Things are going to get weird: creative trends 2024

If we had to bet our lives on what will be the biggest creative trends over the next year, there is one bet we feel pretty confident about making. And that is, you guessed it, AI. Not only will we all consume more AI-generated content than ever before, but the constantly improving AI tools will also drive other trends, such as a leaning towards the conceptually weird and the visually fantastical in brand design. Enjoy our top creative and design trends for 2024.

The AI flippening

2024 will be forever remembered as the year that AI content flippening finally happened. This is the tipping point when the amount of content you choose to consume by AI outweighs the content created solely by humans. Which is either alarming or exciting, depending on your point of view.

AI image tools and video generators are multiplying and improving by the hour, opening up endless creative possibilities to designers who are willing to try them out. Time to welcome our AI overlords and master the art of the prompt.

Masking and kinetic typography

Next, a couple of graphic design trends. Masking, where you layer a shape or lettering over an image, is a simple, effective and adaptable technique. It works well in both print and digital, and we’re seeing a lot of it right now.

Same with kinetic (moving) typography. First seen in film titles and credits in the 1950s (check out Alfred Hitchcock’s North By Northwest), motion designers will be using the technique to create all-singing, moving and dancing typographical brand identities.

Weird stuff

You probably thought that the digital world had reached peak weird some time ago. If you did, brace yourself. The weird stuff that’s been gathering momentum online (think “AI boyfriends”, “goblin mode” and macabre experiments with Dall-E and Midjourney) is an attempt to control the narrative and respond in a meaningful way to the woes of the real world (culture wars, tech wars, real wars, climate change, etc.). Seeing as those woes are going to stick around for a while, things will only get weirder.

And the weirdness is going to creep further into brand design. There’s something slightly spooky about the recent AI campaigns by Vestiaire, for example. And the “fake” OOH ads by Maybelline and Jacquemus are the result of some seriously “out there” thinking. We, for one, are here for it.?

→ Read our trend predictions for 2024 in design, email, social media and more.