2024 Graphic Design Trends TPT Sellers Should Know About

Kirsten 0:04

You're listening to the creative teacher podcast, a show for busy teachers looking for ways to engage, inspire and make an impact in their teacher businesses. I'm Kiersten, a teacher business owner who is all about simple and actionable tips, strategies and resources that result in wins, big or small. If you're looking for that extra spark of creativity, you've come to the right place. Let's dive in together.

Hello, wonderful people. Welcome to another episode of the creative teacher podcast. I hope you're having a fabulous day. And whether is on the warmer side for you right now, this episode is going to be a little bit from the norm, because I'm going to share with you some graphic design trends for 2024. That may or may not be in the TBD space, but it's just really in general in most digital designs. And I wanted to kind of highlight some of the interesting trends that are out there, and what we could possibly learn from them, or how we could possibly utilize them, and our own brands and designs for our businesses.

So I love this first one that they mentioned about diversity and inclusion. A lot of graphic designers are putting in a lot of diverse looks and perspectives and lifestyles of people. It's not your typical cookie cutter looks that we might see. So different cookie cutter type models and stuff like that they're using a variety of people to represent more of our society. So I think that's really cool thoughts to think about of maybe thinking about if you have stock photos of your students, or students in a classroom, maybe just picking up on how you can find more diverse students than what you might see in a typical stock photo. Of course, I know, we may have access to limited stock photos. But if you can find something that highlights the diversity of teachers, classrooms, and even teachers themselves, I always think that's great to put in for your blog posts and website, or in your social media posts as well.

All right, so the second one I'm going to highlight is 70s nostalgia. Now, if you remember back in 2023, if you were a part of the Spring Fling for 2023 I had a free bonus in there, or it was like part of the upgrade. And it was about different graphic design trends of 2023. And one of them was a y2k throwback, like everything. And now this year, it's looking like designers are going toward the 60s and 70s for nostalgic relief. And sidenote 70s music is literally one of my favorite throwback decades, even probably more so than the decades I lived through. It's just something that about the music during that time that I really love. So I'm loving this 70s nostalgia, we're thinking of the retro color palettes and that really unique rainbow look at that you might see and just thinking about how we can bring back that look with the warmer tones and yellows and just kind of thinking more along those lines, rather than the really bright gaudy silver, neon looking 90s and 2000s. This is coming back and logos one that I can think of very clearly off the top of my head is Burger King, they've kind of gone towards this 70s Nostalgia look. And also there's more of this desire to go back to vintage art designs. While I think the colors could be implemented as far as you know, maybe if you're looking for redesign and you're loving the 70s Nostalgia colors, you can always add that into your color palette. But as far as like maybe any retro designs or vintage graphics, that's probably not what we're gonna see in TPT stores but the colors could be something that we could implement into our TPT businesses.

One other graphic design trends that I want to highlight is maximalism this was something that was prevalent in 2023 and it is still happening it's still there and Max realism is if you can think of minimalism as very basic not I want to I don't want to say basic but a lot of whitespace clean simple of maximalism is literally the exact opposite. It's overloaded with fonts and shapes and colors and visuals, big bold fonts in a variety of different sizes, and just a lot of color combinations. It just adding intrigue, think of maybe even like a concert poster. I feel like a lot of concert posters, or music festivals like SXSW. They always have these types of maximalism in the graphics that they display for when they're advertising for different concerts and, you know, different events at different venues. And so I feel like this definitely could be incorporated maybe in product covers, like going all out in adding a bunch of different screenshots and photographs. And, you know, kind of mainly getting it to click, you want to get the click get people on your page. So you can get that view and have people take a look at the preview and see if that's something they're interested in. So maybe maximalism could be helpful and beneficial for TPT. Sellers, I know and see a lot of TPT sellers, kind of using a lot of variety of elements in their listings.

The next one I thought was interesting. And that is experimental typography. This was kind of utilized last year as well, just unique fonts that are different and exciting and not something that we've really seen before. And that's kind of being used as the main part of the design, it's really being used as like a header font or sub heading font. And it's interesting, because this source is saying that a lot of Sans Serif fonts are taking the backseat. And these type of experimental fonts with interesting squiggly characters are kind of going and coming in the forefront. So we're thinking maybe thinking about how display fonts can vary. There's so many different ones, and even on TPT in the TPT space, not just in Canva. I love finding interesting fonts that I've never literally never seen before. But I feel like also in the TPD space, we've kind of been doing this for a while with kg fonts, and aka fonts and AJ fonts and all the different fonts that you can buy on TPT. I feel like there's been a lot of experimental typography going on. And this year is not an exception. If you ever find a cool font in Canva, maybe play around with it and see how you can incorporate it in your brand and kind of add it to that maximalism look if it goes together with your overall branding. Or you might like it so much that you want to use it literally in everything, your website and all that good stuff. So you never know what you might find when you're experimenting with different typography and finding things in Canva, and Google fonts and Adobe fonts, and also on TPT.

The next one I thought was interesting and could potentially be utilized. And it's called Vintage minimalism. So this as it quotes it says, Think of visiting a centuries old apothecary, or a perfumer in ancient times, this trend is channeling the look and feel of a typewriter label, a wax stamp, and handwritten instructions on labels. So if this kind of if you're feeling this vibe, and you're like, Okay, I can do this I can, I can go with this one, then maybe you can kind of incorporate it into your social media graphics or your website in general. And just thinking about keeping it minimalist, but adding, you know, that just specific look and even pairing it with some playfulness of that retro 70s. And giving kind of a clean, modern feel with that. I'm thinking just like these vintage are really old illustrations that you might see in a book from the 1700s or the 1800s. If that's something that could potentially align with your brand. That's something you can always incorporate. But this is something that is trending for the year as well.

All right. Another one is abstract gradients and color transitions. So gradient has not gone away. It's been around for a few years now. And it's still pretty trendy. You can always do two tone transition, or maybe even thinking about utilizing three four colors or just every color on your brand. I've learned that as I I've worked with clients, sometimes gradients don't translate pretty well. Um, sometimes they do, it just depends on which colors are being used. It just really, really depends. But if you happen to have like a rainbow color, or maybe even red, pink and yellow, that could translate pretty well as far as a gradient color. And you can always incorporate that into your designs or on your website, or is maybe some backgrounds on your social media graphics, but just giving it a giving it a more modern look with some clean looking fonts that are matching with your brand and highlighting the fun gradient that's been around for a bit.

Okay, the next trend we're going to be talking about is texture and senses. So I really think it's interesting that we've gotten a lot of technology in being able to kind of convey this interesting type of texture. I've seen grainy texture on gradient actually combining like this grainy gradient look that I really liked. And I actually incorporated with my graphics for the spice up your store challenge. And also, there's 3d icons and pictures that look like you know, you could touch it, and it's like a pillow or like a little bit of bubblegum. So just kind of appealing to the senses. Even though you can't physically touch something can be done on a digital medium, such as your website or in Canva. So this is something that is trending, maybe that grainy look, or even glass look. The bubble gum, 3d look. And low E silk look is also something that it mentions. And it's just kind of interesting of how we can kind of convey certain textures even though it's not something we can actually feel. But it's like we want to we get the edge, we're like, I want to, I wonder what this would feel like. So it's something that makes people think stop and think is always great, because that gives more people time on your graphics.

The last one we're going to talk about is graphics that are designed by AI. Now, I feel like this AI artwork is in its infancy for a variety of reasons. It's just so funny, like to be able to type in like a prompt in what you think might come out or what should come out. And it's completely, very just uniquely interesting to say the least, you might get students with hands that have maybe eight fingers on one hand and three fingers, on the other hand, and it's like, it looks like real, but it's not because it's AI and it just looks different. And that's actually a thing that's trending right now, you can kind of tell which graphics were designed by AI right now, it's really, really easy to pinpoint it. And I've even seen, you know, on Facebook, those clickbait posts of like, oh, this is a person, a family from 1842. And I'm like, this is clearly AI generated, like, why are we even having this conversation? We I don't even know if these people were actually real. So we want to kind of use it and highlight it. And we could put it in our resources. But we also want to just kind of keep in mind that it is while it's trending, there's still a lot we need to learn about this AI artwork, and sometimes it just doesn't translate well. So I am going to link again, this source in the description and you can kind of see what I'm talking about as far as the different graphics and hopefully it'll give you a better visual of the type of trends you can potentially integrate into your branding and into your resources that you sell. All right, that is the end of this episode,

and I will talk to you again next week. Thanks for listening to the creative teacher podcast. If you enjoyed listening to today's episode, feel free to subscribe and leave a review. I'd love to hear your feedback. You can also follow me on Instagram at the southern teach dot designs. Have an amazing day.