Five Design Trends in Your Future

Ruth Hagopian

This article originally appeared on PaperSpecs.com.
Let’s say you’re at a clothing store. You’ve finally found a pair of jeans to replace your favorite old pair — not too dark and not too tight. But before you put it in your cart, you scan the tag with your iPhone, and it connects you to a virtual world in 3D.
Like shopping with the best sales staff answering your every question, this tag activates a video presenting the product’s different styles, sizes, laundry care and carbon footprint, all animated in a clever and entertaining way.
The Future Is Here
It’s called Augmented Reality and Alfredo Muccino predicts it will soon influence the way we shop and buy. Muccino is chief creative officer at Liquid Agency, and his expertise as a design and brand strategist makes him the go-to guy for predicting future design trends.
Muccino recently spoke in San Francisco at the annual Visual Media Alliance conference formerly known as PINC — the Printing Industries of Northern California. He explained that one problem with predictions is that today’s newest trends didn’t even exist 10 years ago.
As a designer who grew up producing brochures, logos and publications, Muccino says the new social media, such as Facebook, YouTube, Kindle, Wii and Twitter have totally changed the way he works. “If I didn’t figure out a way to adapt, I wouldn’t be around,” he said.
When he meets with a new client, they always want the latest and greatest thing and ask, “What are we going to do that’s going to break through the noise, connect with people and leverage technology?” Here are five design trends Muccino has named to lead us into the next decade:
Technoaddiction
The Technoaddict has the compulsive need to use the latest technology in order to connect with people who consume information in constantly more digital ways.
Augmented Reality (AR) is the newest technology being used commercially, which allows a more interesting connection between the print and the digital worlds. Like the tag on those jeans, Adidas has an AR campaign using a printed tag embedded in the tongue of its shoe. When scanned, it shows an explosion of Adidas’ footwear styles.
There’s no Web site. The tag is read through the iPhone or webcam connected to the computer, and it takes you right to that particular experience. “From a designer’s perspective,” Muccino said, “it’s an opportunity to play with a combination of design issues, motion graphic issues, spatial design issues, interaction and set design.”
You can mail it to yourself, mail it to a friend or launch a video without having to have the tech or equipment there. AR is here, but we don’t yet know the many ways it will grow or shape our experience.
Authenticraving
Authenticraving is an allergic reaction to the creation of design using digital tools and techniques. A desire to celebrate tangibles opposed to virtual artifacts.
The result of too much tech is an entirely new generation of people much more interested in doing things by hand. “From a social perspective, it’s a craving for authenticity — something that has meaning, that’s real, is built and exists,” he said. And it takes time.
“I’ve been watching a [TV] show called ‘Mad Men’ and I find it hilarious,” he said. The show is based on the world of 1960s Madison Avenue with its four-martini lunch. “Then [the ad men] go to the briefing, shake hands and say, ‘Great, we’ll have a presentation for you in three months.’ In three months, my client will be out of business!”
One anti-tech example from the New York design firm WSDIA (We Should Do It All) shows how they built sets and created handmade sculptural lettering just for a promotional ad. “Photoshop can do a million things, and in the process, there’s been a degradation of the craft of what we do as designers,” Muccino said. Authenticraving recognizes the need to take time and actually think things that are more tangible.
E-motionitists
This is the tendency to think that static imagery is less engaging than video motion graphics. The generation that was raised on TV and sat passively in front of the tube wants to be the next Spielberg.
Now our camera is turned on ourselves. People want to become the stars of their own lives, and they’re using motion graphics and video as a means to do that.
“I’ve done a gazillion logos in my life,” Muccino said. “Today, it’s got to be much smaller than it used to be. [The logo] is going to be living online and it’s got to be animated. And the same thing goes with presentations every time we launch a brand.”
Instead of creating a traditional training manual or data sheet for a tech company, Liquid Agency designed a storyboard for a video set up like a celebrity interview. It imparted the same information, but was more engaging and was produced by company employees.
The idea is to move things. “By training ourselves to think about e-motion to move things physically, then we move the viewer emotionally,” Muccino said.
Individual Expressionism
The era of mass production is giving away to the future of one-of-a-kind. Everyone wants to be a designer and have custom-made objects that fit their individual tastes (or lack of).
Major brands, such as Nike, Adidas and Levis have all created clothing options that allow consumers to choose the cut, style and fit of a product that’s custom made for them. “It’s frightening to some people in the design business to think that everybody’s going to be a designer. But we need to embrace that and figure out how to make it possible,” he said.
More and more designers will see platforms that allow recipients of consumer products, Web sites and marketing materials to participate in the way they’re manufactured and delivered.
EcoCentricity
Muccino’s last trend is a compulsion towards anything that makes one look like they care about natural resources. This condition used to be associated with kraft paper and is now exemplified by the overuse of the color green.
Companies are embracing the idea of environmentalism in a big way, but Muccino asks, “Where’s the differentiation? It’s definitely a part of our culture and something we need to address as designers, but there must be ways to do this other than just making something green.”
Pepsi is doing something different. With money originally intended for commercials broadcast during the Super Bowl, they invited people to submit ideas about helping society and gave them the money to invest in those communities.
Muccino challenges designers to communicate eco awareness in a way that is more compelling and more real whether it’s print, social media or motion graphics. A new world of possibilities is beyond our current expectations and, as the software developer Alan Kay said, “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”

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