Rarely do I attempt to forecast anything. I’ve always thought it presumptuous, to be honest. I also didn’t want to become an internet meme about failed predictions, which there are many, some even published by such notable organizations as Time magazine. But hey, it’s a new year, and I’m feeling a bit cheeky.
I’m going to base my predictions off personal prediction, and a couple sentences from this article in Fast Company about the best and worst rebrands of last year, which I’ll quote for those of you who don’t like to read anything that takes more than about 30 seconds.
The first: “And we also saw a lot of sans serif branding. I mean, a lot.” This, and the fact that there’s a lot of sans-serif typeface branding out there currently, leads me to believe we’ll see a reversal of that in the near future. Brands will move back towards serif typefaces in an effort to differentiate themselves.
The second: “The worst of all the branding trends has to go to blanding–that millennial-bait, Instagram-ruling hyper-minimal lifestyle approach to products and logos that ruled 2018 but seems destined for a reckoning.” We all know these brands. Plain, sans-serif font wordmarks of a single color on a field of white space, following the flat design trend. Or alternately, plain white sans-serif font wordmarks on a field of a single flat color. My prediction: a reversal, moving towards more design elements and more colors.
Ultimately, what I’m saying is this – branding trends are cyclical. Over time, there are variations on the evolution of the visual elements of a brand, but an easy prediction to make is that whatever is hot now will be reversed in the not-so distant future. Once a design trend has hit the de rigueur year-end “best of…” list, it’s probably dead.
Once a design trend has hit the de rigueur year-end "best of…" list, it's probably dead. Click To TweetA quick side note about the aforementioned article. The new Uber logo that it identifies as one of the best is a great example of what they mention as the worst. Let that sink in, and decide what you’re going to see in 2019 and beyond for brand changes. Hell, you can just watch Uber – this is their 2nd major brand facelift in less than three years.