2025’s trending graphic design aesthetics and how to create them

It’s time to hit refresh on 2025’s trending graphic design styles. Aesthetic trends move at serious pace online and in branding these days, so we’re bringing you a fresh update on the graphic design trends that are making waves right now, keeping your designs fresh and relevant over the coming months. 

From the power of singular color to create distinctive designs for personal brands to the simple impact of modern heritage design and exciting trending graphic design aesthetics like Colorful New Wave and Pop Futurism, these are the design trends to watch and adopt now. We’ll also show you ways to apply these aesthetics to your projects, from AI-generated graphics to fresh social media designs.

Do you ever feel like life is moving crazy fast? It’s not just you—along with fast food and fast fashion, design aesthetics are also moving and refreshing at a head-spinning pace. Propelled by social media algorithms, inspiration platforms, and Gen Z’s aspiration for creative uniqueness, barely a day goes by without a new design trend or social aesthetic circulating online. 

Amid fast-paced madness, it can be difficult for designers to stay ahead of the curve, risking carefully curated designs quickly becoming old-hat (time for a rebrand?). Of course, there are fast-moving trends and trending graphic design styles destined to stick around a little longer. Based on our research, we think these 2025 graphic design trends are set to have greater longevity, defined by characteristics that tap into wider culture and broader style leanings, making them unlikely to fall from favor anytime soon. 

What gives a long-term graphic design trend legs? Graphic designers lean towards aesthetics, resulting in beautiful and relevant designs, and use simple styles to incorporate into existing projects, such as established brands or websites. Color trends and font trends are simple yet effective ways to give designs an instant refresh, while trends like Modern Heritage bring subtle freshness to projects, without the need for a complete overhaul. 

It’s about fitting trending elements into your project where relevant, not shaping your project around a passing fad. The 2025 trending graphic design aesthetics we’ve identified have been chosen for their impact and versatility, and are guaranteed to give your designs a subtle boost in the months to come. 

As the older, more refined counterpart to the quiet luxury trend, Modern Heritage is a subtle and fleeting style that blends minimalist design with timeless classic elements. Think a limestone, bone, and putty color palette, low-key serif fonts, and black-and-white photography. Vintage references can be sourced from any era, whether 1960s modernism, Art Nouveau, or a blend of historic styles—the key is always to balance these out with clean, contemporary design, blurring the boundary between old and new.

Modern Heritage is a 2025 trending graphic design style that broadly translates beautifully to websites and digital designs, bringing depth, tactility, and calm elegance to otherwise brand-spanking new designs. Traditional textures like dark wood, crumbling stone, or brick can be integrated as backgrounds into product photography to bring in even more of an old-world feel.

To channel the Modern Heritage aesthetic, use fonts, colors, and graphics that whisper rather than shout, aiming for measured contrast between nostalgic design and minimal aesthetics.

The modern heritage graphic design trend balances a clean, minimal layout with traditional-inspired elements for effortless elegance. Whisper-soft, organic neutral colors teamed with subtly vintage fonts are the perfect companion to architectural photography and calm, cinematic video shots. Try these design assets, including modernist sans serif fonts and architectural web templates, to channel this luxurious look.

In the age of the personal brand, how do you carve out your niche in a sea of content creators, influencers, and social media businesses?

Even creative folk can take lessons from Charli XCX (the now official owner of Brat Green), Sabrina Carpenter (baby blue), and the Kardashians (black only, please, preferably by Dolce & Gabbana) when it comes to owning your signature color. Brands have consistently recognised the power of singular color in creating memorable marketing. Still, adopting just one color, which is entirely your own, carries new weight on fast-moving social media feeds. 

Color ownership isn’t just for influencers. Intense, singular color is a great way to claim your space and brand identity on social profiles and websites, with monochromatic color an immediate way to differentiate yourself from other brands and set a color psychology mood. 

It’s also an effective alternative to the much-loved (and now much-commercialised) Pride rainbow—make your mark instead with a powerful color punch that reflects your uniqueness and creativity.  

Find your color, adopt it, and own it for powerful and memorable brand designs. Color-wash website pages and photos with a singular color and channel a monochromatic look across other designs, such as flyers, banners, and merchandise.

Go bold or go home with this 2025 graphic design trend. Commit to your chosen color, sticking faithfully to this and closely related hues. This 2025 trend is about achieving a monochromatic effect on whatever layout you’re working on, whether a flyer layout or a landing page. Edit photography with Photoshop color actions to correspond to your chosen color, and only use contrasting colors where essential, such as on typography or logos.

AI images can have a…reputation, should we say, with the first wave of AI-generated ‘art’ ranging from the random to the downright weird. Luckily, it’s quickly becoming a very different story, with high-quality and highly detailed imagery that is more within reach through ImageGen and other generative AI image engines. 

Remember that the next generation of AI-generated imagery must be beautiful and spellbinding to hold attention in an AI-saturated digiscape. With ‘bad’ AI images easy to identify and with telling characteristics (missing fingers, we’re looking at you), savvy designers realise that when using AI to create imagery, the results need to be highly refined. These stunning 3D images feature a very high level of accurate detail and are sometimes animated into AI videos for an even more immersive, mesmerising effect. 

You don’t need to be an AI coder to really push the boat out. Just some creative and specific AI art prompts and a capable AI image generator will help you refine very specific details in your images.

AI images are beautiful when care and detail have been invested in their creation. Experienced digital artists might use additional filters and actions on AI-generated photos to create an absolutely perfect effect. Still, you can also experiment with refining your AI results on ImageGen by adding specific details to your AI image prompts, such as material, lighting, texture, and color palette.

And once you have a beautiful image result, you can transform the static design into a mesmerising animation or video with VideoGen.

Use this prompt to recreate images like the glass flower above:

Alongside the rise of AI design comes this different (and super fun) take on futuristic design. We’re not talking dystopian aesthetics or moody Matrix colors (that’s so last year). The inspiration for the Pop Futurism trend comes from K-Pop (screams), Y3K (the futurist-tinted version of Y2K), and TikTok trends (in-your-face, usually involves dancing). This pop-inspired trend looks to make futuristic tech, fashion, and products fun, pastel-soaked, and even a little camp. 

How does the Pop Futurism trend manifest in graphic design projects? Look to 3D gloss textures with holographic finishes, saccharine bubblegum colors, and cartoonish fonts. Your cinematic reference? Swap out Blade Runner for Luc Besson’s hyper-surreal and ultra-colorful The Fifth Element, and you get the pop picture.

The future is here, and it’s a youthful fusion of pastels, soft silvers, and bubble text! Pop futurism is all about being playful and feminine, and it is about as far from a dystopian grimfest as you can imagine.

Infuse your designs with holographic backgrounds and metallic textures, use gloss effects to liquify text and 3D illustrations, and experiment with AI images to create your perfect cyborg characters.

Defined by bold yet simple use of color, a minimalist aesthetic, and subtly retro 1960s elements, a New Wave aesthetic brings beauty, wit, and sensuality to websites, branding, and marketing campaigns. This vintage trend is updated for 2025 with punchy color palettes, reminiscent of Technicolor cinema and sunny Riviera summers. 

Inspired by French New Wave cinema, this iconic style guarantees a distinctive look-twice style for designs. French fashion brand Jacquemus uses New Wave design elements like strong pastel colors (banana yellow and cherry red), one-shot videos, and graphic black-and-white contrast to bring a nostalgic and witty mood to advertising.

With the new The Fantastic Four: First Steps movie set for release this summer, set in a 1960s retrofuturist world, the Sixties are certainly having a moment. In your own designs, avoid going full retro by keeping your layouts ultra-minimal, with strong pops of color and Swiss-style typography to channel the trend.

Dial up the sun, the off-kilter, and the Frenchness (ooh la la) with this cheering 2025 graphic design trend destined to brighten even the dreariest days. Channel surrealism and vintage cinema with tongue-in-cheek photography, vintage poster fonts, and dreamy light effects. Add a pop of contrasting color, ideally azure blue or citrus yellow, and voilà!

Have we reached neon saturation point? With so many websites and brands adopting screen-friendly bright tones, ultra-bright colors now feel a bit OTT, and can make everything look too similar (those who shout the loudest…?).

Rich colors are still in favour, but we’re dialing down the eye-scorching brights for this 2025 trending graphic design aesthetics. Some of the freshest branding, poster, and website designs use more tonal takes on intense colors like orange, red, and blue as part of subtle gradients, giving backgrounds a wash of beautiful color. The effect is muted, a calm color that allows typography to shine. Bring in some papery or noisy texture, and it feels even more right for right now.

Imagine a sunset as it disappears over the horizon, with its hazy, fading colors (sigh)—this is the effect you want to bring to your website designs and other 2025 graphic design projects.

Subtle gradients are a gorgeous way to introduce color into a design without fear of it becoming too dominant. Wash a faded gradient behind typography and graphics, and overlay a dust and scratches filter to play up the swoonworthy nostalgia.

Operating alongside more digital-focused trends like AI and pop futurism comes a breath of hand-crafted fresh air. Craftcore has gained traction in fashion and pop culture over the past year, switching the focus back to handmade items, and the skill and time required to create beautiful things, whether crochet, quilts, or weaving. 

Now, the trend is filtering into graphic design, but with a fresh twist. 3D effects give craft core-inspired typography, illustration, and graphics even more tactility and texture. Materials jump off the screen or the page, inviting the viewer into a tactile world that blends traditional craft references with contemporary digital design.

In your 2025 trending graphic design projects, try incorporating 3D illustration or 3D color fonts with plenty of touchable texture, and look for details like stitching, patchwork, and woolen textures to make digital designs as handmade and plush as possible. This 2025 graphic design trend makes a great partner to other nostalgic design styles, like Art Nouveau and the eternally quaint Wes Anderson aesthetic.

Don’t let craft fall flat with 3D elements that pop from the page! Craftcore is a popular graphic design trend that brings tactile warmth to hard-edged digital designs, adding a comforting, soft touch.

Use for branding projects and social media images to bring a cosy feel, with crumbled paper textures and collage mood boards as the frame for 3D letterpress fonts or cute knitted characters. Consider bringing in materials you wouldn’t usually turn to, like denim, leather, mohair, or patchwork to add to the handcrafted feel.

The latest social media aesthetics and graphic design trends can seriously freshen up your web design projects, print designs, and more in 2025. In the coming months, keep your branding relevant and marketing banners clickable with a dose of Modern Heritage, 3D Craftcore, or Colorful New Wave.

Are you searching for more design newness to keep your creative juices flowing? Discover the latest color trend (hint: it’s a beautiful blue-green, “Hidden Gem”), how 3D illustration shapes the future of AI design, and why nostalgic design always keeps us coming back for more. And why not explore Envato’s suite of innovative AI creative tools to help you create instant, trending assets for your projects?