Keeping Up With Type Trends 2023

Diversity, variety, and powerful pairing in visual form. Match Maker is a continuation, maturation, and expansion of the Mix-Up trend from last year. Why use three colors when you can use thirty? This variety and diversity of typefaces continues to reflect this generation’s attitudes, values, goals, and missions. Match Maker often adds visual depth and interest, being active and inclusive.

Grids are the main attraction here, but they’ve been selectively softened and cut with precision and sophistication. Last year we highlighted Organic Modular, the evolution of a trend we termed Blockheads in 2021. Following the grid as an organizing principle, the type was organic and mesmerizing. Now in its third incarnation, we see it evolve to Smart Grid, a blend of art and science built on grid structures disrupted - judiciously - by quarter or half circles.

Bursting onto the scene with outlined or shadowed forms, often tilted, skewed, or curved into perspective, Superhero is explosive in form and color. This trend has happy, playful comic book vibes. Could it be inspired by the global popularity and saturation of comic book movies, like a jolt of cultural zeitgeist? It’s big, loud, fun, and doesn’t even shy away from using an exclamation point. The Superhero trend is blowing up!

The graphic austerity we saw as the face of almost every startup and lifestyle brand in the 2010s is back in focus in 2023. It’s often black and white, simple, and centered. The generous white space creates a quiet, calm, and precise look while lending extra focus to the remaining small bits of type, logos, or iconography. Its simplicity stands out in a noisy landscape of competing brands, apps, and notifications. It can be a moment of peace in crowded and loud marketplaces, like an empty bench in an airport.

Here we see a trend of cutting and removing pieces that often produces an exaggerated feeling of sharpness. Some variations of this trend appear high-tech and pixelated. Perhaps they are playing with speed; triangles are fast, squares are slow. Cropping is also showing up, implying movement or a third dimension. Treatments often add sparkle, motion, and visual interest to an otherwise plain sans serif. They make the ordinary extraordinary.

The Pixel Play trend roars ahead with the undying love of our digital tools paired with a heavy dose of nostalgia. Some marks use pixel forms to add moments of interest or plant their digital-focus flag in the ground. Others add beautiful glitches for texture. Pixel Play can show playfulness, like vintage video game motifs. Just because the construction is reduced to simple squares doesn’t take away from the complexity or sophistication, much like fancy Lego kits.

As we pointed out in last year’s report, anything that moves is catching eyes these days. Variable fonts, including icons, are moving around because they can. Our reliance on paper continues to diminish, and screens allow and encourage movement. Even type and letterforms designed in static images can look as if caught in motion.

After the Solid Gold trend we tagged last year, type envisioned as 3D models continues to show up all around us. As AR and VR continue to bubble on the surface, volume may also be an essential attribute to capture. Today’s textures are richer than they used to be - this is no longer the plastic-looking world of Toy Story. Lavish textures and lighting are the norm: chrome, glass, and wood. Has 3D modeling and animation become graphic design? The boundaries continue to be blurred.

The more liquified, the better. But legibility and readability hang on by a thread in this trend. Last year’s Acid Flow trend has morphed into what we call Psychedelic within the broader Liquify genre. There is a greater focus on organic rounded and soft forms, with the more detailed looks of Svelte Serif and Neue Nouveau trends declining. While the Soft-serve serif trend focused on typefaces with rounded serifs, Liquify gets groovier - the more organic and wild, the better.

We’re still in the dawning days of AI design tools, but the speed of evolution among these programs is startling. And while it may still be a bit early for AI Painting fonts, this is a space to watch. AI-painted letterforms often have a collaged look, with a soft focus or smudge in places where the machine stitched the image together. Sometimes AI painted type has a bizarre appearance, an uncanny valley vibe we don’t immediately trust. AI will change the art and design world; we just don’t know exactly how it will pan out yet.