How does Monotype’s annual Type Trend report even come together? The team gives us the inside scoop

The world of design can sometimes almost feel like a mirror – if you look closely, it’s not impossible to spot the way our visual world reflects our lived experiences, and our collective hopes, aspirations and anxieties. Type, too, is touched by this ebb and flow of time, culture and change. Every year, to take a temperature check on type, Monotype looks back at the year that was to chart a path for the year to come, and in doing so, asks what the type of our times is telling us about our lives today. Now in its fourth edition, their 2024 Type Trends report unpacks a lot – from a rush of maximalism, the comeback of serifs, our yearning for craft and nostalgia, to designers’ collective urge to throw the rulebook out the window and push type to new, exciting places.

Curated by Type Designer Jordan Bell and Creative Type Director Damien Collot, the report’s findings are presented as ten trends set to leave an imprint on our visual culture in the coming year, and each trend is imagined as an LP cover. In fact, the overall identity for the report places type design into a universally understood context – music. “In this year’s report, we’re not just identifying type trends; we’re also looking at cultural trends. We’re exploring how type and culture intersect – how type changes with culture and influences design, and vice versa,” Bell tells us. “Music is packed with cultural elements, and record covers and labels have a rich history that’s influenced many areas of design. It made sense to use music as a conduit to share typographic trends with a wider audience.”

The concept also draws some parallels between type and music. “The recurring music theme serves as a metaphor to convey that type can evoke emotional responses just like music can,” says Designer Ibz Gharib, drawing attention to the fact that, “type and music are both ripe with genres and sub-genres from diverse cultural backgrounds and inspired by specific points in history, evolving as the world changes around us.” Tugging on the cultural discourse of the past year, the identity also uses Midjourney to reflect on the way designers have been using AI to unlock new possibilities in the creative process. Tapping into the tool allowed them “to delve into unexplored aspects of AI image generation and animation, opening up fresh avenues for our creative team,” says Gharib.

While Bell, Collot and Gharib curated, designed and polished the report, the groundwork that led to the insight-rich study was “a full team effort.” “We started back in early summer looking for projects that spoke to us, felt unique, or just downright strange,” shares Collot. The process stretched for months, while the team put together a spreadsheet to track the projects. “But even that became a bit too convoluted and difficult to organise,” he adds. “We moved this catalogue of sorts over to a digital whiteboard on Miro. From there, we started simply visually organising them into little piles.” As the piles grew, some were merged, some were split, and others had to be culled. “Having others add to the piles, or write quick notes even, really helped us figure out what was most important,” says Collot. “But to reiterate, having a team where some could focus on ideation, hunting for exciting projects, writing, managing, scheduling, and designing really brought this report to life.”

Before the team started defining any of the trends, they began collecting articles, and spent a lot of time reading about cultural trends. When the projects were placed next to each other on the board, groups started to emerge naturally. “We considered the details of each project in order to fully understand their concept, their aim and message. And little by little, you start connecting dots or the cultural trends and everything starts to make sense,” notes Bell. “When you curate such reports, it becomes part of your daily thoughts, and even outside of work you find yourself analysing and collecting projects, discussing with friends, and other creatives you meet,” he says. “The most difficult part of the process ends up being the naming of the trends themselves. We achieved this by groups, where we refined each trend and decided on a name with other members of the Monotype Studio.”

This exercise of zooming out to zoom in led the team down a circuitous, but ultimately fulfilling path of pinning the type trends to cultural moments and sentiments, allowing them to find answers to that question that set off the entire exercise – “what is type telling us about our lives today?” Turns out, it’s definitely telling us a few things – ‘Everythingallofthetime’ looks at designers balancing a party of colours, textures and typefaces, all held within one design, speaking to our appetite for ‘More is More’; ‘De-form’ offers a counterargument to blanding and the sea of tech-centric, minimalistic branding by urging designers to “use methods of typographic distortions that have been discouraged for decades,” pushing, pulling and tweaking typefaces to spark “an aesthetic disobedience”; ‘Return of the Serif’ celebrates the big serif comeback; while ‘Profeshinal’ celebrates imperfection and simplicity through a series of projects that feature hand-drawn type and a stripped-back approach; a departure from the slick, hi-def digital world.

“One of the most interesting insights came from watching designers reacting to the use of technology in the creation of graphics and images. This is a personal interpretation, but perhaps in reaction to past years trends where tech, and especially AI, arose fast and in force, creatives want to counterbalance the smooth, sleek and clean effects by handmade, slightly rough graphic elements and letter shapes,” says Collot. “Making craft obvious is a way for us to shout back and say that the hand, eye and pen are still a thing.”

So, having spent the last few months swimming in the visual zeitgeist of our times, does the team behind the report see any of these trends going full-tilt this year? “It could be a personal wish of mine, but serif typefaces are slowly gaining more space every year, and hopefully this style will make a total breakthrough in 2024,” shares Bell. “In ‘Return of the Serif,’ we have seen brands who want to differentiate themselves, express their unique personality, or mark a new beginning. I am excited to see where this trend takes us; also, what would a De-from serif typeface look like?”

Collot, on the other hand, would like to see more experimentation and play. “Less blanding please!” he says. “I have nothing against using a nice typeface and colour scheme simply, but I think our ideas, problems, and briefs generally have more to say. Hopefully, manipulation of more variable fonts or experimenting with complex typography will continue, and designers will keep playing around and having fun! I would like to see more bold usages and manipulations; a call out to all type designers – please make typefaces your own and push their limits!”

What is type saying to us in 2024?

Listen to the soundtrack