With its focus on clean lines and white space, the “chic modernist” trend stands in clear contrast to the “brushstrokes” trend. However, to keep them completely separated would mean missing out on loads of design possibilities, because these two trends play together so well.
The “chic modernist” trend is all about clean typography, geometric pattern, and bold blocks of color, with oodles of elegant florals and botanicals, beautiful calligraphic elements, and plenty of white space. The result is a look that’s fresh and light, with some serious minimalist tendencies.
Highlights of the Chic Modernist Trend
- Classic patterns, as in the “brushstrokes” trend, but interpreted in a clean and classic way. Lots of triangles, diamonds, stripes, and dots.
- Bold blocks of color used as backgrounds for clean, typographic designs.
- Elegant, swashy calligraphy coupled with chic type – typefaces like Didot / Garamond / Caslon (serifs) and Sweet Sans / Helvetica / Headline Gothic (sans-serifs). Slab serif typefaces like Archer and Museo Slab for designs with a more mid-century influenced look.
- Cards, invitations, and paper goods inspired by mid-century bus and plane tickets, invoices, and forms.
- Badge and circular emblem / stamp elements. Clean line frames around text.
- Watercolor and painterly florals.
Holiday Trends
- Pine boughs, branches, berries, and other seasonal botanicals and florals – the same motifs as in the “brushstrokes” trend – but more stylized, with clean and light lines.
- Minimalist, typographic designs.
- Lots of black and white, with classic red and green elements. Gold glitter and metallic details.
Color Trends
- A soft spectrum of colors, with mint greens, soft peaches and pinks, and frosty blues and teals at the head of the line.
- Pure white.
- Rich black and deep, indigo blue as a bold contrast to the soft and light colors.
- Warm grays as a softer contrast to light colors.
- Gold foil stamped calligraphy and type.
Images Shown Above
Row 1 : Anna Bond (left) and Ross Bruggink (right) – via
Row 2 : Matt Vergotis (top left) // Emma Dime (bottom left) – via // Also Known As (right) – via
Row 3 : Jennifer Wick – detail (left) // Perky Bros (top middle) – via // Yao Cheng (bottom middle) // Andrew Littmann (right) – via
Row 4 : Annie Clark (left) // 16 Floor (middle) // 31 Bits (top right) – via // Ashley Goldberg (bottom right)
images from their respective sources
