2020: The Year of Curiosity in UI Design

Are you a designer who creates both web and mobile apps? Do you like branding, UI, and illustrations? If yes, you came to the right place. We are happy to feature one of the most popular designers on Dribbble - Mike Creative Mints. Check out what excites him about design in 2020.

Stock vs Custom

One of the main trends in design in late 2019 and without a doubt in the upcoming year is a custom illustration in commercial design. A few years ago, persuading clients to use custom illustrations might take some effort, but today it’s the industry standard. With more and more digital products that are difficult to visualize (blockchain, AI, big data, machine learning), custom illustrations become an integral part of the modern web and UI design.

This, in turn, has a big impact on design trends as well. Decorations and heavy graphic elements give way to simple, clean, and easy to understand styles which do a better job at telling a story and framing unique illustrations. Skeuomorphic design is mostly used in game design and rich media these days.

I see this trend becoming more and more mainstream in 2020!

Extensive use of 3D in illustration

3D has been increasingly popular in 2019 thanks to numerous Instagram experiments of 3D enthusiasts, but 2020 will definitely be the year of 3D illustration in design! Here is where I can see it being used most:

• Business/corporate illustration
• Geometric primitives, arthouse, experimental illustration
• HiTech and IT-related illustrations
• Illustrations for kids and 3D characters

The reasons for this great trend are cheaper video cards (goodbye cryptomining craze!) and better rendering software products such as Octane, RedShift, and others, which make 3D illustration much easier. I’m sure we’ll see many new artists and great experiments in 3D in the upcoming year!

The market is dying for new ways to emphasize and illustrate ideas, and 3D is just the right tool here - there are so many ways to reimagine old ideas and experiment with something new!

And the main design trend of 2020 - Curiosity

Curiosity is taking over the place! When I was starting my Patreon channel this year, I thought I’d be sharing some information most relevant to designers’ daily routine - grids, content design, and interface elements…

Boy, I was wrong! I’ve gotten so many questions about how to combine 3D modeling with illustration, how to improve photography skills, invent original characters, how to see and feel your colors, and so much more! Each week we’re discussing so many different topics, and I can see so much curiosity and ambition among the designers these days! A few years ago, you wouldn’t find any 3D software in web designer’s toolset, but today designers learning Cinema4D, illustration, photography, frontend, or animation are everywhere, and I love it!

Designers today have the courage and determination to step outside the boundaries of their daily work and create something new every day. This is a genuine revolution of curiosity in design, and this wonderful obsession will drive us to so many amazing discoveries in 2020, I guarantee that!