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.

What’s a bit different

Your own take. A theme across an alphabet works well, but that theme is only limited by your imagination.

Here’s our Pinterest board for crazy typography inspiration

Love this? Check out our post on great book cover design or how to evaluate a piece of design.

 

Changing fashions…in book cover design. Six original vs current covers.

It’s wise to remember that the “perfect idea” or “perfect solution” doesn’t stay perfect forever.

The idea of what makes something ‘great’ is far from static. It changes over time – sometimes it only takes months, or a few years – but what was once the ideal becomes passé. It’s affected by everything from technology to taste to design trends.

This is really changes in ‘fashion’ – which is noticeable in areas far outside the clothing industry.

Book publishing is a prime example: Books and book jackets look extremely different now than they did even ten or twenty years ago.

You can see variations in everything from fonts to imagery to text. And of course with ‘classic’ books, their nod to the original period is notable – but still somehow more modern.

We’ve collected a few classics and pictured their original (or an early) edition against their modern counterpart. Even if some of the original jackets didn’t look so worn, you can immediately place the old versus the new.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND

“Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” was published by the Homewood Publishing company, circa 1900. “Through The Looking Glass” was published by Donohue, circa 1904. Image sourced from Forgotten Book Marks.

CARRIE

 

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Friday colour – pink

I have a love-hate relationship with pink. A soft yet striking suits-everyone hue; yet walk down the ‘girl’ aisle in any toy store and it’s enough to put you off pink for life.

Here’s a collection of pink.

Looking for more colour inspiration? Here’s our post on how to choose the perfect colour for your brand. Here’s some ways to work with copper too.

The beauty of stamp art – a designer’s Holy Grail

When it comes to graphic design, there are a few Holy Grails. Book covers for me are definitely up there. For some it’s the branding of a large corporation. Most of us though would love a crack at designing a set of stamps. Tiny, beautiful works of art that capture a moment in time.

I still have some of my stamp collection from my childhood, and I still love looking over them from time-to-time for a little visual inspiration. Here are some of my favourites:

 

Friday colour – four seasons

Melbourne is not a city that sticks strictly to its seasons. It likes to keep us guessing.

It has turned us into a people obsessed with the accuracy of weather forecasts. Fifty-percent of people I know have the weather radar app on their phone and yet are not outdoorsy types. We Melburnians compare notes on the art of layering over a beer. We share umbrellas at traffic lights with sodden souls. We frequently test our city by planning outdoor events without back-up plans; but we will brave any weather providing there is coffee or wine nearby.

Here are some colour palettes from the last few months inspired by the seasons.

Winter

Winter clouds, storm coming, blackest night, red velvet armchair, Baileys on ice

Spring

Velvet grape, mulled wine, come-get-me pink, dusty rose, grey clearing, electric teal, neon lime

Summer

Clouds ahead, Wash away grey, summer girls, peachy glow, copper ground, emerald eyes, tropical foliage

Autumn

Pearl blush, French blue, off-teal, pale bronze, spotlight, shiver of emerald, mossy grey, hello mustard.

Looking for more colour inspiration? Here’s our post on how to choose the perfect colour for your brand. Here’s some styling with yellow too.

Friday colour – books and artichoke

I’m sitting in the library trying to write, so here is a book-inspired colour palette for today.

Good growing soil, russet, leather journal, forgotten pink, dirty cream, foggy beach sky, blue dress.

And here are some more book-inspired palettes: with red, with pink, and with navy blue.

Mid-Century Modern at NGV – A review

Kimberly’s review

A celebration of industrial design post-WWII, this exhibition features the surprisingly modern furniture that was the antithesis of the ‘overstuffed and ornate’ styles of previous decades. The exhibition includes only furniture that was designed and manufactures in Australia from 1946 to the early 1970’s.

The furniture and exhibits at Mid-Century Modern were both nostalgic and familiar. Many of the shapes are still seen in today’s furniture, whilst others leave you feeling like you’ve seen it before…at your aunt’s house perhaps, or in a childhood home.

Grant Featherstone Cord Chair – 1950

Clement Meadmore Chair

I’m not used to experiencing furniture as ‘art’ – but this exhibition does a great job of demonstrating to you why these designers should be celebrated. Some pieces resemble modern sculptures. Yet others feature truly handcrafted design that they were never taken into production, being too labour intensive.

The styling of the exhibits is one of the best elements, particularly the rooms that are re-creations of actual rooms of the period. One of my favourite elements wasn’t the furniture at all, but the large renderings of Home Beautiful covers from the fifties and sixties. It also confirmed that ‘DIY’ is by no-means a modern invention!

There were also some fabulous fabrics on display, largely from Frances Burke Fabrics, Melbourne. Several designs incorporated native floral, fauna and even nods to Aboriginal themes. Again, these fabrics would be as relevant today as they were at the time – surely a sign that great design really is somewhat timeless.

Caitlin’s review

Wandering through Mid-Century Modern feels like entering a golden era of furniture and interior design; it’s still so current- but as Kimberly said, nostalgic at the same time. Moving from hand-crafted to mass-produced pieces I imagine posed both an opportunity and quandary for designers: a balance between potential profit without compromising on quality.

This period was the beginning of affordable design for every home, the precursor to the mountain of interior choices we enjoy today. Practicality and comfort was still key, but housed in the clean lines and simplicity of good design.

I also loved the magazines and fabrics on display, as well as the working sketches for some of the furniture and photos of houses the pieces ended up in. That was the strength of the exhibition for me- along with the way the furniture was displayed, additional information and a mixture of sources created a whole sense of that time in Australia, and the influence it has had on design today.

It’s rare to see these kind of exhibitions showcasing products that are uniquely Australian, and it’s a great insight into our own history of design.

Mid-Century Modern: Australian Furniture Design is showing at the NGV (Ian Potter Centre) until October. You can find more information on their website here.

More art reviews: Melbourne Now exhibition, Three artists in imagined space, Juan Sánchez Cotán: A modern muse for still life