Trends

Hypnotic, Euphoric, Minimalistic.

Over the last year I have noticed an emerging visual trend that has started popping up in all sorts of videos, and will probably make it’s way to the rest of the creative world. It is a black and white, lo-fi, grainy, not quite 8-bit look. It reminds me of 1980’s video camera footage that has been mashed up with a sort of hand-drawn style. I say sort of, because like in the video below it is obviously digital. The lines and shapes have a hand-drawn quality to them, but they are to clean. Like the art brushes that come with Adobe illustrator. Then there is the background texture, in this case paper, but in a number of other videos I’ve seen it’s is fine digital noise. Fake signal noise that has been added to the clip to give it a dirty analog look. I’m curious how long it’ll be before this makes it’s way to mainstream advertising, at which point we can add it to the “jumped the shark” list like so many other trends of late. (sketchbook, stop motion, hyper color, 8-bit graphics and sound…)

By the way, this is quite hypnotic. Consider yourself warned.

Monday Morning 80’s Flash Back.

If you were wondering what era was having an influence design these days, look to the 1980’s. Everything from 8bit game graphics, to over saturated color pallets, collage, geometric shapes and patterns. It’s all there and it’s all retro. Well retro to some, nostalgic to me, I grew up with it. When I was starting out, it was 1950’s and 60’s retro design that was influencing many, so it’s no surprise that a 1980’s retro look is hot right now. I guess that means the 1990’s grunge look will be creeping in soon if it already isn’t.

Below are two examples of 80’s influenced videos to start your week off with. They feature new takes on bad effects that were produced by state of the art gear 30 years ago. 8 bit graphics, and audio to remind you of the games your dad used to play at the arcade, and loads of bright colors. The thing I love about both of these examples is how the visuals have been filtered through a new set of eyes, and a memory of this style handed down from a generation before and faded memories of early childhood.

Pink and Blue and 80’s too.

When Pantone announced the top two colors for 2016 were pink and baby blue I kind of thought it was a joke. It isn’t those two colors are showing up everywhere, along with 80’s inspired graphics and animation treatments. The good news, is it looks like the long trending sketch book look might finally be dead. We can only hope right?

The first video is from Contra for Izzy Bizu. It has a great look to it. And the story makes watching all the way through worth it. The second is a series of indents for Nick at Nite from TransistorStudios that embraces the pink and blue fusing it with some really nice stop motion, CGI, and traditional animation.

15 Digital Trends for 2015

As 2014 draws to a close and 2015 rapidly approaches people are beginning to look at trends for the upcoming year. Below is an infographic from Bell Pottinger that predicts 15 digital trends for 2015. The infographic is marketing focused, but has some really interesting facts in it that will ultimately impact everyone whether you work in marketing and advertising or not. Things that jumped out at me were “Blog posts with visuals drive 180% more engagement on your site”, “NFC saw a 358% increase in use over the 2014 year”, and “Businesses with Blogs increased by 41% with the blog generating 67% more site traffic per month”.