CREATIVE DESIGN TRENDS 2025

FOREWORD The Retail Institute at Leeds Beckett University works with packaging supply chain businesses to research the major contemporary topics and trends that the industry faces. Our partnership with the Coveris Pack Positive Centre has been highly beneficial in bringing together the expertise and experience of Coveris with the knowledge and insights we produce through our research. We’re very excited to see this report, which summarises current design trends superbly. Design trends reflect the times in two ways. They build from contemporary ideas and show how to enhance them both practically...

INTRO Welcome to the year 2025! For those of you that haven’t been here before - we’re glad to have you! This document is brought to you by the creative team at the Pack Positive Centre, to explore all things design and to share with you new and evolving practices in the creative world. Expect big bright colour combos, classic revivals and futureproof branding! Set aside a spare moment in your busy schedules, grab a cuppa and sit back and enjoy as we introduce this years hottest design trends

01 ADAPTIVE BRANDING 02 ART DECO REVIVAL 04 MINIMAL THAT’S BIG 05 QUIRKY ILLUSTRATION 06 COLOUR OF THE YEAR 07 THE SPARK EVERYTHING PAST THIS POINT IS NOT ORIGINAL EVERYTHING PAST THIS POINT IS NOT ORIGINAL EVERYTHING PAST THIS POINT IS NOT ORIGINAL EVERYTHING PAST THIS POINT IS NOT ORIGINAL EVERYTHING PAST THIS POINT IS NOT ORIGINAL AI ISN’T TAKING OVER... It’s just enhancing the creative industry! AI has exploded within the creative sector over the past few years and has no plans of slowing down any time soon! AI is a whizz at analysing data and spotting trends aiding designers to stay relevant,...

ADAPTIVEBRANDING Our world is evolving rapidly, and so are our environments— both digital and print. As a result, rigid logo formats and fixed colour schemes are becoming a thing of the past. The future is all about adaptive logos and versatile brand marks that embrace a wider range of colours and formatting options. Fertile Earth Enterprises. WOW! Adaptive brands embrace variability in logo design, typography, colour scheme and graphic elements to suit different applications. These may include print, packaging and digital with the aim to create impactful, seemless brand identities. Embrace Nature's...

The traditional rule of "don't mess with the logo" no longer holds the same weight. By maintaining key elements of a logo, brands can experiment with other aspects, allowing for flexibility while still ensuring strong brand recognition. Adaptive branding empowers companies to stay relevant and agile, enabling their brand to evolve alongside shifting online platforms, changing user experiences, and emerging design trends.

Art Deco, with its timeless elegance and bold sophistication, has never truly fallen out of style, and recently we've noticed a surge in its influence and anticipate this trend will only grow as we move into 2025. Key characteristics of the Art Deco aesthetic include strong geometric shapes, elegant patterns, and a high contrast between stroke thickness in typographic elements. The addition of tactile foiling and gloss finishes provide a design outcome which screams luxury. -■F® WITK CftNFaHKlA FRlirr a MTtaEftS I rrtP.WJA f TAtrOf PUKP

This resurgence is especially noticeable in the premium alcoholic beverage market, where Art Deco's inherent sense of luxury and decadence perfectly complements the high-end positioning of these brands. However, we have noted that this trend is also being adopted in a plethera of other areas, such as restaurants and the beauty industry, bringing big bold colour palettes and ultra modern spins on beloved Art Deco style. With its rich visual appeal, Art Deco not only captures attention but also evokes a sense of exclusivity, making it the perfect design language for products that aim to convey...

CUSTOM ROPPIN Using your brand imagery as a clipping mask is an excellent way to create custom crops with photographic elements, offering a striking and impactful visual effect. This trend is poised to gain momentum through 2025. Custom shapes break away from the standard boxed, circular, or full-bleed photography we're accustomed to, giving designers the opportunity to infuse a brand’s identity with greater creativity in an engaging way. It also enables dynamic layering within a design, enhancing depth and visual interest while maintaining a minimalist approach-avoiding the clutter and complexity...

MINIMAL THAT’S We have seen minimalism dominate as a design trend for many years and we don’t think its going anywhere, anytime soon! The next logical evolution of this is simple maximalist minimalism. It’s all about retaining the simplicity and clarity that minimalism offers whilst injecting it with a sense of energy and joy. This is achieved through bolder, more expressive transitional fonts, high contrast colour palettes and large-scale playful graphics. The use of text in graphic design no longer follows rigid formats and layout constraints, but explodes beyond the confines of artwork areas,...

This new phase of minimalism reflects a more confident approach to branding. Instead of keeping things small, restrained, and uniform, we're seeing bigger, bolder, and more experimental takes on typography and layout. This expressive style lends itself to the growth of motion graphics in branding. When a brands identity is designed around a few uncomplicated graphics and bold rounded typography it is much easier to add motion to the brand whilst maintaining it’s identity with a digital twist. Motion graphics allow brands to bring their identity to life whilst maintaining consistency. A simple...

ILLUSTRATION As FMCG brands aim to differentiate themselves in a saturated market, the use of modern illustrations in packaging design has surged. These illustrations not only captivate but also convey the essence of the product, the ethos of the brand, and appeal to consumers on an emotional level. Quirky illustrations, in particular, are likely to be more memorable due to the unique way they are able to communicate. Engaging illustrations, provide a humanistic element to a brand which can help connect emotionally with audiences.