After a decade of clean lines and calm compositions, designers are turning the volume back up. The age of minimalism in design is coming to a close and it’s time to say goodbye to sans-serif fonts, flat designs, limited colour palettes and lots of negative space.
Minimalism was most visible in a wave of rebranded logos, with countless brands reworking their logos to become simpler and cleaner. But in doing this, something was lost. Their personality. Google’s switch to a sans-serif font took away some of their trademark playfulness; the Warner Bros shield became less grand and more generic; the Pringles man even went bald in the process!
As minimalism took over, people started to grow tired of simplified logos and boring typography. So now, designers have finally had enough, and it’s time to bring in… maximalism.
What is Maximalism?
The core focus of maximalism is the use of bold colours, eclectic typography, layered visuals and mixed textures. It’s about bringing the personality back to design. It’s about self-expression and adding emotion to connect with people on a deeper level. And it’s about making design fun again.
Minimalism: clean, consistent, calm
Maximalism: expressive, varied, bold
Typography is now becoming more personal, with designers choosing fonts carefully to reflect the tone of the company or project. Serif fonts for a smarter, more professional feel; thin fonts for an air of elegance and sophistication; bold fonts to make a big impact; handwritten fonts to be more natural and connect on a human level.
Layered visuals will allow designers to break the traditional grid format, making designs less structured and corporate, letting them flow and draw the eye around the page or screen in a new way.
Colour will also spark life into designs, with vibrant hues and high contrast visuals capturing the eye and giving off a positive vibe.
Textures and patterns – including gradients, metallic surfaces, and grain/noise – also make designs more visually interesting and evoke the textures and patterns that we see in the world around us. It plays with our senses, adding a layer of tactility and depth in a world that has become overly digital, connecting with us on an emotional level and adding to the theme of authenticity.
3D elements and motion are also a part of maximalism. With advancements in technology, 3D design is now much easier and more available – with software like Blender and Adobe Dimension, as well as 3D features in Adobe Illustrator and Figma – which will help to bring the old flat designs off the page and create a physical world with depth. Creating moving elements, such as kinetic typography or animated characters, also helps to literally bring life to the design and engage the viewer. Even in print, designers can still give the illusion of motion, by playing with the typography or using photographs of people or objects in action.
However, while all this may sound like an excuse to “throw everything on the page”, the skill will come in creating maximalist designs in an organised, thought-out way: choosing the right fonts for the message, layering visuals to create a hierarchy, choosing colours and textures that complement each other whilst also creating contrast.
Why the change?
As well as minimalism running its course, there are also other factors that have brought about this inevitable change.
With the rise of social media, brands need to find a way to stand out. A clean, simple advert won’t cut it anymore. They need to be bold and capture people’s limited attention spans with something bright, bold and fun.
Nostalgia is also playing a part in the design shift. We are currently living in a time that is obsessed with the past – endless band reunions and movie reboots – and design will take advantage of this to connect with audiences. With people growing tired of minimalism, they find themselves looking back to other eras and revelling in the emotional response they get from the different styles. It is for this reason that things like 90s gradients, VHS textures, collage-style posters and garish colours are making a comeback.
AI and Authenticity
These days, it’s impossible to talk about design without mentioning AI. Artificial Intelligence has had a massive impact on design and will assist designers in creating maximalist designs in different ways.
With AI and things like image generation becoming so accessible to the general public, designers are naturally using it to enhance their designs in ways that they couldn’t themselves. Sometimes it is due to skill, with designers relying on AI to do things more effectively than they could in Photoshop, for example. Or it could be to save costs, generating a scene rather than buying stock images or hiring models and equipment to create it in person. AI allows designers to extend their imaginations, opening up a world of possibility and leading to some mind-blowing visuals. This has naturally led to a more maximalist approach to design, with designers wanting to show off what they can do with the technology available to them. Why have a crudely drawn vector image when in a few clicks you could have a hyper-realistic 3D rendering with cinematic lighting?
On the flip side, it has also led to designers avoiding AI and championing traditional methods of design to make brands feel authentic and trustworthy. This includes things such as hand-drawn typography, natural textures and photographed elements, all of which are part of maximalism. Traditional art now has a chance to become even more impressive and stand out amongst the tidal wave of dodgy AI designs, so designers will – or at least should – embrace this.
In both cases, the result is the same: a push for creativity that feels unmistakably human.
What does this mean for the Work PR design team?
We’re excited! As a designer who has always favoured clean, structured, minimal designs, I am now looking forward to going back to my college days and being more experimental and playful with my designs.
This won’t be an overnight change, and nor should it be. But we will gradually introduce one or two individual elements of maximalism into our designs, starting with bolder typography and bolder colours.
While some of our clients are in industries such as law and finance, which traditionally have a more corporate look, they still have personalities. Therefore, it is our job to understand our clients and produce designs that reflect their personalities in an appropriately creative way.
For us, maximalism isn’t just about following a trend – it’s about rediscovering the joy in design.
