The Year in Review Part 2: Recurring Trends

More often than not trends are considered a bad thing, which they can be the longer they drag on where it becomes more evident that others are trying to replicate the success achieved first by someone else but, at their most interesting, trends often reflect a reaction to something else within a similar timeframe where different designers arrived at similar solutions at the same time. Not all trends are bad, by the way, so this post isn’t meant to be a shaming exercise but a reflection of what the industry as a whole leaned on to create work. This list isn’t exhaustive either, I’m sure there are a number of things I didn’t spot, so I would love to see in the comments if you noticed a trend I didn’t. In terms of criteria for inclusion… nothing too strict: a tre