Source: Freepik
With 2020 well under way, it’s time to ask yourself if your brand’s visual elements are keeping up with the times, the ever-changing industry trends, and the way consumers want to experience their favorite brands. Why, you might ask? Because your visual identity is one of your brand’s biggest assets, and quite simply, if you don’t have a striking visual presence and a distinct look and feel to your brand’s identity, you don’t really have what it takes to engage the modern customer. After all, the modern business world is filled to the brim with amazing brands, and there’s nothing stopping your customers from checking them out instead of you.
For this and many other reasons, you want to update your visuals with a focus on the design of your icons, and online and offline illustrations in general. Nowadays, icons are used to make a brand stand out by telling a story and giving it a distinct visual appeal, so let’s take a look at the biggest trends that you need to follow in 2020.
Adding color shapes to line icons
Simple line icons have always been very popular, and indeed they continue to be popular to this day. Using a minimalist approach to icon design, you can make line icons that are brand-specific, but are easy enough to reproduce by hand, which typically means that they are memorable and that the customer had a higher chance of understanding them upon first contact. That said, line icons can get rather boring, rather quickly. Unless your icons boast truly unique shapes, you might want to start adding color shapes to the base design in order to breathe new life into your illustrations.
This is a simple yet powerful way to rejuvenate line icons and give them a fresh look. Color shapes are just that – they are simple shapes such as a circle or a square infused with a single color that you place on one part of an icon. To illustrate this point, simply pick any line icon on your site, and add a small circle color shape on a small part of the icon – what you will notice is that the icon immediately got more interesting.
Playing with abstract icons
Many companies will use concrete icon designs to illustrate a point and make the topic of the conversation easier to digest, but that doesn’t mean that these types of icons are right for your business. In fact, nowadays business leaders are playing around with abstract illustrations to see how they impact brand stickiness, user engagement, and whether or not they manage to achieve the same results as their more traditional counterparts.
Unsurprisingly, abstract icons are becoming increasingly popular because they bring their own benefits to the table, especially to innovative companies that can’t convey what they do in traditional illustrations. If you’re running a creative agency or if your products are truly breaking the mold, then you might want to consider going with the abstract icon design.
Illustrations that tell a story
The biggest trend that some of the most experienced marketers and designers around the world have caught on to pretty early is the storytelling design. Simply put, this is the idea of using illustrations to close the gap between form and function, which has been masterfully depicted by these icons designed by the Infostarters team that focused on rich yet straightforward illustrations for their Reportz project, the key focus being on creating icons that portrayed the brand, conveyed information, and caught the attention of the observer.
The premise behind these types of illustrations is simple – reduce customer effort and make information more digestible. Using icons like this allows you to minimize the amount of written content on your site, cut the fluff, and get the customer on board as quickly as possible.
Testing two-color icons
Among the popular 2020 design trends is the two-color design, as well. This design approach aims to simplify the visual experience and make the icons easy to integrate into all marketing materials, whether you are creating email campaigns, paid ads, of producing marketing collateral like flyers and product catalogues. By having just two colors, these icons can go well with every backdrop and every theme, and if you choose striking colors to boot, you will ensure that the icons get noticed immediately. Try it out, chances are that they will work wonderfully for your brand visibility.
Going back to primary color schemes
Retro is always in, it seems, which is why this year business leaders are leveraging primary colors to distinguish their brands from the competition. By focusing solely on color schemes comprised of the essential red, blue, green, and yellow hues, brands can draw the user’s attention to the text on the screen, and incentivize them to actually read through the copy on the landing page.
It’s a nifty psychological trick that creates a kind of a contrast to the overly-popular minimalist approach to colors and shapes, and allows a brand to separate itself from the mostly uniform design of its competitors. Just remember not to overdo it with primary colors, as they can be quite aggressive if you don’t create a balance between the shapes, colors, and text.
Wrapping up
Graphic design is always evolving with the industry and consumer trends, so it’s important that you stay on top of the latest developments if you are to keep your audience engaged. Be sure to try out these design solutions yourself in order to revitalize your brand and inspire the customers to reach out.
