Graphic design trends for 2023 to make waves next year include flared type, metaverse and photographic branding. An overall futuristic vibe sets the tone for 2023, with hyperactive websites, flowing gradients, and sci-fi logos that fit the forward-thinking theme.
Designers look to the future with innovative branding, print, and digital design approaches as we move further from the pandemic. The graphic design trends of 2023 will show the most unbridled creativity in recent years, with logos, apps and brand identities that are distinctly digital and futuristic. The 2023 typography trend will also play an essential role as the basis of the brand identity, with twisted and bold typefaces giving the project a unique personality.
Read on to discover the most significant graphic design trends of 2023, current branding trends, inspiring typography trends, and modern graphic design styles for your projects.
Why Graphic Design Trends Matter
Graphic design trends help you create projects that connect and connect with your audience promptly. By tracking and understanding trends, you show your audience you are relevant and engaged in developing consumer interests.
As writer and activist Tony Cade Bambara say,
“The role of the artist is to make the revolution unstoppable.”
In other words, a graphic design trends is a sign of the times and sometimes a catalyst for change!
What to Expect in Graphic Design Trends 2023
While designs come from creative minds, trends also come from the context of their time. 2022 is a post-pandemic world where design trends favors cozy nostalgia and colorful expressions. The biggest hope remains for 2023, but factors such as rising global inflation and the emerging climate crisis have moderated this year.
Graphic designers and creatives respond differently to these situations. Some people are excited and curious about things in the future because technology encourages them to explore the unknown, such as the aforementioned virtual reality graphic design and artificial intelligence-generated art. While others shied away from restrictions and anti-establishment sentiments, their styles ranged from a yearning for escapism to repurposing styles from simpler times to revolutionary innovation.
Top 10 Graphic Design Trends of 2023
To compile our annual report on graphic design trends for 2023, we analysed web search data, looking at the latest agency deals and highly anticipated rebrands in the coming months. We also examine the major cultural and social trends that may influence graphic design trends and typography trends in 2023.
The top 10 most influential graphic design and branding trends for 2023 include:
1. Mysticism
In the design context, Sufism includes iconography related to astrology and divination. This trend focuses heavily on prevalent symbolism, including the signs of the zodiac, the all-seeing eye, the lotus flower, and sacred geometry. As in the past, these symbols served as amulets, imbuing the physical and celestial worlds with mystery and deeper meaning.
From a purely visual standpoint, these designs have an inherent softness. They are designed with thin lines and organic curves, making them feel light and delicate. As the pastel shades fade, the color calms down. Images of the moon, stars, and pensive faces evoke a developing serenity, a release from earthly worries that brings hope and peace. All this makes the trend universally appealing: you don’t have to rely on tarot cards to experience the comfort of mystical designs.
2. Risoprint Reimagined.
Risograph is a printing technology developed by the Riso Kagaku Corporation in Japan in the mid-1980s. It paved the way for cheap, mass printing with dots and desaturated colors, resulting in images often grainy and unintentionally stylized through double exposures.
In 2023, risograph printing will be redesigned for digital abstract graphics. Its grainy texture adds depth and noise to minimal shapes. This has inspired many designers to create surreal abstract valleys with a vintage vibe. Depicting real people, line art textures and colors combine with exaggerated caricatures and simplified features to transform the familiar into the unknown. Ultimately, this trend blurs the line between basic machine form and craftsmanship.
3. Punk Revival
Punk was a revolutionary counterculture with roots stretching back to the Dada movement of the 1920s. It’s never really gone away since – it was born on the fringes of society and remains there. But 2023 may see a revival in its mass appeal as the general public will find good reasons to question the failing system. As the recession hits, not only has the extraordinary wealth gap become more pronounced, but the death of Britain’s monarch in 2022 has reignited opposition to the monarchy and its colonial legacy.
Aesthetically, punk is often characterized by DIY techniques such as graffiti, decoupage, mismatched fonts, and messy collage. The pink design perfectly dispenses with opulence and elegance. It’s not afraid to get dirty because life is chaotic; viewers will find comfort in that honesty. What’s more, the complex arrangements are visually alive – you can almost hear the screams of desperation amid the dense edges and splotches of graffiti.
4. Retro Line Art
In 2023, many designers turn to minimal line art for humorous and playful illustrations. It’s a vintage style that brings back the nostalgia of drawing with a felt tip pen.
The simplicity of line art lends itself to cartoon styles (like thick borders and flexible pipe ends), making the trend a natural fit for lighter projects. And because these designs are so minimalistic, they can handle highly bright colors without overwhelming the viewer. To add to the retro effect, many designers combine these images with bubble fonts and design features reminiscent of old magazine ads, such as oval borders and star stickers.
5. Airbrush Surrealism
Realism has become a popular design method due to its innovative and endless possibilities for whimsical ideas. But in 2023, realism meets the ’80s airbrushing in an unlikely mix, with soft retro filters masking strange, fantasy-like images.
This creates a veiling effect that softens the blur that realism usually causes and wraps the figure in a uniform veil. It’s like retrieving images from a vividly remembered dream. In some cases, the faded colors create a soft glow that makes the images appealing and inaccessible. Overall, the airbrushed realism encourages accessibility, suggesting that weirdness is now expected.
6. 90s Space Psychedelia
Last year, ’60s psychedelia returned to graphic design through escapism, transporting audiences into dense, colorful worlds. By 2023, the trend will continue with this momentum to infinity and beyond, but this time through the psychedelic space of the 90s.
While psychedelia is often inspired by nature (think colorful clouds and melting mushrooms in many of these works), space psychedelic is about the future meeting the past. It features retro 90s techniques like Memphis Design graphics, a Saturday morning cartoon style, and colors reminiscent of Lisa Frank’s school supplies. It combines futuristic themes such as robots and spaceships, wet scenes, simulated environments and neon cyberpunk. With these bright, imaginative illustrations, the designers of 2023 are optimistic about the future of technology.
7. Mixed Dimension
The more time we spend online versus physical spaces, the fewer the boundaries between the two become. By 2023, graphic designers will break free from this constraint by producing digital illustrations alongside physical photography.
While the amalgamation of the artificial and the real may seem dystopian, the trend is more focused on pleasure and thrill. Vivid splashes of color and smiling animations emphasize the contrast between the various elements.
It also shows the world as we want it to be, a place of discovery and wonder. When life sometimes feels dark, the magical power of art offers a way out, reminding us that we are capable of miracles when we give it our full attention.
8. Acid Graphics
Acid graphics, sometimes called Y2K grunge, is the next phase of the Y2K renaissance that began last year. The trend includes grungy textures, metallic chrome, broken grids, and unstructured shapes. Considering it was born in the goth subculture of the late ’90s, it’s a rare nostalgia piece that favors the dark over the good.
The acid graphic trend goes well with adjacent styles, such as brutalism and anti-design, as it is emotional and often uses computer bugs, full text and chaotic surfaces. Like these acts, Acid Pictures portrays a darker side of the Internet and finds its best expression on websites, album covers, and social media posts. This style examines whether the future of digital art is more computer-centric than the human eye.
9. Experimental Escapism
Escapism became a dominant theme in graphic design last year as creators sought to lure viewers into magical, imaginative worlds. This trend will continue until 2023, but the escape is currently in the experimental phase.
Many of these experiments are inspired by recent technological advances, from the viral appearance of AI-generated art, metaverses, and interstellar imagery in 2022 made possible by the James Webb Space Telescope. All of them have left their mark on the creative industries. Designers are inspired by all these technical experiences and combine them with their innovative know-how.
The result is a work of discovery that feels like a window into the digital mind. Dark and moody, this brand of escapism features impossible scenes that are man-made yet imaginatively daring. This year, more than ever, designers looked into the unexplored art world.
10. Abstract Gradients
Gradients, or color transitions, have been trending for a while, but each year somehow keeps us on our toes. The slopes of 2023 are no exception: this time, they are represented by abstract shapes and scattered in a blur.
The long organic shapes of the abstract gradient create a sense of weightlessness that complements its vibrant colors. Noise edges add a touch of realism as if gradients are made of wind-blown colored sand. Thanks to their muted colors, the gradient has a naturally calming effect, enhanced by the abstract angle’s fluidity. And since tilt isn’t so readily apparent everywhere, their reliable presence is a comfort.
