Here, you’ll find hopeful design that looks forward with confidence. These examples remind us that there’s light at the end of the tunnel.
It can be difficult to feel optimistic about the future in these uncertain times, but the design world is doing its best to combat negativity and inspire hope. Hopeful design can describe projects, products, and architecture that aim to solve problems, improve society, and generally bring light and optimism into the world.
So, if you’re feeling a little despondent about the state of today, read on . . .
What Is Hopeful Design?
Hopeful design aims to deliver optimism, ambition, and an inclusive spirit into our daily lives through thoughtfully considered graphics, digital designs, products, interiors, and architecture.
In many of these examples, designers have focused on tackling one particular problem or have aimed to improve the lives of those excluded by mainstream design. While some of these designs offer mood-boosting features—such as color therapy and nostalgic styling—others provide life-altering solutions that make a serious impact on people’s lives.
Some of the areas of hopeful design making waves in 2022 include:
- Vitamin Color
- Child’s Play
- Design for Well-being
- Nostalgic Design
- Sustainability
- Accessible Design
Read on to discover more about each of these hopeful design trends, and see how they’re putting optimism into action.
1. Vitamin Color
Color has long been known to have significant psychological impact on viewers. In fact, color therapy (sometimes known as chromotherapy), which uses exposure to colored light to affect the individual’s physical or mental health, is a widely used holistic method for combating low mood or depression.
While color therapy remains a holistic treatment, the psychological effect of different colors has been explored and reinforced by numerous scientific studies. Some of the impacts of various colors are no doubt partly caused by environmental conditioning, with blue proven to calm while orange invigorates and green has healing qualities.
In 2022, more designers are looking to the power of color to inject designs with a sense of hopefulness and optimism. In the same way that the bright colors of fruit and vegetables stimulate appetite, so design projects will feature bolder and more diverse palettes to mimic the effect of a serious vitamin dose.
With companies like Apple releasing ranges of products featuring a greater diversity of color choices, we’re starting to see a move away from minimal, Scandinavian-influenced palettes towards eclectic, sunny color choices that won’t fail to raise a smile. This multicolored trend is a quick and easy way to bring instant hope to your designs.
2. Child’s Play
You might have noticed that design products aimed at adults have started to look consistently more naive in form, shape, and color.
Simple geometric shapes, curved forms, and colorblock palettes have been a strong trend throughout interior and product design over 2021. The style gives a nod to both the Memphis Movement of the 1980s, as well as design aesthetics usually aimed at much younger audiences.
Whether it’s a naively sculptural lamp or illustrations inspired by children’s drawings, these innocent and youthful design forms actually point to a wider trend which looks to childlike reversion to offer consumers and viewers a feeling of cocooning comfort. When we want to escape the scary adult world, we can turn to the designs that featured prominently in our childhoods.
Why is this hopeful design? When we surround ourselves with childlike designs and objects, we begin to rewire our thinking to mimic that of children. We can be more open to new ideas, channel creativity without rules or boundaries, and view the world through new eyes.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that our interiors have to look like children’s playgrounds (although the aesthetic of Netflix mega-hit Squid Game purposefully goes there). Interior and product designers are combining childlike elements with more sophisticated (and grown-up) styling, such as teaming simple puzzle-like shapes with natural textures or earthy colors, creating the perfect balance of hopeful naivety and aspirational maturity.
3. Design for Well-Being
As technology becomes ever more integrated into our lives and homes, our own psychologies become more intertwined with tech products, apps, and websites.
In sharp contrast to recent reports of the negative effects of social media apps on our mental health—and particularly that of young people—more designers are looking to use app technology for more hopeful purposes.
While the pandemic forced millions into isolation, it was possible to manage this added strain on mental health and well-being through innovative apps that looked to improve issues such as stress, isolation, depression, and sleeplessness.
The success of these apps had led to a huge upswell in the number of developers creating their own contributions to the well-being app market, and design is playing an increasingly significant role in their uptake and use.
Now, you can find an app for almost every concern or need, including anxiety relief and anti-insomnia aids, to name a few. You’ll find a wide range of psychological design techniques in action across this market, from the use of bespoke illustrations to create a more immersive user experience to pulsating gradients designed to mimic the effects of chromotherapy.
While these apps aren’t entirely altruistic in nature, with many relying on advertising or in-app purchases, they are on the whole both effective and largely free of charge, bringing therapeutic methods to a much wider audience.
4. Nostalgic Design
Although this article is themed on looking forward, one of the most effective ways to inspire a hopeful attitude is to revisit the past.
Designs that were familiar to us in the past, and particularly in childhood, act like a soothing salve for world-weary minds. Nostalgia marketing has been used by savvy businesses for years, to foster an emotional connection between consumers and brands.
Over the course of the pandemic, nostalgia-infused design became even more prevalent, as individuals turned to the familiarity of retro references to offer a sense of comfort and stability.
A variety of well-known brands have looked to vintage-influenced styling in their brand identities and marketing, including Burger King (who streamlined their ’90s era logo for the contemporary market), Coca-Cola (whose “Unbelievable Double Take” ad campaign used nostalgic sports moments for the NCAA basketball tournament), and Pizza Hut (who provided PAC-MAN-inspired pizza boxes to takeout customers).
In 2022, we can expect this nostalgic design trend to continue, with more brands looking to infuse websites, branding, and packaging with a throwback mood.
Revisiting designs that featured in our younger years is a guaranteed method to press pause on our fast-paced and technology-filled world. So, whether it’s furnishing your interiors with secondhand treasures or using a classic typeface style on a website design, there are ways you can incorporate the comforting feeling of nostalgic design into any project.
5. Sustainability
No longer a word that appears on the fringes of the design world, sustainability has become an essential rather than optional standard adopted by most fashion brands, and other design sectors are swiftly following suit.
Reusing waste materials in manufacturing and apps designed to monitor our consumption of resources and energy, designers are more focused than ever on making sustainability the core focus in industry and in our own homes.
In manufacturing and product design, groundbreaking initiatives in promoting sustainability are helping to set the tone for a more eco-friendly and hopeful future.
Designers are tackling some of the overwhelming issues that contribute to waste and emissions in manufacturing, and doing it in serious style, too.
Swedish startup Volta Trucks launched a sixteen-ton truck entirely run on electric power in the ambition to cut freight emissions. The innovative design also features a glass cabin, improving the scope of the driver’s vision and reducing traffic collisions as a result.
With plastic packaging having one of the most detrimental impacts on the environment, more businesses are investing in the creation of alternatives. Notably, Notpla developed seaweed-based, entirely compostable clear packaging.
Meanwhile, Norwegian furniture brand Vestre has become the first manufacturer in the world to declare the carbon footprint of all of its products in an effort to promote greater transparency around CO2 emissions in the furniture industry.
While there are still significant steps to take towards making mass manufacturing wholly sustainable, there are plenty of inspiring design examples to make the near future feel more hopeful.
6. Accessible Design
For many decades, the web has remained largely inaccessible to disabled individuals. Finally it seems that web and app designers are realising that by alienating these audiences they risk closing off the digital world to a large sector of the population, as well as excluding individuals from accessing essential services.
In addition to incorporating accessible features into web design, such as incorporating detailed alt text for screen readers and using high-contrast type for visually-impaired users, more tech firms and manufacturers are making significant steps towards making their designs more usable.
Apple introduced AssistiveTouch and Hand Gestures features on their products, including Apple Watch. These features allow users to control the watch using hand gestures alone.
IKEA, in collaboration with non-profits Milbat and Access Israel, launched the ThisAbles project, an initiative to develop furniture hacks that any individual can download, 3D print, and add to existing IKEA products to make them more accessible for disabled users.
The innovative hacks include an enlarged Mega Switch for making lamps easier to switch on, shower curtain grips and Cane By Me, which allows items such as walking aids to be stored by the user’s bedside.
Even the gaming world is starting to make progress with accessible design. Game developer Naughty Dog incorporated more than sixty accessibility settings into the design of The Last of Us Part II, making it the first AAA game that can be played start-to-finish by a visually-impaired gamer.
Some of the features include unique sound cues to help decipher the difference between different attacks or to help locate opponents, as well as a zoom feature, audio narration, high contrast mode, and adjustable text size.
Hopeful Design: Light at the End of the Tunnel
In uncertain times, it can be difficult to look to the future with optimism. But where there are problems—be it social inequality or environmental issues—no doubt there will be a designer hard at work trying to remedy at least one aspect.
What these examples of hopeful design demonstrate is how innovative and, in many cases, altruistic design can contribute to a greater sense of positivity more widely and also provide practical solutions that genuinely improve individuals’ lives and the state of the planet.
Cover image via contributor Master1305.
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