Trend Teaser: Spring & Summer 2020
When it comes to beating the heat, the last thing you might feel like doing is an in-depth study of next year’s summer season. Luckily, the creative team at Jewel Branding has been keeping a sharp eye on Spring and Summer 2020 retail trends, and we’re here to give you the scoop. So grab a cold drink and sit back– Here are three major directions we’re seeing and some of the stories that are heating them up.
Seasonal Direction: Nature Tech
2020’s Nature Tech direction merges futuristic looks with natural inspirations, exploring the motifs and textures of both manmade and organic worlds. Products are wrapped in dense, all-over patterns that fuse organic and manmade elements. Subtle motifs and surface treatments are layered to create fresh looks, while boldly-colored prints have an otherworldly look reminiscent of retro sci-fi.
Trend: Lucid Nature
The natural world is looked at through a saturated lens in this story of rich colors and dense patterns. Exotic foliage, sea life, animals and landscapes all provide inspiration for designs, which are vivid interpretations of nature. Dreamy, augmented looks emphasize the surreal with bold color palettes that transform designs from realist to fantastical.
Trend: White Noise
Terrazzo is the gift that keeps on giving, and this season it’s in the form of micro-scale patterns that can be applied to any product. These speckled textures are like a visual representation of white noise, adding interest to interior objects without causing distraction, while a variation in texture can create an ombré effect which enhances the form of designs. A glossy finish can add a high-shine look, while matte finishes provide a raw crafted feel.
Trend: Stepped Ombre
Ombré patterns appear in linear compositions, playing with a full spectrum of tones and hues. Products have a futuristic look, and finishes interplay with light to create an otherworldly glow. This stepped structure enables designers to have more control over fantastical palettes, meaning products appear more considered even while appearing brightly colorful. Pixelated looks add dimension to flat designs and also provide an opportunity to add a tactile quality to the surface of products.
Seasonal Direction: Color Fest
A range of brights gives this direction an inventive and lively festival character, where rainbow-inspired colors play off one another. Maximalism continues to have an impact this season with a broad celebration of global patterns, while linear Bauhaus-style blocking gets deconstructed into less organized motifs. Artistic expression is key, with hand-rendered marks, unexpected compositions, and creative abstracts.
Trend: Culture Collab
A combination of global folk motifs and patterns come together to create the Culture Collab trend story. Experiment with an assortment of compositions, including tiled and collage placements, to create a maximalist effect. Block-style prints and aged effects add an authentic quality to products. Digital filters can achieve a similar effect, ideal for the commercial market.
Trend: Chaotic Geos
Patterns, stripes and shapes use tightly packed geometric repeats to create a sense of coordinated chaos. Focus on bold, bright color combinations that are balanced with accents of cooler or neutral hues. Play with scale, placement, and subtle over-layering. Tessellated designs are key.
Trend: Flower Power
The ever-popular floral gets the hand-drawn treatment in this trend story, with flowers expressively represented in paints and pencils. Scales range from medium to large-scale blooms, in repeats and placements that feel both irregular and random. Bright red, green and yellow are important for this look; experiment with mixing colors in collections to enable the consumer to mix and match products as they please.
Direction: Earth/Home
Sun-baked earth, desert sands and dried grass inspire this inviting direction of harmonious tones and imagery. Matte surfaces sooth the eye and ask to be touched, while visual texture adds another element of perceived tactility. Soft shapes, quiet designs and organic prints echo nature and create a sense of welcoming calm for home and lifestyle products.
Trend: Soft Shapes
A softer and more tactile take on geometric patterns sees shapes become curved and non-uniform. Repetitive all-over patterns are perfect for a range of product surfaces and designs. Dusty brick reds and browns are added to a core palette of ecru and dove grey to ground patterns with a sense of depth.
Trend: Minimal Foliage
This quiet trend story speaks of gardens, with a focus on all types of wild foliage and grasses. Monotone patterns can feature either pale or darker grounds, with linear designs being highlighted in a tonal hue. Silhouette motifs decorate surfaces in two-tone colorways, drawing consumers’ attention to their delicate movement. Larger-scale placements work well on accessories, while more densely-designed and delicate repeats work for fabrics and surfaces.
Trend: Dot & Dash
The dot and the line – two basic building blocks of classic designs – take center stage in these pared-down patterns where simple geometrics are created from these two fundamental motifs. The stand-out combination of thistle pink and soft grass green offers an evolution of Instagram’s obsession with Millennial pink. Experiment with scales, from microdots to large circles, and create new motifs from clusters of shapes, and ideal approach for repeat designs.
Jewel Branding & Licensing works with the world’s leading trend forecasters to provide our clients with valuable insight into trends in retail. Learn more about our full suite of Creative Services, or contact us to see how we can help your business increase consumer engagement through on-trend design.