Out with the old in with the new. I love being a designer. Change is the one thing that remains constant in our field, and because of that it never gets boring. So I did some research looking at new designs that haven’t really got that much attention, but were still very good design. This is what I came up and if I am wrong oh well. Here is my list of 2008 trends.

PLAID Let’s start with a long shot. As much as really don’t care for the idea I saw a lot plaid designs. I am laughing so hard right now, because I can’t believe I just said that. I hate plaid I never liked it. It is true though if you look you will see plaid in clothing and design. As I keep thinking about it the idea of reinterpreting plaid designs doesn’t seem that bad. You can’t think of plaid as the catholic school girl skirt, but rather brighter colors or more dynamic plaid design. I can come up with handful of ideas to recreate plaid, it could be very interesting.

WEB 2.0 I think we can all say this style of glossy everything is starting to fade. I hope. The web has become too saturated with this stuff. So much so that you find it being used in inappropriate places. Can it be replaced? YES by all means, but what is going to replace all those buttons? Well I have seen a lot of designers playing with the idea of creating objects and effects that relate to the actual website.

TEXTURE More and more designers are adding textures to there designs. The grunge look for example has attributed to this. I think we will be seeing this look in more creative ways this year. I wouldn’t be surprised if designers go back to their roots and start cutting and pasting objects. Seriously though, I have a feeling that designers will begin using the tools of old and adding them to the computer. We have already seen this in all of the new watercolor brushes for photoshop and I don’t think that it will end there.

COLOR Pantone has officially released the color they think will be popular this year. The winner is blue iris, this is what they have to say. “From a color forecasting perspective, we have chosen PANTONE 18-3943 Blue Iris as the color of the year, as it best represents color direction in 2008 for fashion, cosmetics and home products,” explains Leatrice Eiseman, executive director of the Pantone Color Institute®. “As a reflection of the times, Blue Iris brings together the dependable aspect of blue, underscored by a strong, soul-searching purple cast. Emotionally, it is anchoring and meditative with a touch of magic. Look for it artfully combined with deeper plums, red-browns, yellow-greens, grapes and grays.” Well other than all that emotional stuff I agree with them. If you look at the designs being pushed out now it is very warm. I think we are about to see a change with a very large range of cool colors this year.

CANDY With all of the downloads we have accumulated this year it would be hard to believe we did any work at all. Candy will we not be as popular this year as much as I want it to be (since I will be giving it away). I truly believe designers will start creating more and more of their own things for several reasons. One being you can’t download anymore candy because your hard drives are full. And secondly, I think designers really want to create their own work it is who we are, we design and create. That leads me to my final prediction.

DESIGNERS Get off your butts and get creative. One thing that has resinated throughout the year is how stale designers have become. I know it happens constantly and that is how we evolve to get to new things, but I think designers are copying others designers style constantly instead of creating their own. I believe and hope designers will start believing in themselves and their own work this year. Like I said before, we are designers and it is who we are, we design and create.