The 2022 Type Trends Lookbook

Posted by in Trend Reports on Mar/2022

What is the future of Type?

We are not fortune tellers, so we are not going to give you prophecies about the future. But we like to take notes about the changes that are happening today, which will lead us to somewhere tomorrow.

This is why we sponsor each year the work of the educational team of Typecampus, that analyzes visual trends as a way to reflect on global design culture. We are proud to present to you he results of this research: the 2022 Type Trends Lookbook. An inspirational guide to typographic and design trends, published in digital format and free to download. If you’re interested in the future of type, this book is meant for you — curiosity is all you need.

ANOTHER ONE BITES THE TRENDS

The release of the 2022 Type Trends Lookbook coincides with dramatic and unexpected events – a period that demands awareness and knowledge by everybody working in visual design and communication. Rather than just looking at the trendy surface styles, designers and brands are required to pay attention to the meaning of their visual choices. And whether this meaning is found in a shared dream or in a choral action, this book can be a useful tool to help your design become more critical and conscious of the world around us.

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The 2022 Type Trends Lookbook exists thanks to the generous contributions of the many designers and agencies that allowed us to reproduce their work and to answer aour questions about their views on visual trends. Its pages are graced by the presence of the works and the ideas of Nadine Chahine, Amber Weaver, Hector Ayuso (Offf! Barcelona), Francesco Franchi, Julia Kahl (Slanted), Raissa Pardini, Tina Touli, TypeType, Valentina Casali (Sunday Büro) and Bill Gardner (Logolounge). They all help us define what we call the typographic “new normal“.



Following their 2021 research, the Typecampus team has identified four behavioral drivers, that we can use for defining different scenarios to describe our present visual panorama. You can dream of escaping from reality, finding refuge in another time and space, or you can face reality by seeking the best of what it has to offer. You can take action, by embracing new purposes, or you can choose to be passive, because nothing you do makes a difference. These behavioral drivers define the trends among which we move, being pushed once in a direction and then in another.

DIGITAL ECSTATIC 

Digital and physical spaces have merged into a phygital reality thanks to new thrilling technologies. Neural networks, augmented reality, cryptocurrencies and metaverses are all escape pods to a future with endless possibilities. A new frontier to explore, a liquid reality, that materializes in a haze of holographic textures, acid gradients, fluid typography and surreal designs. Acid trip meets hyperpop culture as digital shapes become organically entangled in a maximalist, exuberant rave.

> Read more about this trend in our interviews with Héctory Ayuso, Tina Touli and Amber Weaver!

ARTIFICIAL NOSTALGIA

Marcel Proust was right in stating: “Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were.” Surely, everyone wants to get lost in comforting vintage memories: but any Google search for typefaces, fashion and design styles from the past will give us plenty of results created digitally in the last few years. Why this jet lag of nostalgia? Does this mean that we cannot distinguish our real past from its reinvented digital versions? And how can we remember something that never happened to us? Making sense of these memories of ours — whether true or not — is at the heart of artificial nostalgia.

> Read more about this trend in our interviews with Raissa Pardini and Valentina Casali!HARDCORE NORMCORE

Our society would like everybody to be special. To be “Instagram famous”, to have an extraordinary career, and possibly, to have a special destiny waiting for us, as if we were characters in a Disney movie. But why can’t we just be ourselves? Why not overcome this generational bias and find “liberation in being nothing special”*? Neutral and characterized by a comfortable aesthetic sense, Hardcore Normcore is no longer a non-fashion style, but has become the attitude of an entire generation that has chosen to simply live their own life.

(*) K-HOLE trend forecasting group describing the Normcore fashion trend.

> Read more about this trend in our interviews with Bill Gardner and Type Type!

BOLD PURPOSE

The urgency of global crises is pushing designers to address these issues with responsible actions and environmental awareness. Beautiful and well-executed images aren’t enough, especially since neural networks will soon be able to deliver them at will. Designers around the world share a new desire to inspire and empower people through meaningful messages, visually translated through the use of bold typography and content-centric projects. Creativity is for everyone (and there is something good about it), but meaningful design is only for those who are willing to take a step further.

> Read more about this trend in our interviews with Dr. Nadine Chahine and Francesco Franchi!

SWAP CULTURE

At the meeting point between the trends presented so far, there is a blurry area that hosts the more interesting styles of contemporary visual culture. It is the realm of the so-called edge effect, in which all the tensions coming from the visual trends collapse onto one another and create a hybrid realm where opposites – truth and false, past and present, digital and physical – merge together. Welcome to the heart of New Normal: Swap Culture.

> Read more about this trend in our interviews Julia Kahl from Slanted!Discover the typographic styles and interviews for each of our trends and get this free 300+ pages book by clicking here:

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