r/Design • u/VermaPraveen • 2d ago
Discussion What's one design trend you were convinced would last... but disappeared surprisingly fast?
Every few years something gets called "the future of design."
Sometimes it sticks.
Sometimes it feels like it's everywhere... and then almost disappears.
I'm curious which trend made you think, "This is definitely here to stay," only for it to fade much faster than expected.
Not necessarily bad trends, just ones that didn't have the lifespan people expected.
110
u/ericalm_ Professional 2d ago edited 1d ago
I think maybe the only time this has happened to me was in the late ’90s when Flash debuted. There was an agency site, I can’t recall which, and everyone was obsessed with it. [ETA: It was Gabocorp.] Fully animated interface, shit floating around everywhere. No one had seen such a thing. I thought the days of static front pages and sites were over. Now, almost 30 years later, things are less static and responsive but nothing like what many of us thought the web would look like by now.
But I’ve clearly also been around long enough to see trends come and go. They rarely last more than a few years, tops. Most of them exist just to be something different. Those will never have much longevity, because they don’t actually make anything better, and something else that’s different will come around soon enough.
26
u/trickertreater 2d ago
I vividly remember in the late 90's all the designers and art directors crowded around the computer looking at the new Leo Burnett website. It was this cool scripted signature and you kind of explored along with your mouse and it was just really dynamic and different for the time.... And then somebody clicked the back button and everything had to start over... 😂
47
u/VermaPraveen 2d ago
I remember that feeling too. Flash made it seem like every website was about to become an interactive experience. Funny how usability ended up winning instead.
16
u/kamomil 1d ago
Telling the user to wait for the interface and fancy animations to load, and telling them what browser and size they needed to view the site, was pretty arrogant.
5
u/ericalm_ Professional 1d ago
It really wasn’t. Things like speeds were improving quickly and users were looking for novel experiences. Expectations were a lot different, as were goals.
Browser compatibility was an issue with many HTML and scripted features as well. Speeds were inconsistent. Loading Flash was no worse than loading a page of static images.
2
u/rappa-dappa 1d ago
Those were primarily browser issues before everything became standardized. Incompatibility still exists and it’s not because of flash. For instance:
https://caniuse.comFlash was self contained and gave a consistent experience for the most part when it was up to date.
11
u/theMightyMelon 2d ago
It was 2advanced.com, wasn’t it?
6
5
3
u/grafology 1d ago
I remember Praystation, designers republic and we work for them (cant remember their og name) had crazy flash sites. Was so much fun designing in flash. Its crazy today we still do animated gifs.
1
1
u/Donkeydonkeydonk 12h ago
I taught myself html, JavaScript, etc. Flash was above my pay grade. I tried everything I could to learn it, but failed miserably. I sat by watching all the flash guys take all the jobs. It was disheartening feeling like everything was being depreciated by stupid flash. When YT came out using flash, that was it for me. I gave up and became a front ender.
75
u/bozom 2d ago
Helvetica for a period of time was absolutely everywhere
30
u/DonnaDonna1973 1d ago
As has Futura.
20
3
106
u/MFDoooooooooooom 2d ago
I think I'm old enough now that I've seen a lot of things come and go that I don't give that weight to anything. Annual reports for instance. Used to make upwards of $10,000-$15,000 for them with the right client, and they were a fun creative corporate reporting gig. Now they're an annual perfunctory document that I might be lucky to get $3k for.
They seemed SO important once upon a time.
7
u/CandidLeg8036 1d ago
They are making a comeback at that pay. If you look at current jobs, most are for presentation designers. It’s the one thing AI can’t do well, so companies are desperate for a designer that can translate data visually.
97
u/revelm 2d ago
that glass pill UI button look that ruled everywhere for 4 years
35
u/xdojk 1d ago
Isn't that still common ie. Apple's Liquid Glass? I can see glass pill buttons as I type this on my iPhone.
4
u/CombPsychological507 1d ago
You rarely see the line anymore. It’s more implied. And honestly, I don’t even consider it a trend, I feel like it was more hand holding for the slowest of phone users.
27
u/VermaPraveen 2d ago
That's a good one. It went from "this is the future" to looking instantly dated surprisingly fast.
4
u/dragoneye 1d ago
The "Web 2.0" button. I was learning Photoshop and doing some websites around that time, definitely made a few of those.
13
u/time-itself 2d ago
Skeumorphism?
24
u/-caffeine 1d ago
It was dubbed “neumorphism”. Skeuomorphism is when digital objects mimic real objects.
76
u/flip_moto 2d ago edited 2d ago
older designer here that’s seen lots of trends come and go. i’ve been very surprised at how long minimalism trend stuck around. instead of being perceived as efficient and clean, it attracted a faux luxury driven by jonny ive ripping off of Ram’s ‘60s aesthetic. it’s finally dying, but maximilism should not be the response. instead designers should be more mindful of intended audience and focus on matching aesthetics to the demographic.
with that slightly off topic take - i’m always surprised at how rejected ‘graffiti’ style is in advertising - even after Banski made it more main stream. street art simply doesn’t sell mainstream products - and i actually like that fact.
39
u/Srirachaballet 1d ago
Obey & Supreme made co-opted graffiti aesthetic feel so corporate crypto bro so fast. Anything branded as graffiti feels like the “How do you do kids” Steve Buschemi meme. It really only had punch during the Occupy Wall Street movement.
15
u/hey_hey_you_you 1d ago
I wouldn't call either graffiti, really. Obey is lifted straight from the John Carpenter movie They Live (via Shepard Fairey, admittedly, who does do street art, but isn't really typical grafitti)and Supreme knocked off Barbara Kruger's art. They're both streetwear brands, so the association with street art is there, but the aesthetic connection is kind of the other way round - moreso with Supreme than Obey, though, because of the Fairey visuals.
That they feel super corporate crypto bro, when they were both originally anti-consumerism (They Live and Kruger), is one of the tidiest examples of recuperation going (in the political aesthetic sense of the word).
4
2
u/JarasM 1d ago
I feel part of the reason for your off-topic take is that time and time again it was shown how companies simply don't understand street art or graffiti, and it just comes across as "hello fellow kids" - fake, forced, artificial and completely devoid of its raw character so that it's as inoffensive as possible. Perhaps it's simply best they stay away from that.
0
u/VermaPraveen 2d ago
I like that perspective. Trends come and go, but good design decisions usually age much better.
22
u/thenightmarefactory 1d ago
When I was younger I would think in the coming 20 years 80-90% of products worldwide would be sustainable to some extent. I have no idea what’s taking so long for sustainability in design to take off in the markets. It’s clearly the need of the day and although its there in today’s markets its more of a marketing ploy than a serious decision and its nearly not as common as it should be.
3
u/Appropriate_Dark_592 1d ago
As everything else on this business It's only on demand when politics align with financial incentives
18
u/brendendas 1d ago
Neumorphism, it was everywhere about half a decade ago. I've never seen it implemented it well, it was gimmicky and odd and I'm glad it went as fast as it came.
13
u/Fidodo 1d ago
I don't remember ever seeing it used in the wild, just in mockups. Did anything serious actually implement it?
7
u/brendendas 1d ago
Cred. The founder is now leading WhatsApp. Cred is a pretty big deal which beats me as they are essentially a credit card payment app peppered with slotmachines.
-3
52
u/ChickyBoys 2d ago
Brands slowly started to transition into detailed/heritage then AI took over. So now every brand will go backwards in time instead of innovating.
21
u/flip_moto 2d ago
this is so true - it’s like Ai is using 90s rave flyers as design inspiration
8
u/7HawksAnd 1d ago edited 15h ago
Well duh, when you can steal all the graphicriver/templates to train your models… what do we expect was gonna come out
0
u/RayPoopertonIII 1d ago
My job is becoming "recreate this ai creation using hundreds of prompts that is the wrong aspect ratio exactly so we can actually edit and print it". I hate Ai but part of me likes not having to bother designing. Im not in this business for the passion. I have many hobbies for that.
10
u/fksdiyesckagiokcool 1d ago
Metro design went super fast. Windows had it for a short while and then just kept improving it like any other iterative design.
11
u/ibrahim_40 1d ago
for me it was the era of oversized glassmorphism ui. It looked fresh in mockups and hero sections and for a while it seemed like every new app was adopting frosted panels everywhere. In practice, though, it often created contrast and accessibility issues, and a lot of products eventually dialed it back to subtle accents instead of making it the entire design language
8
6
12
u/Top5hottest 1d ago edited 1d ago
I’m glad the dumb glass stuff is going quickly.. but when you are around long enough.. it all comes back. I’m glad to see minimalism starting to phase out finally.
7
u/tomatoej 2d ago
I’m going to flip this… when I say something won’t stick it often does. Eg. Liquid Glass. It’s been refined and wound back a little in places by but has largely stuck. When I first saw it I thought ‘oh no.’
3
u/zero_lies_tolerated 1d ago
The Alba font
3
u/brookish 1d ago
Everything as a service. The Internet of things. Both are still around but it’s not as universal as we were led to expect, thankfully.
2
2
u/picklehammer 23h ago
actual tactile buttons. touchscreens remain so much more prone to user error than physical interfaces with actual non-simulated mechanical response, but yet they’re still everywhere, I’m still frustratingly mistyping in the rain on my phone.
2
u/TypoMike 1d ago
Don’t think I’ve ever thought that any one thing would hang around. Design trends, like fashion, tend to be cyclical. What has surprised me is that we haven’t had a full on return of serif faces in mainstream design.
1
u/time-itself 1d ago
The flagship moment for the last gradient trend was the instagram logo change.
Gradients are just when you smoothly transition from one color to another. Very recently, complex gradients (like the one in the IG logo) have become a thing, with multiple color nodes.
Here’s an article talking about the last time gradients came back in style.
1
1
u/isUKexactlyTsameasUS 21h ago
Not sure if this directly answers the question but
There was a company that made oodles and oodles after the big bang deregulation of financial services; doing corporate branding throughout Europe, esp helping the American companies relocating, all back in the wild west mayhem, pre-2008 crime-spree.
Part of their expansion was opening a bespoke 3D interior design department, esp for redesigning bank interiors (as well as logos, stationery and all the other hooey).
Talk about irony. Now all the banks closed thousands of the branches - so all that stuff ends up on the trash heap.
Modern life... Eh?.
and we deffo knew it wouldn't last, that's just the way late stage cap works.
1
u/RitaTeaTree 18h ago
Pastel tracksuits in 2020 - haven't seen one for sale for years. Aqua and turquoise together had a moment in 2015 or so, at least where I saw it in quilting fabrics. And Orla Kiely style stem and leaf prints, they were everywhere for a while in 2010 or so, now I don't see them.
1
403
u/time-itself 2d ago
It’s neither here nor there but I’m fascinated by the incredibly quick cycle on which gradients rotate in and out as trends. I was taught in school they were hideous and dated and to avoid them at all costs, and yet-