How To Choose The Right Graphic Design Style

In the ever changing world of graphic design, trends really do come and go, ranging from the cartoony human illustrations and fabulously colorful illustrations of the 1950s, all the way up to the sleek, digital designs intended to convey a serious element of futurism. Sometimes the lines between modern vs. vintage graphic design styles can get quite blurry; a steampunk looking style of graphic design is thoroughly modern, but relies on imagery from over a century ago. The exact place to draw the line between vintage and modern is getting even blurrier as “modern retro” designs incorporate the style of digital imagery from the 1970s to the 1990s, when digital imaging technology was in its infancy and was still relatively crude.

The advantages of vintage designs in graphic design style are quite simple but also rather potent. Depending on your exact target audience, an image invoking the computer generated images of the 1980s may be a great idea or an absolutely terrible idea. Vintage imagery tends to make it easier to entertain an audience, as long as they get the reference.

Further, these styles tend to require fewer elaborate graphical fine tuning unless one wishes to combine crude vintage graphical styles with state of the art modern technology, say a crude block of pixels with a dizzying array of details inside each individual pixel. Most of these designs play quite well with audiences between 18 and 40 as they are the target demographics most likely to remember these designs when they were new, or have learned to appreciate such vintage technology from their older peers.

Modern design styles’ advantages are somewhat simpler. They have a wider appeal and more audiences will easily understand the design. Vintage designs tend to be understood more by specific age groups that remember when those design elements were new. In cases of vintage designs for imagery that is so far out of date nobody alive remembers them, these design styles are even more obscured and appeal only to a small base of enthusiasts.

If your design absolutely needs to appeal to a wide range of people for whatever reason, a modern design style is almost assuredly the way to go. Additionally, if your design needs to handle a number of fine details, modern is the way to go. Vintage design styles tend to be crude and uncomplicated, meaning that they perform rather poorly if one wishes to create a detailed design.