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11 Graphic Design Styles

For Your Design | When To
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Written by Stefan Mouttet | Nov 8, 2021 1:36:13 AM

Humans have been creating artistic

designs since the Ice Age. They've
evolved from simple cave paintings made
from dirt, charcoal, and animal fat, to a
variety of sophisticated graphic design
styles that breathe life into
advertisements, products, and websites,
giving them a character of their own.

In this article, we explore 11 common

graphic design styles that you might
adopt for your company’s branding, to
help illustrate the character and values of
your business.

Table of contents

1. Contemporary
2. Minimalist
3. Flat
4. Scandinavian
5. Retro
6. Psychedelic
7. Art Nouveau
8. Art Deco
9. New York
10. Grunge
11. Victorian

Why use a graphic design style

for your business?

If you’re starting a new business, or

thinking about refining your company’s
branding, learning about the various
graphic design styles can help you to
pick a suitable aesthetic that can shape
its personality and identity. Design is a
powerful tool that can evoke strong
emotions in people, so if you select a
style that resonates with your target
audience, they’ll naturally gravitate
towards it, and you may win their
business.

For example, simplicity might be at the

core of your product or service, in which
case a minimalist design style may suit
your branding. Or you may want to
transport your customers back to the 60s
and remind them of the liberating spirit of
that era, in which case the retro style
might be best for you. Design styles can
represent values, so when you use them
for your own business, the values are
adopted by your branding, and you can
attract the kinds of people you want to
attract more easily. You’ll also have a
consistent and recognisable brand image
that people quickly become familiar with.

11 types of graphic design

styles

Here are some of the most common and

popular types of graphic design styles to
use for your business, with a mixture of
old and new.

1. Contemporary graphic design

style

Image from Image from svart

LazebraArt ink

Contemporary isn’t a graphic design style

per se, but encompasses current design
trends, so is constantly changing. It
includes a wide variety of line styles,
shapes, and textures, from thick
cartoonish styles as displayed in the left
image above, or a “flatter” and more
minimalist style that mixes a small
handful of clearly-divided colours. The
latter is a style that has been particularly
popular in 2021.

If you'd like to learn about contemporary

fonts for your branding, check out our
article on the best fonts for websites.

2. Minimalist graphic design style

Image from Stack Image from Logo

Exchange Design

Minimalist graphic design is defined by its

simplicity. It tends to use very few
elements, a small number of colours, and
a single texture style that is usually flat.
When used in imagery, the few elements
in a minimalist design style almost forces
the viewer to pay attention to them,
because they’re encapsulated by white
space and nothing else. When used in a
website or product design, the style is
intended to become almost non-descript,
fading into the background so that the
website’s features and content take
center-stage. For this reason, minimalist
design is incredibly popular with web
designers, because the site’s content and
features are the reason that the user is
visiting in the first place, making the
design more usable. This is especially
important for homepage designs—the
most popular page on your website.

Minimalism is a hugely influential design

style, and you’ll recognise its quality in
some of the other styles explored below.

3. Flat graphic design style

Image from Envato

Tuts Image from
Shutterstock

The flat graphic style was inspired by

three others: the Swiss style, Bauhaus,
and Modernism. It might also be
considered a type of minimalist design,
because it uses many of the same
principles. Few colours are used, and if
variations are used for a single colour, it’s
usually slightly darker to create a two-
dimensional shadow effect, as seen in the
images above. The colours that are
chosen are usually nice and bright.

Lines are created by the elements

themselves, without the use of black
borders, and they’re mostly straight with
the exception of some curved edges.
Typography is super-clean too, to match
the design style.

Flat design has been made popular by

Google, Apple, and Microsoft, who
incorporated it into their software
products, now used by billions of people
across the world. The style works well for
software because uncomplicated imagery
has smaller file sizes which makes
loading faster.

4. Scandinavian style graphic

design

Image from
Image from 99
Pinterest
Designs

Another minimalist-inspired style,

Scandinavian design is known from its
stripped-down quality that makes every
element seem important. Originally from
the Nordic countries of Denmark, Norway,
Sweden, Finland, and Iceland, it was part
of the populist design movement that
advocated for a beautiful aesthetic that
was affordable by the masses, as
opposed to the ostentatious, expensive-
looking Victorian style seen in royal
British palaces.

Its colour palettes are small, shapes

simple, and typography curvy without a
serif in sight. You’re also likely to see
plenty of white space, to draw focus on
the most important elements of the
design, whether graphical or practical.

5. Retro graphic design styles

Public domain
Image from Techno
image
FAQ

“Retro” graphic design refers to a broad

range of design styles from the 1950s to
1970s. This includes Psychedelic, Art
Deco, Art Nouveau, Gothic, Baroque, the
New York style, and 60s and 70s design,
each with clearly distinct styles that
would rarely be mistaken for each other.
We explore some of these below.

Retro design styles can spark nostalgia,

thrusting the viewer to an earlier period of
their life where they might have felt a
strong sense of belonging or meaning.
This sentimentality can evoke a feel-good
reaction, and work well in commercial
uses like branding or advertising.

The example image on the left is from the

Japanese World Exposition in 1970, and
is an example of design trends that were
popular in the 60s. Again, you can see
shades of minimalism in this style, which
uses just two colours. On the right is a
more complex style that looks to be a
combination of Art Deco, New York, and
slight influences from Psychedelic.

6. Psychedelic style graphic

design

Image from
Image from 99
Pinterest
Designs

Psychedelic design is another instantly

recognisable style, characterised by its
vivid colours and profusion of wavy lines.
The principles of this design reflect the
psychedelic movement of the 60s, driven
in part by LSD—a newly popular,
powerful drug that drastically altered
people’s perception of reality, particularly
the way that objects were viewed, whose
edges and lines would wiggle and warp
as though shaken from both ends.
Colours were also much brighter. Both of
these visual effects have been captured
in the psychedelic design style, which has
become a metaphor for the LSD
experience.

You can use our colour wheel charts to

help select a palette for psychedelic
designs (or any other design, for that
matter).

7. Art Nouveau graphic design

style

Image from Image from A.

Wikipedia Beardsley

Art Nouveau is the first truly modern

design style. Created in the 1890s, it’s a
result of Western artists trying to create a
style they could call their own, which with
the fast increase of global trading, could
be promoted more easily. The style is
identified by its lengthy organic lines,
often used to animals, plants, and
delicate objects, creating an ornamental
and beautifully decorative effect. The
typography used in this style follows
similar principles, with a heavy use of
natural-looking serifs, and looping shapes
that complement the graphical elements.

Colours are kept to a minimum in Art

Nouveau because printing was expensive
in the early 1900s, so designs tended to
use a single colour (commonly black) with
subtle shading, as with the left example
shown above.

8. Art Deco graphic design style

Image from Design Image from

Shack Shutterstock

If something has been designed with

strong geometric shapes, bold colours,
and plenty of symmetry, there’s a good
chance it’s in the Art Deco style. This
style is heavily influenced by Cubism—
another style that used hard shapes to
create a cube-like effect—and Futurism,
which is famous for its monochromatic
style that used materials like metal,
plastic, and glass, which you can clearly
see in the Metropolis image on the left.

Art Deco is a design style that can stop

you in your tracks. It’s almost forceful,
demanding that you give it a look—a
valuable trick in today’s distracted world,
when you want your website or
advertisement to shine through. Its
intense shapes, highly-contrasting colour
schemes, and bold typography has made
it one of the most recognisable design
styles in history.

9. New York style graphic design

Image from Minnie

Image from Cargo
Muse
Collective

The New York design style emerged from

a group of artists living in the city during
the 50s and 60s. They created an
informal group called The New York
School, whose art was permeated with
the idea of dance, poetry, and music,
leading to an avant-garde design style
that was free-flowing, bright, and highly-
experimental. The typography on the
right-posted is a good example of this,
using colourful triangles to create an
interesting effect, rather than just having
plain text. Using this kind of design style
in your website or branding may give you
an interesting quirkiness that people are
drawn to.

This design style also gave birth to

abstract expressionism—an entirely
abstract style with no attempt to create
recognisable objects, made famous by
Jackson Pollock.

10. Grunge graphic design style

Image from
The Awl

Image from The Grittiness

Of Grunge

The definition of grunge is “grime or dirt,”

and you can clearly see these reflected in
the grunge design style. Typography is
typically bold and roughly drawn, with
letters dripping or splattered, as though
drawn with a rebellious attitude. Shapes
are torn, ripped, or crooked, giving it a
rawness that may remind you of punk or
rock. Colours are often minimal, and
usually include one vivid primary colour
that looks stark against the rest of the
design.

If you’re looking to appeal to people who

thrive on anarchy, this is probably the
design style to go for.

11. Victorian style graphic design

Image from
Image from
Pinterest
Pinterest

Victorian graphic design is an ornate,

busy style that usually bursts with
content, with shapes, borders, characters
and letters filling the entire image. This
reflects the style of Victorian Brits
(especially royalty), who preferred
everything to be opulent and gilded, and
can still be seen in royal palaces today.

Victorian design tends to be symmetrical,

and its typography quirky, with swirling,
serif-laden letters that lend an eccentricity
to the style. Colours are typically muted
because of the lack of brightly-coloured
ink. You may find yourself associating the
style with posh royalty, which may appeal
to people who value such things.

Graphic design styles defined

That’s it! Every major graphic design style

defined, with examples and descriptions
of each. If you'd like to read more on this
subject, check out our article on graphic
design trends for 2022.

With an overview of the various graphic

design styles, you should be able to