At Threshold Agency we have the ability to combine important, relevant information and great innovative design. The melding of the 2 worlds is what makes us marketing experts in the multifamily industry. But how do we achieve that design? Where do our designers look for inspiration and fresh ideas? What are the trends in residential marketing design? Is your marketing design trending?
Trends in the design world are always evolving. They can be similar to any trend in the sense that they can be difficult to follow unless you keep up with it. When you are a designer, following the trends in this industry can keep you from falling into a creative rut. During my research I found a lot of information, and I mean a lot! I’m only going to go into detail about my absolute favorite trends, and the ones that are mentioned over and over again or this blog would get out of hand rather quickly.
I’ll start with the similarities in both print and web design; the most prominent being the size of the media we design for on a regular basis. In print design, you have many different projects and an immeasurable amount of document sizes per project. If they can print it, you can design on it! Web design is not as temperamental, but since responsive websites are the industry standard, you have to think about the different media your end user will be experiencing. Users can view the web on many different sizes of screens (TV, laptop, tablet, phone, etc.) and some of those screens flip from horizontal to vertical depending on how you’re holding them. That seems like a lot of different ways to think about how one website is viewed! Other similarities between print and web are the trends of using large images, large blocks of text and going back to the classics/modern/simplistic/clean design.
Sticking with the web design trends, the most commonly talked about trends I’ve come across are large background images, video background images, parallax scrolling, flat designs, mobile first websites and one/single page web layouts. My favorite is the single page website layout. With a single page website layout all the user has to do is scroll down the page, or click on the navigation bar and the website will scroll down to the part of the page you want to see. It’s easy to navigate through, looks great on all devices and is faster because you only have one page to deal with.
One of my favorite trends in my research are being made in Typography. Handwritten fonts, letterpress printing, delicate scripts, and fonts with imperfections are so much fun. I got married in May of this year and searching for invitations was my favorite part of wedding planning. I really wanted to design my own, but it was easy to choose one since there were so many beautiful ones out there (and let’s be honest, it was less time consuming than doing my own.) Handwritten typefaces seem to be more personal to me and I enjoy utilizing them for logos when I can. I think that style of personalization is a huge part of building a brand. Find it in your budget to invest in letterpress printing, trust me, it’s worth the cost. This finished quality makes your printed piece look very polished. Another trend in typography are icon fonts. Icon fonts are basically a series of symbols set to letters and numbers, so when you type (A, B, C could be a Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram icon). These are more prevalent in the web world. They are clean vector graphics that help your users interact with your site in a new and simple way. They can be used in a countless ways especially as social media icons. Everyone knows if you click on the Facebook icon on a website it will take you straight to their Facebook page. This is a simple, efficient way to use icon fonts.
Logo trends are always fun to follow. A website I love to browse is logolounge.com. They posted a lengthy analysis of current logo trends of 2015 and my favorite is the contoured logos. This type of logo can be parked right in-between a logo with only one color and a highly detailed logo. If you are familiar with gradients, they are used inside of simple shapes to make up a logo that reads well in a small format and is slightly more detailed when viewed on a larger scale. Although these kinds of logos are more difficult to turn into a black and white format; I think they are visually interesting without being too over the top. Another trend in logo design is to create a singular brand and use that brand for the rest of your business, assuming your business has multiple branches. Threshold did the below logo for the Lennar Multifamily Communities called Crest.
You don’t need to be the trendy design expert or follow current designs to have something amazing—you just call me! If you’re in the creative business like us at Threshold Agency, it’s good to keep up with the trends and keep your mind fresh with new visuals. We love to thrill and exceed our clients expectations. That’s why…we’re trending! #GoThresholdorGoHome