With examples and advice to help you achieve the ideal mix between aesthetically pleasing and very functional design, we’re starting off this year’s graphic design trends. We’ll dissect each trend’s unique components and outline how to apply them to your branding and marketing.
Leading trends in graphic design for 2025:
1. Bright and mismatched
Mismatched and Bright is a graphic design trend that combines typefaces of various widths, styles, and sizes with vivid, contrasting colors, reminiscent of magazine letter cuts from the 1990s but with a contemporary, digital touch. Small companies may experiment with a unique look that attracts clients thanks to this fun trend that highlights contrast and imperfection. And shouldn’t it be the goal of great design?
2. Organized Scrapbook
Through the use of structure, location, and balance, designers are incorporating the allure of traditional scrapbooking into digital design with greater care and consideration. Intentionally stacking and combining pictures, cutouts, doodles, tape, and stickers in a creative and professional manner is the main focus of a structured scrapbook.
3. Networks of Memories
Nostalgic Networks draws inspiration from the retro-tech age of straightforward color schemes and clear layouts, fusing contemporary design aspects with nostalgic computer vibes, in contrast to the Structured Scrapbook approach, which tends toward analog.
4. Imprints and Etches
The Etches and Imprints graphic design movement is a protest against artificial perfection, emphasizing the human touch that is present in fingerprints, smudges, and imprints—something that machines cannot duplicate. Designers are physically putting their imprint on their work as they reclaim their profession.
5. Adorable Textures
Childlike Textures opposes the accuracy of AI-generated design, much like the Etches and Imprints style. But this time, it’s all about utilizing the young people’s unadulterated, unrestrained imagination and inventiveness.
6. Modern Nouveau
Using strong and classic font, striking scripts, and vivid colors against dark backgrounds, the Contemporary Nouveau graphic design movement brings the beauty of Art Nouveau posters from the 1920s into the present day. It all comes down to rewriting history and interpreting a certain period and location.
7. Design Rewilding
Bringing inspiration directly from nature into the digital realm, the Rewilding Design movement is a welcome change. Visually, this design style makes use of textures that imitate wood, stone, or flora, as well as gentle flowing lines that resemble the way water flows or the curve of leaves. Deep greens, warm browns, and gentle blues are examples of earthy tones and watery hues that are frequently used in color schemes. To give a surprising twist, color schemes may occasionally be dotted with surprisingly vivid pink or blue.
8. Minimalism Not Quite
We couldn’t overlook the summer of 2024 trend known as “Not Quite Minimalism.” Pop sensation Charli XCX’s album Brat served as the catalyst. Low-resolution photos and a casual typeface selection were made famous by the album’s promotion, and the trademark “Brat green” ended up being the year’s unofficial color. Brands have joined the trend, and it appears that the use of strong typefaces and contrasting colors will continue until 2025 on everything from billboards to social media postings.
9. Practical and Calm
The Functional and Serene trend is for firms who want to keep things quiet, practical, and serene with designs employing natural materials and subdued tones that “evoke a calm and timeless elegance,” according to Stylish designer1, whereas the majority of 2025 graphic design trends are huge and bold.
10. AI’s development
Though it may not be a trend in graphic design per se, the development of AI is significantly influencing the field. Its function and appeal have changed from producing ostentatious, ostentatious images to producing subtle improvements that designers utilize to accentuate and magnify their designs.
There are more AI designs that aren’t overtly AI these days; it’s the silent helper that elevates designers’ work by boosting accuracy without taking center stage. The hyperrealist and flawless designs of earlier years are giving way to a more understated and organic “AI look.”
Try improving your brand or adding curiosity to your packaging and marketing materials if you want to employ and experiment with AI this year. It may be adding a gradient, perfecting a sticker picture, or balancing color schemes—small details that can improve the outcome.
Are you prepared for a modern makeover?
In terms of graphic design trends for 2025, we’re witnessing a drive for maximalist and strong aesthetics, a resurgence of nature and humanity in design, and an exciting fusion of modernism and historical periods. One thing unites these trends: the urge to push limits and try new things while maintaining a connection to creativity and honesty.
