7 Design Trends For 2024 [+Detailed Report]

What are the design trends for 2024? For months, the Depositphotos team has been conducting research to deliver you the answers. Today, we’re introducing the latest addition of our annual report dedicated to creativity, communication, and design trends.

The design trends 2024 include concepts we explored while analyzing top search queries by clients, as well as the artistic approaches of our community of 40 million creatives. To help you understand the essence of communication and design trends 2024, we also interviewed industry experts and looked for outstanding examples in advertising, product design, and beyond.

Explore seven trending design and communication concepts by downloading the full trends report below. Enter the new year knowing how to connect to your audience in 2024 and beyond!

The top 7 creativity, communication, and graphic design trends 2024

Trend 1. Back to the streets

Trend 2. A way with words

Trend 3. Core wave

Trend 4. Retro yet timeless

Trend 5. Personality, not gender

Trend 6. The dimensions game

Trend 7. Life, work, hybrid

2024 design trends, as well as trends in communication, marketing, and creativity will reflect the state of the world we live in.

References to street culture of the 70s-90s will appear in ads and digital designs together with hints of stealth wealth. Trending designs will more often communicate messages with text only, however, we’ll also see more projects aimed to blend realities, styles, and dimensions.

Millennials and Gen Z will continue to set most graphic trends in motion by being active on TikTok and Instagram. As a result, in 2024, we’ll spot numerous aesthetics emerging, coinciding, and flagging quickly; this phenomenon will become a trend in itself.

What trends are coming back in 2024? Some of the creativity and web design trends are linked to ones we’ve mentioned in our previous reports: Creativity Trends 2023: Ready to Escape and Creativity Trends 2022: Merging the Future and the Past. In particular, a recent tendency for rethinking workspaces in a hedonistic perspective is a more specific manifestation of 2023’s trend we called “A Blast of Joy” that is still booming among customers.

The honorable pool of experts commenting on upcoming design trends includes:

Elena Bazu, lifestyle photographer & artist.
Elena Bauer, digital designer & researcher at Remote Futures.
Marta Syrko, fine art photographer.
Armida Ascano, chief content officer & head futurist at Trend Hunter.
Rogier Vijverberg, founder of the digital street art collective JIMMY and chief creative hero at SuperHeroes Agency.
WEDZICKA, artist & graphic designer, member of Alliance Graphique Internationale.
Tina Touli, creative director & graphic communication designer.

We’re inviting you to experiment with creative trends in your upcoming projects: Each of the 7 design trends for 2024 in our trends report is followed by ready-to-use digital assets: stock images, audio tracks, and videos. Download them by clicking the links in our report, or start creating your best graphic design right away by browsing a big curated collection with all the trends.

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Back to the streets

What social trends are affecting the graphic design industry? The nostalgia Millennials have been experiencing in recent years is definitely the most powerful of them.

For people born in the 80s and 90s—the most active on the market so far—urban jungles are associated with coming of age and finding like-minded people. Being the last generation that enjoyed no-Internet “street” socialization, they are now willing to contribute to local communities and see things that remind them of the street subcultures they belonged to.

As a result, web design trends 2024 are likely to contain visuals featuring street athletes, DIY locations, and community events. And don’t forget about graffiti-style lettering and grainy print typical for zines.

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A way with words

What trends are out for 2024? This year, minimalism will manifest itself through a more conscious usage of letters and fonts.

New design trends concerning typefaces will cause creatives to make their text-only projects expressive and meaningful by combining neutral and custom atmospheric fonts, as well as adding motion to typefaces. Flaming, melting, shimmering, or moving letters are just a couple of examples for lettering animation which, in turn, will become one of the major trends in web design.

The reason why modern design trends are still about the “less is more” approach is because short and clear messages are a sign of respect towards audiences in the visually oversaturated Internet environment.

Core wave

According to Depositphotos search query analytics, some of the latest design trends are following the decentralization pattern.

Instead of one aesthetic dominating social media, fashion, or marketing communication in 2024, we’ll observe dozens of “-cores” based on historical periods, movies, literature genres, lifestyles, etc. Barbiecore, Cottagecore, Retrofuturism, and Animecore are just a few examples in the general framework of the creative trends 2024.

Asking yourself how to keep up with graphic design trends if there is no major aesthetics you can safely rely on? The solution is to experiment with branding or product design while leveraging various cores that don’t contradict your audience’s values. Our core-specific content collections come in handy here.

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Retro yet timeless

What are design trends that support sustainability and thoughtful consumption? With the #oldmoney hashtag booming on social media and influencers opting for quiet luxury aesthetics, the future of creative communication is likely to be about cherishing family and local history.

The current design trends will include muted and royal palettes, retro fonts, and images depicting models wearing classic clothing.

If you are curious about where to look for graphic design trends in product-specific areas like packaging, posters, or websites, check out the advice from our trend expert in the full trend report.

Personality, not gender

In 2024, communication and website design trends will rarely convey messages leveraging gender stereotypes. According to our trends report and niche expert opinions, emphasis on a model’s unique beauty, emotional state, personality, and personal stories will become a starting point for visual storytelling.

As a design trend, the concept of genderless beauty will manifest itself in a less frequent usage of colors considered gender-specific. Layouts will be filled with self-care attributes, jewelry, and accessories regardless of the genders projects are targeted to.

More popular trends 2024 will concern gender-neutral product development. For example, our trends forecast for fashion includes the design and production of unisex items forvarious sizes.

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The dimensions game

One more creativity, communication, and design trend mentioned in our 2024 trends report is mixing contexts, artistic techniques, and storylines. In advertisement and on social media, we are likely to spot more content referring to diverse artworks, personalities, decades, or even particular symbols and mass culture messages. Moreover, these references will coincide and become a part of one story.

How do trends improve graphic design? The dimensions game will give creatives more artistic freedom. As a result, their experiments will result in pushing the boundaries of how 2D, 3D, animation, and augmented realityare all used today.

Life, work, hybrid

If you’re wondering which trends helped shape the development of graphic design, we couldn’t avoid mentioning work routine and changes it is undergoing for many. Current design trends and messages that users respond to actively on social media reflect concerns and dreams they have towards the future of their work.

Communication and digital design trends 2024 will show two major concepts of work organization in the post-pandemic world. First is a dichotomy of work and life, where one is focused on executing tasks fast and switching to leisure activities. In this case, one’s workspace should be designed to maximize their productivity, which, in turn, means tailoring it to needs and preferences.

The second concept is all about harmonizing work and life, and seeing work as a state of life that can be as enjoyable as having a rest. This approach is gaining momentum, which is why current graphic design trends include images with people taking their pets or children to work, or working in places that aren’t designed for the purpose of working (but are acceptable if you have a laptop, phone, and headphones with you).

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Follow the 2024 design trends with Depositphotos: Explore expert tips & Get files for projects

How important is it to follow graphic design trends or create your own? By knowing current visual trends, you can understand your audience as well as generate more promising ideas of how to stay relevant to them.

Our annual data-driven trends predictions are aimed at saving your time on research and providing you with tools to create outstanding and budget-friendly projects.

Download our handy trends forecast report on new design and communication approaches, and explore analytics, expert tips, and collections of photos, vectors, audio tracks, and video for each of the listed trends. Find more files for your projects on Depositphotos.