This trend points at an understated intention of moving away from the hi-def, ‘perfect’ image, a sentiment that perhaps is rooted in the recent renaissance of film photography. This style feels new although it’s old. This drive to create an imperfect image definitely has something to do with the slow revival of film, the very feel of the medium which is frankly unmatchable, and the space it creates for honest mistakes.

While specific details like light leaks and fish-eye lenses might be left behind, the broader trend itself is highly adaptable, and will stand the test of time.

There is something about amorphous, squidgy blobs and shiny liquids in 3D and digital art that seemed very on-trend over the past year. Sugar-coloured, cushiony structures popped up on magazine covers, and hypnotic, elastic-band-like liquids shimmered and pulsated in a kind of tranced rhythm. Leaning on a sense of randomness and abstraction, these fluid and glinting organic shapes – with no sharp angles or edges in sight – shift and move like aquatic creatures, in ways that defy logic and any notions of gravity.

Techniques and ideas born in the 1890s, and seen again in the heady years of the late 90s, became recurring themes across commercial and personal projects. 

With misty gradients and grainy, tactile textures, the aesthetic pull of the medium was hard to escape: one cursory scroll on Instagram and it pops up in posters, album covers and endless editorial illustrations.

The complexity of these typefaces draws on the beauty of the eccentric graphics of the 60s and 70s, and its contemporary update, which makes it more than just a revival

If there ever was a visual riposte to uncertain, challenging times that manifested through the reflective microcosm that is the world of design, then the recent rise in the use of dramatic, eye-searing colours was definitely it. Intense gradients and blazing hues showed up across advertising campaigns, album and book covers, identity systems and editorial design that made it almost impossible for the viewer to look away.