Article

Daniel Durandt
Daniel Durandt 6 January 2015
Categories Innovation & Trends

What Determines Design Trends?

What and who decided what is trendy in design?

Designers, celebrities, journalists, stylists, executives and many more all play a role in creating the design trends we live with and experience daily. Fads come and go. But they are all created somewhere by someone and then some get picked up by pop culture and made into trends.

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Marie Claire Australia writes: “How does a thing become a thing? Who decides? It’s hard enough to keep a finger on the pulse – imagine trying to find the heartbeat of a movement that hasn’t even been born yet. Yet it happens in fashion, music, even food. One day, something just feels right. And a trend is born.”

The trend setters tend to talk vaguely about their moods and feelings when asked about how they create trends. There are practical reasons why trends, seemingly at random, emerge on different runways around the world at the same time. Those similarities exist largely because of the textile industry which decides on colours and textures many years before it reaches the designers.

“In other words, somebody already knows what you’ll be wearing in a year’s time – not the precise print, but in terms of shape, colour and fabric. And they know this because fabric manufacturers have been given their orders, which influences what a designer can do, explaining the seasonal confluence of ideas at the shows. “This explains why so many apparently ‘original’ ideas can seem similar. But there’s another element to trend creation that is not about the designer’s creative genius, but about his or her ability to put what they have seen going on around them on a large public platform. And the people they’re watching are the innovators,” Marie Claire continues.

Trends are very quickly picked up and suddenly appear to be everywhere. But this can be dangerous as they can become overdone quickly. According to Absolute Media, when designing for clients it can be easy to slip into using trendy designs which will date. “I think it should come down to what becomes right for the client and their brand.

Your client has come to you to for help with improving or building their brand and they trust you will do this in their best interest. The best way is to design for the client. “The greatest brands are those which stand the test of time and not the ones which have been set up to need a new look after a year. When it comes to your client: lead, don’t follow.” 

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