Three design trends I’m loving

Love or hate them, trends are hard to ignore. One minute you see a stray pineapple in the back of your favourite gift store, the next there is tropical foliage bursting out of towels, posters and T-shirts everywhere you look.

Here are three of my favourite current trends – with links to many more images I’ve pinned on Pinterest.

Tropical

Let’s start with pineapples, banana leaves and parrots. The tropical trend seems to cycle around every few years, and I love it every time. What can I say – give me a toucan, a piña colada and some sun and I’m happy.

What I’m loving

Big and bold patterns, lots of greenery, bright colours set against pastels, jungle exotica, and of course lots of avian friends popping up. I love the artist Henri Rousseau, and his work is referenced a lot.

Henri Rousseau, Exotic Landscape 1908

What’s a bit different

Using black as a backdrop. Black isn’t your usual first thought when talking tropical, but when paired with over-the-top patterns and colours it adds a sophistication and (I think) a bit of a mysterious edge.

Here’s our Pinterest board for tropical inspiration

Geometrics and Gemstones

I think it’s fair to say geometrics are always ‘in’, it’s navigating the subtleties of how they’re used. It will be no surprise that I love the gemstone-geometric trend; we’ve done a few projects in this vein.

What I’m loving

It’s so easy to do your own take on this trend – we made a gemstone-inspired mousepad, painted some book art and tried a bit of collage.

What’s a bit different

Illustrated gemstones; collaged, painted, drawn – there’s a beautiful organic feel to this trend that sets it apart from other geometric patterns. Have a look at artists like Liesl Pfeffer, Karina Eibatova and Russell Leng.

Russell Leng, Future Findings (left), Liesl Pfeffer, Hearts and Arrows (right)

Here’s our Pinterest board for geometric and gemstone inspiration

Crazy typography

Hand-drawn type has been trendy for a while now – but the trend for outlandish typography goes one step further – type that is itself an illustration. As with everything, it has been recycled from another time, but with some gorgeous results.

What I’m loving

Go wild. Go crazy. This isn’t display type to be used cautiously – throw it out into the world. My absolute favourite examples are the letters made from landscapes (I’ve pinned a heap of them on our Pinterest board here); there are also lots of versions with botanicals which I love.