Visual trends
Future has come: we can determine it due to actual tendencies and decorative elements. Evens take places in the virtue reality, artificial intelligence creates music to them, and each participator has been impressed with experience by someone. In the year we are looking for space sceneries, optical illusions and rich optimistic colours. It seems to be only rich and even aggressive visuals at the height of the year, but trends are antinomical: natural colours and grain patterns have just stood one’s ground. We are going to tell you what is the different between ‘metaverse’ and ‘immersive world’, which expressions are needed for environmental activists and how you can storytell unputdownable.
Metaverse
The metaverse is likely to be the most popular trend in 2022, a digital reality in real time. At the present it consists of variety of virtual spaces on the internet base, where users can intercommunicate and interact to 3D virtual space. The metaverse is supposed to be a new orbit of internet evolution.
The metaverse existence is technically based on augmented (AR) and virtual reality (VR). The completely virtual version is not widely used yet; nevertheless, it requires quite serious technical equipment, which is difficult to immediately launch into mass production. But augmented reality has generated more than one massive boom. The most obvious example is Pokémon Go, the first world-gamed game that combined physical locations and virtual details. For now a lot of companies have added such functionality, especially gaming or focused on the children’s market. McDonalds and Kinder have applications that add virtual characters to the phone’s camera image. Adults also enjoy playing virtual transformations: a lecturer at an online webinar can easily appear with bunny ears from Snapchat.
The entertainment industry use no any of the capabilities of the metaverse, but also holds events in a completely virtual space. Such concerts were held by the Imagine Dragons, the Travis Scott and the Muse, and Roblox, the game monster, launched a week-long online music festival with 5 million visits. Completely virtual events are not suitable for everyone, but the use of special AR and VR technologies has already become a trend. The task is to create or enhance the effect of presence, increase interactivity. A design with thoughtful 3D elements and motion graphics will help to achieve it.
Immersive world
Immersive projects are one of the directions of the metaverse development, but they have already become an independent trend in design. Such tools are also designed to give users that talk about “seamless” transition between online objects and reality. But in distinction from the metaverse, the immersive world is more focused on the user experience, rather than on the global interaction of users among themselves. So far, it is more based on augmented reality than virtual reality, but these are only technological limitations: VR headsets, which it is impossible to fully immerse yourself in the invented world without. So, it is not yet sufficiently refined for the mass market.
But augmented reality is compatible with lots of smartphones, which let it be used in 3D advertising, design, event design and even shopping optimization. For example, some companies offer special lenses for shopping, which you can test or try on a product with.
Immersive tools are not necessarily designed for an individual experience, like AR filters. Three-dimensional animation and motion graphics can be used in digital campaigns, and with the help of a modified perspective, you can create 3D illusions at offline events.
Psychedelic art
All the main trends may seem to be focused on virtualization and digital tools, but there is a place for nostalgia in 2022. Designers are inspired by the motifs of the 70s: psychedelics, hypnotic broken lines and acidic colors. In the digital space, complex bright abstractions will be in fashion, it is convenient to create them now in special editors.
In graphic design, you can expect experiments with references to the hippie style. Pop art of the 70s consists of handwritten fonts, curved shapes, simple illustrations and bright colors. Grainy and holographic backgrounds will be topical issues.
A similar trend was formulated by Adobe Stock analysts, it was called Powerfully Playful and it is not easy to adequately translate it into Russian. Because in Russian the literal translation sounds rather strange, but the visual trend unites exactly these two aspects. From ‘playful’ we have bright colors, daring solutions and animated details. Frivolous color solutions balance the flow of determination, as ‘powerful’ emotional design.
Environmental vector
By 2022, the environmental friendliness of the event is not even a trend, but rather a norm. It is a necessary minimum. For users, it is important how the brand relates to nature protection. The tendency has affected the philosophy of events: for example, event organizers are often required to calculate the carbon footprint.
In the positioning of brands, the trend is called ‘Prioritize Our Planet’. This year, New Naturalism is also topical: visual effects in modernism style with an emphasis on everything natural. Designers use natural palettes — black, white and terracotta, and also choose earthy shades. Natural materials and soft imperfect shapes will be appropriate in the decor.
Science fiction or fantasy reality
Another futuristic trend perfectly combined with immersive instruments is the interplanetary entourage of science fiction. In the decor and design, it suggests the motives for the design of interplanetary ships, images of robots and space landscapes.
Dark shades and metallic textures befit the style. Adobe analysts called this trend ‘Otherworldly Visions’: images of other worlds. It incorporated elements of Afro-futurism, a mixture of pseudo-African and cosmic visuals. The creators of the trend were inspired by solarpunk, a utopian style in art, representing the future of humanity, which has solved all the most important problems. In design, this is manifested through soft color gradients, optical illusions and ethereal illustrations. Sun drenched green multi-tiered cities, streamlined forms of interplanetary shuttles, sparkling spacesuits — every element is appropriate in the design of events and websites.
Scrollytelling
Users scroll news in social networks with incredible speed, that forces content producers to look for ways to attract the attention at lightning speed. The season’s trend has combined two ordinary phenomena: scrolling, e.g. flipping ahead news feed, and storytelling, e.g. telling a story. The main task of the design is to calm down for users distracting and scrolling through the video or picture without looking.
To do this, designers experiment with different elements: asymmetric layouts, huge fonts, parallax scrolling and 3D motion. To enhance the immersion effect, hero videos, adapted audio tracks and sounds are used. But every element works only with high-speed loading and with the way, where a reader is told a unique story congenial to him.
Emphasis on text
Another notable trend with a similar task: to capture the viewer’s attention and to hold it is ‘Copy and Captions’. This is an emphasis on text, subtitles, captions — any elements helped to watch videos in social networks without sound. At the same time, the content is adapted for people with hearing impairment. In social networks, the opportunity to choose is considered to be a good form to a viewer. He/she can choose how it is more convenient for him/her to receive information: read or hear. Therefore, even TikTok, Instagram and YouTube focused on the visual let the titles to the video. But not only trends affect social networks — the most popular websites set the tendency. In the season, for example, a lot of visual artists are making stories in style of Instagram.
Joy philosophy of – optimism & endorphins
The world, tired of the pandemic, wants to receive and generate joy so much that optimism has turned into a full-fledged trend. Bright, juicy, but not aggressive colors are now appropriate in the design trends.
Fun, carefree topics being as far from possible problems as possible can be used everywhere: in decor, web design, event decoration. Now most of international corporations are acting in this vein: they choose photographs of laughing people for advertising, draw good cartoons and move away from a serious tone. There is no universal set of visual elements, but for each event or business you can find your own source of endorphins.
Digital to help visual: generative music
We have already talked about the metaverse and the immersive world: in essence, they can’t be called visual trends, but it is already difficult to imagine the design of anything without them. Therefore, it is impossible to talk about visual in 2022 without mentioning digital trends. This series is logically continued by generative music (That sort of music is created by artificial intelligence).
There are several methods of compiling, but the main distinguishing feature of such sort of music is the absence of a human composer. Usually, human-made samples are taken as the basis for the composition — specifically for this purpose samples are recorded by musicians. These fragments are bought by specialized programs, for example, Mubert, Russian company or Endel, German company. Then the algorithm creates a composition in real time that can be adapted to the desired parameters and personalized as much as possible.
Generative compositions are not protected by copyright low, meaning that they can be legally used for games, streams and public events. That kind of track will not be removed from the video posted on the Internet, it can be easy used for the background on the website or in the application. But the benefit and convenience are not the main advantages of such music, possibility to personalize it are much more important, which means you can personalize your event or product. Every track can adjust to the mood, sense and even the pulse rate of the listener. It gives you the opportunity to create an exclusive experience at digital exhibitions and other immersive events. Hypothetically, adaptive tracks can also be used at offline events: silent disco was successful recently. As good a reason as combining two working instruments!
