It’s new. It’s old. It’s here to stay.
Vintage has been a long-running and highly effective design trend. For 2018, the new vintage is analog. Consumers crave an offline experience, so vintage design has started to evolve into analog. It no longer references a certain era or time period but looks specifically offline, non-digital, and IRL. Sign-painting techniques also dominate the analog trend, with slab serif and script fonts referencing subtle, hand-painted imperfections in their lines.
“As the tides of technology rage on,” marketing and content strategist Katie Perry said earlier this year, “2017 saw several examples of people and businesses gravitating around purposefully non-digital aims. These included companies that, despite being rooted in technology, aspire to help people unplug and unwind (#meta). Calm, a meditation app, was named Apple’s App of the Year. Meanwhile, companies like Getaway and Hipcamp gained popularity by connecting people with nature. Brands are getting on board, too. Casper hosted a camping outing for its community during the solar eclipse, and this past fall, REI extended its #OptOutside campaign for a third straight year, urging people to enjoy nature instead of shopping on Black Friday.”
