accessable and there are so many more designers out there that trends do evolve very quickly, spread and then get copied.
So in a nutshell, look and learn but try not to take the lazy route for a quick buck. Invest time, communication and creativity as best possible.
Hi Dave! Glad to see you.
I love your definition of “visual tourettes”. I too find that I will stop in the middle of my tracks to study a design effect. I bet a lot of designers do.
You and Justin have both talked about how trends can quickly become dated, in your opinion, at what point does a design trend lose it’s effectiveness?
It depends on the client as well as the project. Sometimes it’s critical the client look current. Sometimes the client is better served bucking the trends.
Recently I developed a project for a client who wanted a 50s retro look. Is that a trend?
Thanks for stopping by David.
You raise a good question. What actually defines a trend?
In my head, a trend is certain design look that is currently popular and being widely used. Retro in general could be a trend, but narrowing it down to a specific period might not fall into the same classification.
Does anyone else have any thoughts on this?
It’s funny, I don’t actually think it important that designers follow trends, however I think that it is important that they be aware of trends and their constant change.
Eventually, all trends cycle back around to good, simple design. Happily, one ‘trend’ coming to full strength lately is an observation of subtlety… which many would argue has been a design fundamental.
There are also arguments about minimalism, and its validity as a form of design. Isn’t the concept of reducing a design to only its necessary elements and ensuring its strength in brevity merely a hallmark of good design?
Trends should be known and understood by designers as much as buzzwords — clients will refer to them, ask for them, and speak in them; in order to understand the language, we can’t be ignorant of it.
Hi Bobby!
I hear what you are saying about the minimalism trend that is happening. I agree with you that it is a basic fundamental of design. Do you ever worry about the more basic and reproducible a design can get, the more untrained designers will move into our already supersaturated field?
Also, I’m not sure that it’s just enough to know the buzzwords so that when a client asks for them then you know what they are talking about. If they are asking for them – don’t you also need to know how to produce them?
Thanks for joining the Roundtable!
I don’t know… I suspect that as long as Photoshop still comes with the Lens Flare effect, there will still be a clear cut way to distinguish the hobbyists from the professionals.
More seriously, though, the attention paid to all the principles of design, and the insight that goes into a piece in regards to the ways that a user can interact with it are hallmarks that you can easily discern, yet only come with the years of thought and careful execution that a born designer will achieve most every time. I don’t suppose I worry very much.
What I do think would be great, however, would be some sort of thesaurus of buzzwords and client requests, in order for them to be more easily deciphered as they come in.