What are Brand Design trends and why is it important for businesses to leverage them?

Tracking trends in brand design as we do has proven to be fascinating over the years. When a brands seek to connect with their audience and communicate their strategic positioning through the use of photographic or illustrated imagery, colours, fonts and other graphic devices this is what we call Brand Design.

At an individual level, brands seek to reinforce their relationship and value proposition through their considered use of brand design. However when we see the sort of large-scale and wide-spread social upheaval covid-19 has caused this year, we often find brands across virtually all categories responding in a similar way with their brand design.

Following the 2008 global financial crisis we saw brands return to tradition. By that we mean brands across many categories responding to a sense of general unease and nervousness with classic, traditional brand design elements such as older style fonts, imagery that harked-back to ‘happier times’ and layouts and grids that provided a sense of order and calm. We’re expecting some similar trends in brand visual language to emerge over the next year.

When anxiety is high and we feel our world is in chaos, we naturally seek order, certainty and calm. Brands who are able to provide that to us by their products and services, by the consistency and reliability of their offer and by the way they communicate will likely attract a higher level of engagement from both consumer and business customers alike.

We expect to see more and more brands presenting their heritage and trustworthy track record, using calm colours, structured grids and traditional typefaces in the months ahead. For brand managers, the opportunity here is to consider your brand strategy, how it may best ‘dial-up’ the elements that will provide the island in the storm your audience is seeking, and how you should then adjust your brand visual language to communicate that to market.

Below is a graphic that further explores seven possible brand design trends for 2021. Created by Ryan McCready from Venngage it provides a deeper exploration into how this trend may play out.

 

 

You can read the full report from Vengage here…

Truly Deeply is an Australian-based branding agency with 30 years experience working with brands to position them for growth. Our deep expertise is in the creation of high engagement brands that attract the attention of their audience and stand out from their competitors. We have a deep expertise working with corporate, retail, food & beverage, health and property clients. Find out more here
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Image courtesy Venngage.