Trendlist — OUGD501

Trendlist is a blog style design catalogue that categorises various designs into different sections. Artists can submit their work or the admin, Michal Sloboda, can seek out the work and add it to the blog under the correct 'section' of the site.

Trendiest takes the design out of context and focuses on it purely from a visual aesthetic point of view. This can often cause conflicts within the design industry as people disagree with this 'culture' and believe that taking the design out of context creates confusion and then enables other designers to use these visual elements within their own work for the sake of it. Design for design's sake if you will, however trendlist's purpose could not be further from that, in the about section, Michal states that the sole purpose is to get an idea of when a visual trend within design is being used the most;

"Graphic design, like fashion or music, is influenced by contemporary tendencies. This is intensified in a world where digital information is transmitted at speed of light. Trend List’s task is to search, name and sorts these graphic design tendencies. Trend List tries to spot where and when they rise, which countries they’re popular in and how they evolve over time.

Trend List showcases posters, books, catalogs, magazines, album covers, and invitations for the cultural sphere. This work is often the space of experiments and the “most current” graphic design.

It is interesting to observe how many of today’s “professional” designers create “conceptual” design, custom­made for client, that values content over formal appearance (which nowadays seems quite unimportant). However they use recurring graphic languages and motifs, and these can be characterized as a trend.

Trend List explores graphic design from an opposing angle. It ignores the content of the work and analyzes just its appearance. Based on the formal attributes of the site, it then sorts and catalogs the work.

But is it possible to separate the content from the visual? Is it possible to present graphic design without further explanation?

It seems so. It happens at every exhibition of graphic design, where the works are taken out of context and the audience is often unable to go under the surface of the work. They do not examine the content. They perceive design only visually.

Trend List is not a criticism of contemporary graphic design. It just points to the fact that graphic design (like everything else) is affected by certain trends, and today is no exception. But a lot of designers do not agree and still insist on the originality of their work that is based on pure concept."