Don’t be a Bland Brand

Friday February 4, 2022

Here we are one twelfth into 2022 and as we come up for air after a couple of rather dull Covid years, we were wondering what this means for brand design.

There is going to be more brand bravery this year and that’s driven by people looking for more visual stimulation, layering, brighter colours and a continued move to embrace motion. A personal mission too, which reflects a global concern, is to encourage and embrace nature in all that we do. How can we in our small way lessen our impact on global warming?

The three trends we are focusing on for 2022 are 1/ brighter colours, 2/ movement, and 3/ nature.

BRIGHTER COLOURS: we’ve seen a less is more or no logo approach and the world has been somewhat muted over the past couple of years, now modern brands know what they stand for and are shouting about it. We are seeing a shift to vibrant confident colour palettes, big typography and multi layering. This is an exciting graphical shift and embraces the idea that brighter colours attract attention and cut through in our visually overloaded world. 

MOVEMENT: If it doesn’t move, it’s dead. Our eyes and minds are designed to be attracted to movement and we’re making sure everything we design has movement or the potential to move built in at an early stage. This is driven by fast-paced, broadband-driven social feeds and motion on web and app experiences.

NATURE: everyone’s aware of the climate challenges facing the planet and individuals and companies all want to do their bit. Avoid greenwash and do something meaningful; make sure you specify sustainably, travel less - Zoom more, be clean and green in as many ways as you can be. For my part, I’m evangelical about electric vehicles and extremely frustrated at the slow pace of change, especially with charge point infrastructure.

I’m supporting rewilding which will ensure a better balance to our depleted natural asset. A great example of this is the re-introduction of beavers; they create dams which in turn create wetlands and help mitigate the problems of downstream flooding.

There are many ways individuals and companies can contribute to the rewilding movement here in Scotland: 

https://www.scotlandbigpicture.com/support-rewilding

So there you have three trends for 2022, bright colours, movement and nature; get in touch and we’ll explore how your brand can avoid being bland and embrace these trends this year?