Be Careful to Balance Design Trends with Your Established Image

There is little doubt that Millennials are driving markets today and this is especially true online.

One place where their impact is literally seen is in design. Online design trends move quickly today and this is because the tastes of younger Internet users drive the changes. And, the tastes within younger consumers always change more quickly than they change among older consumers.

That’s just human nature and the facts of maturation.

This poses a problem for online marketing because businesses need to balance two competing demands:

• The requirement to appeal to evolving aesthetics, and
• The need to establish a solid, dependable reputation that is reflected in company visuals.

Therefore, you need to keep your look and feel up-to-date without chucking the brand identity you’ve worked so hard over the years to establish and maintain.

Bill Gardner chronicled 2018 logo trends on the logolounge blog the other day and noted some developments that are worth considering. Two of these in particular I believe you can use to tweak your look without jeopardizing your overall brand identity.

Back to serif fonts from san serif typefaces

Just as we’ve seen male professional athletes sporting facial hair that beckons back to a bygone era, we’re seeing something of a retro trend in typefaces with serif fonts making a comeback.

You might not want to go overboard with old-style typefaces in your corporate logo, but if you’re introducing new products, you might take advantage of this trend and give your new venture a little retro-appeal.

Color Millennials boldly

Colors are getting more intense and Gardner points out that the blending and merging of colors is also having an impact today. As an example, he points to the Instagram logo.

These bolder colors with their gradations stand in stark contrast to the more flat, minimalist design criteria that Apple forwarded just a few years ago with its anti-skeuomorphism design guidelines.

I think you can pick up a few hints here to give your marketing materials a little freshening up. I wouldn’t go overboard with any of them because this big group of powerful consumers that we have labelled Millennials hasn’t completed their aesthetic evolution. You need to always provide yourself with wiggle room so you can give a nod to changes without abandoning your core visual branding.

And don’t forget the good branding is much more than colors and typefaces…