Another year has passed and another trend report for the coming year has been released. Today's comes to us from everyone's favorite stock photography site — Shutterstock. The repository of the mundane, the weird and this old dude, has released its 2019 Creative Trend Report and you'll never guess what decade still won't go away. It's the 80s. The 80s won't die.
This isn't the first time in the last month or so that a creative trend guide for some stock image website has been written about in this space. Here's the last one so you can add your click to the standing room only queue of people who don't really give a flying fork about creative trend guides. However, there are some people that rely on this type of information to influence their design and advertising choices for the next year, so it's at least worth a few hundred words.
Also see: xHamster 2019 Trend Report Shows Women Rule And We Are Paying For Porn Again
Based on billions of searches and downloads from Shutterstock, the company was able to determine what is major hot bananas, what is rising like a muffin in the oven and what one whack design trend is the one to watch in the coming year. This is all presented in a dynamic, interactive infographic which illustrates the point that stock photography, stock imagery, stock illustration and design is much more than meme fuel. It's the visceral visualizations that keep the internet and our designs as dynamic and relevant as possible.
Major trends
Zine culture, which gives me terrible flashbacks to stumbling through Microsoft Publisher thinking I was some sort of hipster rebel with my sarcastic slant on current news (I think my Zine lasted three issues, that I handed out to friends), is on the rise. Shutterstock has seen a +1376% jump in contemporary art collage searches and it doesn't seem to be slowing down. This is always a good design choice if you aren't exactly sure what you are doing, I speak from experience.
Searches for "Synthwave" (+717%), "Retrowave" (+676%) and "Duotone" (+230%) all fall under the "Yesterday's Tomorrow" search. This is the future as envisioned by those in the past. Like book covers from science fiction novels written in the 1960s that take place in the 2010s. Basically, think if Logan's Run was a visual style, which it kind of is.
Then we have the 1980s. Not just the 1980s, but the American Psycho opulent 80s. The gross, gaudy 80s that you'd see around 10pm on the casino floor in Atlantic City. "Elegance Pattern" (+1060%), "Snakeskin Pattern" (ugh) (+157%), "Chain Print" (double ugh) (+731%) and "Leopard Print Pattern" (triple ugh) (+168%) are all trending upwards into 2019, which means that the 80s aren't dead and buried just yet.
Rising trends
Kawaii (+911%) as a rising trend should be no surprise if you've watched anything on the Cartoon Network lately. This colorful animated world is infusing many different aspects of design and advertising and that's a-ok. It's fun.
Recycling and thinking about future sustainability is as well, which is why searches for "Plastic Free" (+729%), "Bamboo Toothbrush" (+656%) and "Hemp" (+752%) are on the rise in the "Beyond Plastic" category. Other rising trends include: Kalamkari, ancient Indian painting and printmaking art; the old world maximalism of Rococo Romance; trippy and colorful prism and hypnotic imagery; and finally, more futurism but with a more functionally modern twist.
One to watch
There's a section of the report focused on global trends, but the real icing on the almost literal cake is the one trending topic that has seen a higher rise than a wedding cake that sets off the fire sprinkler system. "Icing Letters" (+8389%) is something Shutterstock is calling "Tempting Typography" and makes my eyes feel diabetic. This collection of letters and numbers formed from food should satisfy your hunger for food-based typography, because apparently, that is something your design-based stomach is grumbling for.
You can check out the entire interactive report here. Happy, delicious designing in 2019. Keep it fresh. Like the 80s.
