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Discover the Hottest Graphic Design Trends in 2024

Featuring Brutalist Vectors by ThunderPixels

Creative Market September 14, 2024 · 11 min read

It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that graphic design is tied to the cultural laylines of society. Like modern art, trends in design can represent the temperature and trajectory of our cultural evolution. When our world changes, design changes with it.

For the last decade or so, design trends have fallen along the trajectory of corporate modernism and were characterized by clean lines, minimalist color palettes, and symmetrical compositions. But 2022 graphic design trends marked a shift, and the design world began breaking away from the corporate sameness that defined it for so long.

The result was a foray into new creative frontiers defined by exuberant color palettes, wild interpretations of styles from decades past, and a resurgence of trends that had long since faded, taking center stage once more. Given the stark departure from norms, it’s accurate to say this shift was more of an about-face.

2024 Graphic Design Trends

As we move into the new year, designers will be happy to hear that the exploration of new creative territories isn’t slowing. Pantone’s Color of the Year for 2023 is a nod to the cultural climate. Vividly saturated and pulsing with life, Viva Magenta is, in Pantone’s words, “an unconventional shade for an unconventional time.”

Below, we’ve defined some of the characteristics of the best graphic design trends to come in 2024. We’ve also curated some appropriately unconventional assets for each one, so you can prepare for your own creative explorations.

The Holo Surreal Graphic Design Trend

The first on our list of 2024 graphic design trends is a trend we’ve dubbed holo surreal. This visual style is all about jarring compositions that defy traditional layouts. It leans on abstract imagery and experimentation with color. Think reflective materials that play with light and shadow and 3D shapes wrapped in vibrant gradients. In terms of aesthetics, this is a trend that marries the modern with the futuristic. It’s visually appealing, bold, and playful, free of unnecessary elements and focused on the principles of inclusive and accessible design—a captivating graphic design trend for now and for the future.

Breaking away from fixed color palettes and conventional shapes, these abstract assets fully embrace the bold presence of holo surreal:

3D Abstract Gradient Shapes. This collection by Mio Buono features unique 3D shapes with surreal gradients. The colors in the gradients are complex, with glowing pastel hues that dance across the spectrum. Use a few shapes to add a touch of the abstract to projects with modern sensibilities, or use them all together to craft a vibrant surrealist collage.
Surreal Holo Abstract 3D Shapes. Pushing the boundaries of color even further, these vibrant creations by Larysa Zabrotskaya are untethered from reality. The set includes 70 iridescent and futuristic 3D elements in unique shapes that you can use for any type of design project.
Molten: Fluid Metallic Textures. Created by Chroma Supply, this set of metallic textures is one part autostereogram, one part kaleidoscope, and one part melted funhouse mirrors. You can use these backgrounds to transform posters or apply them to text to create the surrealist brand packaging.
Holographic 3D Abstract Shapes. This set by Designessense contains 50 unique 3D shapes that feel like geological discoveries from an alien world. Each shape takes on a life of its own, but all feature exceptional metallic gradients that create tension between the second and third dimensions. They’re great for projects in need of a modern futuristic infusion.

Crispy Whim—A Whimsical Style, Popular with Graphic Designers in 2024

This trend is a creative counterbalance to the visual style that’s defined high-end luxury brands for years, with minimalist designs and seamlessly blending colors that seem to flow into one another, often with distinctive, script-like text set on top. There’s familiarity in the silky, desaturated backgrounds that frame thin, elegant typefaces. But the typography itself yanks the unattainable back down to earth by embracing organic fonts with humanist touches. It embraces whimsy and refuses to take itself seriously by contrasting vertical strokes with italics on every line—easily one of the top design trends for 2024.

Here are three fonts and a spirited social media kit that perfectly captures this enduring graphic design trend:

LUCETTE Social Media Kit. This social media kit created by the graphic designer team of Studio Standard comes with 37 fully customizable layout templates for Canva and Adobe InDesign. The highlight is the typography, which puts the modern aesthetic and chic aesthetic squarely into crispy whim territory. It’s an excellent choice for fashion brands, influencers, and design studios.
New Icon Font Duo. Created by Sam Parrett, this luxurious yet organic font duo is at once timeless yet completely approachable. Standing alone, the two fonts are no slouches in terms of quality. But when paired together, they strike a modern pose that’s youthful and playful, with hand-drawn illustration styles and script-like text that oozes visual intrigue. It’s a versatile set you can explore with a variety of projects.
Carefree Serif. True to its name, this condensed serif is almost irreverently sophisticated, with a retro finish for good measure. Crafted by Jen Wagner Co., the set includes italic variants and ranges from thin to bold, with a total of 16 fonts. With high contrast and great letter spacing, it’s perfect for oversized headers, pull quotes, and calls to action.
Fairytale Serif. Conceived and developed by Nicky Laatz, Fairytale is a whimsical little serif influenced by ancient handwritten italics. It’s a font that enchants with its picturesque letters and ink borders, and it’s a great choice for invitations and other printed materials.

Abstract 3D—One of the Wildest Graphic Design Trends in 2024

Following the infusion of 3D shapes seen throughout 2024, the abstract 3D trend takes organic shapes and objects in the third dimension and transforms them into bubbly, ballooning abstractions, often with ample white space and contrasting colors all around, creating designs that are both bold and calming, ideal for the unpretentious and endearing world of fun and playful web design. If you can imagine a playful art store or toy blocks in a child’s playpen, you’re pretty much there.

This is a trend that touches on typography and icons, but above all, it’s about experimenting with shapes to establish a unique brand identity and creating visuals that truly pop off the page. Here are a few to get you going:

Grainy Gradient 3D Squiggles. Hey Scamp’s set offers an excellent selection of grainy 3D doodles you can use to create designs. It comes with dozens of unique creations, each one with editable gradient colors, so you can explore your own creative palettes.
Puffy Abstract 3D Graphics Elements. This collection comes with 30 unique takes on puffy 3D imagery painted in black and white. Created by Youandigraphics, the shapes in this set are amorphous zebra-skin blobs that perfectly capture the abstract 3D trend.
AVALON 3D Abstract Shapes. This set features 25 unique geometric shapes, along with 10 premade compositions and seven backgrounds. The shapes themselves are ones you’d find in a set of toy blocks, and the colors reinforce this aesthetic. Yet this set somehow manages to feel both futuristic and retro, making them strangely abstract and exceptionally flexible.

Brutal Grunge—A Distorted, Distressed Visual Aesthetic for Striking Web Design

As in music, grunge is characterized by intense distortion and a distressed aesthetic that favors worn and eroded over clean and new. Meanwhile, brutalism eschews aesthetics altogether to accentuate base compositional elements. Melded together, this trend is all about adding as much distress as possible to make compositions feel analog instead of digital. Think irreverent retro with a seriously distressed style.

This aesthetic is best represented by textures and imagery. These assets give you a sense of the style and a starting point for brutal grunge projects:

BADCOPY Copier Effect. Created by Thundr Co., this Photoshop effect conveys all the essence of brutal grunge. With 10-toner ink textures, 5 vintage paper textures, and 35 displacement maps, this grunge set is perfect for transforming images, shapes, and text into brutal grunge.
BRUTALISM 400+ Brutalist Vectors. Another creation of Thundr Co. and a perfect addition to the BADCOPY set, this library of more than 400 vectors is brutalism in its purest form. Packed with classic retro shapes and imagery, like science graphs, grids, globes, and wormholes, this is a set you’ll reach for time and again.
NVC CYBERPUNK Instagram Templates. These Instagram templates created by The Muza feature more than 50 unique designs that define brutal grunge. Each template comes decorated with abstract shapes, gritty text, grainy images, and other elements that accentuate the cyberpunk aesthetic. If you’re working with a brand that has a dystopian feel, this is the set for you.

Arcade Fantasy—Sure to Be One of the Top Graphic Design Trends in 2025

Not unlike the Y2K aesthetic that dominated designs throughout 2023, arcade fantasy is one of the latest graphic design trends and an ode to simpler times. This style immediately creates a sense of fun and playfulness, harkening back to retro video games of the ’80s and ’90s, complete with retro console influences, neon highlights taking center stage, hand-drawn art in the simple pixel style, and a sense of nostalgia that makes you want to plan an all-day excursion to a retro arcade. Even in our constantly evolving digital age, these classic shapes and forms from decades gone by continue to open doors to endless creative exploration.

Simple geometric shapes, pixel art, and vibrant colors characterize this graphic design trend. If you want to get your game on in the graphic design sense, hit the start button and select one of these sets:

Pixel Art Colorful Backgrounds. Created by dvtchk, this set features 22 abstract pixel art backgrounds that capture this trend perfectly. As backgrounds, they’ll infuse your projects with a pixelated fantasy vibe. Or you could use them as headers to add a little retro gaming flair to your social media accounts.
Pixel Arcade Photoshop Effect. This effect package, published by Design Squad, allows you to create a visual story with the best aesthetic elements of the ’80s and ’90s, amazing for creating mesmerizing transitions in videos or presentations. The filters have smart object layers, so editing and adding text to your digital designs is exceptionally easy.
SGNL Branding Mockups Kit. These branding mockups by Mockup Cloud have 31 templates; each one presented with dark, moody colors and glowing neon glowing accents. They’re suitable for minimalist design in branding or print, and the set comes with detailed instructions and even a YouTube video tutorial.

Molecular Typography—Bold Typography with Divided Design Elements

The same rejection of conformist values that characterize other current graphic design trends has also seeped into typeface design. The result is typefaces that have undergone vivisection. Glyphs are broken apart, examined, and stitched back together. Angles and proportions are wired this way and that. And styles are crafted purely out of creative expression with no room for conventions. In short, this graphic design trend is about breaking typography down to the molecular level. It’s one of the best of the latest graphic design trends for establishing a distinct and bold brand identity in saturated markets like retail and ecommerce.

Perhaps the most interesting trend to watch, molecular typography, is akin to the Wild West of creative fonts, transforming the very landscape of graphic design in our increasingly digital world. Here are a few notable outlaws to keep your eye on:

TAN GEORGIA. Fun and flexible, this is a unique stenciled display font that adapts well to a variety of projects. Unlike other fonts with a stencil aesthetic, this one feels more like retro magazine lettering that had an Exacto knife unleashed on it. Created by TanType, it’s an excellent font choice for posters, invitations, and other print projects.
Rendi Wendy. According to ana & yvy, this is a fun, chunky, choppy, and trippy font. And it’s as apt a description as any. It offers several alternatives in the form of ligatures, and it’s an excellent option as a font for adding abstract gradients and textures. It makes for an excellent secondary font for just about any abstract design project.
Florence Display Font. This experimental display font by Tropical Type is an excellent typeface for accenting high-fashion projects. It’s an elegant font with a blackletter style that looks almost Arabic, but its ornate glyphs are marked with smooth lines instead of sharp edges. And the fact that it incorporates traditional serifs means this font is 100% molecular.

Get a Jump on Graphic Design Trends in 2025

This year was an exciting and rejuvenating year for those of us fortunate enough to be a part of the graphic design community. And as creativity’s comeback picks up steam going into 2025, things are only going to get more interesting. To keep your own creativity flowing while you’re pushing the boundaries of design, become a member of Creative Market today. With an endless supply of assets at your fingertips, you’ll ensure your next project takes its part in defining the future of design.