Contemporary design is responding to the habits and lives of contemporary people. In the web full of content, yours has to stand out, attract and take someone’s breath away. To create visuals that respond to the modern online eye, you need to get even further more outside of that box, think bold and exotic, passion-driven and consumer oriented.

Individualization

Over the past few decades, mankind got used to fitting boxes all the time – by gender, age, interest, hair color. Nowadays, the society is getting tired of being a part of a generalized audience, individualism is getting far in appreciations – everybody needs attention and unique approach. Therefore, the time of generalizing your User Persona is officially on it’s way to retiring. It is time to put an individual in the focus of things, make everybody feel special, avatar by avatar.

Teasing foreplay

A contemporary scroll-er scrolls down through million of posts and adds every day, from the moment we wake up and grab our phones, to the moment we drop them next to our bed in the evening. To really get someone’s attention has never been this difficult. In the ocean of colors and codes, your idea needs to stand out and reach the thumb of your customer. It is no longer about pretty, elegant and sophisticated design, the next focus that will reach the market popularity is the shocking, provocative, teasing. The factor of unexpected is what gets people to stop scrolling and take a look at your visuals – this is the magic window for your success in design.

Go retro

Social disconnection is bringing the world to a state of nostalgia and melancholy, seeking for different party types, looking for alternative ways to connect. This is exactly why the era of our parents is so vital for this new emerging culture. The new, millennial, IT literate generation longs for a time of innocence and dancing, when the world just started opening up, but you could still have quality social time. This need to relax and enjoy life inserts a new type of groove and retro suddenly became cool. Your audience is buying the vintage dreams wrapped up with a bow, and this trend in design has been here for over a few years now, but it is only growing and expanding.

As we are approaching the end of the decade, black is the new black, and emotional strength and vulnerability is the focus of individual interests and passion. New trend, new consumer, dictates to be treated like a living, emotional being, and no longer as a data on a chart.

About the author:

Nina Petrov is an activist, poet, performer and mathematician. She communicates with the world mostly through words, movement and equations, but sometimes also by speaking very loudly. The only truth she could say about herself is that she keeps changing every day, never stops learning and interacting with her surroundings.