Pujji like Gucci

I’m not a graphic designer (although I’ve done a fair bit when I’ve ‘had to’). But I do love beautiful graphic design. I subscribe to the tens of well edited design website RSS feeds and review literally thousands of beautiful creations via these, and those produced by my colleagues at DNA every year. As far as inspiration goes, my appreciation for great graphic design is like how others feel about art. For the record, this doesn’t mean I am particularly discerning, nor that I have conventional taste – I’m just a bit of a fan.

One graphic-design ‘situation’ that gives me a great laugh, is this. Every year, about this time, various people who claim to know about these things spend some time stating what they believe are going to be the graphic design trends for the coming year. This is often web design trends, since it’s a rapidly changing and easily changeable space (I guess), and ends up being a blog post linked to from all over the place by everyone.

It gets funny because what’s happening alongside this, is that every single graphic design practitioner is readying themselves for the moment when someone like me sends them the link to said review. They, without exception, never, for any reason, ever, accept any suggestion that they produce fashionable design, that they are in any way influenced by trends or the (dare I say it) ‘mass movement’ of the design trends predicted.

There is an animal reaction. “Don’t be stupid” “Don’t be naive” “You have no idea what you are talking about” etc are the typical responses, and they come mounted on flaming arrows. Somehow suggesting design is subject to fashion, or trends, infuriates a designer’s need to feel like they are constantly crafting unique results. This is much less so with print design, where those genres and trends have been established over many years and seem to be more acceptable.

The brilliant thing is that also without exception, those trends always, always, always make their way into what is produced by those designers – just as predicted. There just seems to be this inevitable evolution of design, this sort of herd-like migration of styles from one genre to the next. 

It’s a beautiful thing to watch, and funny to be in the middle of. And essential to deny. But also essentially harmless. Maybe it’s my underlying lack of ability to discern the subtle differences between instances… but somehow I don’t buy that.

What graphic design styles would you like to see more of in 2009?