Graphic Design Festival Scotland (GDFS)

Trends of 2018 

Festival is hosted by the Glasgow-based Warriors Studio, founded by James Gilchrist, Beth Wilson, Victoria Donnelly and Mitchell Gillies. Running since 2014, GDFS has welcomed over 150,000 participants through its array of events that promote differing forms of creativity. After receiving hundreds of poster submissions, founding member James tells It’s Nice That about the overarching visual and conceptual trends that have infiltrated the creative communities this year. Below, James discusses the “visually chaotic” year of poster design, seeing very few “classic, flat, two-dimensional” works and how “even fewer were generous with whitespace.”

James Gilchrist: The main visual trend we saw was a heavily digitalised artificial aesthetic. Chaotic combinations of layered colours, gradients, software effects like bevels, shadows and highlights. Lots of Rudnik-inspired, sci-fi-esque typography and Jonathan Castro and Metahaven-inspired aesthetics. Think pop-sci-fi. We saw a lot of similar typography on posters too. Block letters with sharp, custom, alien logotypes placed on top with drop shadows, each filled with multi-coloured gradients. Hundreds of them.

Other concepts which have shone through this year include themes around technology, social media and gender. The “School” poster which uses the format and colours of the Google logotype is interesting. There were a lot of posters which focus on our unhealthy obsession with social media and others that contribute to our ongoing discussions around gender.