Visual Trends 2018: Adobe Breaks the First Ground

These are special times. Time to look into the crystal ball, to predict the upcoming trends of 2018. Adobe is up first. Of course, you have to create demand when you're a provider of stock material, like Adobe Stock. In contrast to color mixers like Pantone, you can't just invent an Image of the Year and push it into the market. Thus, we can't avoid a particular closeness to reality, and we should not forget that subjectivity is a significant factor in every trend prediction. The image experts of Adobe have come to the realization that there are six specific groups of topics with the potential to assert themselves as visual trends in 2018. In my opinion, Adobe's suggestions are not completely absurd and have a certain charm to them. I should add that the Adobe Stock team will deal with each of the trends for two months of the upcoming year. Just like in the past, there will be cooperations with famous, and less well-known artists, contributing to their respective interpretations of the topic. This is sure to be interesting. And this is what happens at Adobe Stock in 2018:

Silence and Solitude

Let's start the year by looking into the theme "Silence and Solitude." Mindfulness is a desirable goal amongst creative workers. Although self-contemplation does not necessarily require solitude, a certain degree of seclusiveness makes the target easier to reach. I'm curious to see what the Stock artists have to add to that.

The Fluid Self

I have a very clear idea of the characteristics that I want to define myself through. These are quite conservative criteria. However, especially in the creative area, with many colleagues, this is not the case anymore. Identity blurs, flows, and changes. How can we represent that visually?

Multilocalism

When I started working with computers in the eighties, I never thought I would experience the birth of multilocal. By now, I have become a digital nomad myself. With the internet, the entire world has changed into a village, and us, who move through it professionally, are experiencing this very eminently. My colleagues are spread all around the globe, and so are my customers. In the nineties, this was near inconceivable.

Creative Reality

The profound shift that societies all around the world are exposed to, due to digitalization, is expressed in different ways. Some respond with fear, protest, and retrogressivity, others see the opportunity, and actively design the future. Others flee into alternative realities and create dream worlds and utopias.

History and Memory

History can be a source of inspiration if you don't halo it like some diehards like to do. As the histories of different cultures do not parallel each other since progress is made at different paces, the intersection points result in interesting effects, that can be visualized.

Touch and Tactility

Nowadays, we touch the touchscreen more often than our loved ones. And shortly, even this touch is likely to become redundant. When everything works without touch, how does the human, a gregarious social animal, work? Will there be new interhuman relations, or will we get used to being robot-like to a certain degree?

Conclusion: Adobe Stock's Got a Nice Roadmap

Each of the themes listed above will be looked into for two months of the following year. At the end of 2018, we will have a genuinely complex image collection in the different areas. Whether these are topics you would have chosen or not, at least it's safe to say that Adobe Stock won't copy and post the next boring business clown pic. That's an advantage in itself. (Adobe Stock is the image source of all used photos.)