Red and white like a Santa hat, green like a Christmas tree, and sparkling gold like the star at the top. If you find this list creatively tired rather than inspired, don’t worry.
While classic colours and symbols put their stamp on the festive season, it’s also shaped by the latest trends and styles, which you can use for your designs.
Every year, trade fairs like Christmasworld Frankfurt present the top trends for the holidays ahead. This Christmas, the following styles will be our guiding lights:
- unusual beauty à strange + appealing
- calming nature à caring + pleasant
- ideas made to last à passionate + atmospheric
Just like last year, nature is the main source of inspiration for this festive season Now, more than ever, the main focus is on sustainability. Many new creations emerge from a mix of traditional handicraft and innovative techniques.
Unusual beauty à strange + appealing
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This trend swaps classic Christmas symbols for unexpected and surprising designs. You can use the following colours and elements to make extraordinary and appealing creations:
Design ideas:
- Unexpected decorations and unusual shapes
- Situation-specific patterns and organic shapes
- Reflections of surroundings and interplay of light and shade
Colour palette:
- Metallic surfaces and pearlescent objects
- Engraving and flowing colour effects
- Interplay between extravagant colours like azure blue, peach, magenta and burgundy and cute, subtle shades of light blue, lemon, silver and grey
Technique:
- A blend of handicrafts and innovation
This trend consciously breaks apart conventional festive design templates. It’s ideal if you want to express yourself creatively and get your fans into the festive mood with new, even futuristic interpretations.
Calming nature à caring + pleasant
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Peaceful vitality and natural minimalism shape the second big trend this Christmas. It’s all about a vibrant connection to nature and design themes revolving around life cycles and transience. The colour palette also takes inspiration straight from nature.
Design ideas:
- Patterns, designs and textures are inspired by natural materials
Colour palette:
- The shades draw on the hues of lichen, mountain lakes, raw malachite and the many grey tones of rock. Dark colours are offset with warm tones such as moss and woody and delicate pink.
Technique:
- With creativity and a sustainable approach, the designs increasingly blur the boundaries between art, crafts and technology.
This trend taps into a caring, feelgood vibe you can approach from a number of different directions. Perhaps you want to create a simple sense of cosiness and warmth, make a stand on the environment, or take inspiration from the natural world around you? Then this is the Christmas style for you.
Ideas made to last à passionate + atmospheric
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This trend is about visuals and decorations that make a clear design statement:
Design ideas:
- Striking designs with lots of geometric shapes
- Shapes like circles, discs, cones and squares
- Stripes – from sharp and elegant to subtle and flowing
Colour palette:
- Unicolour designs, intense colours and neutral, metallic tones
- Shades of blue and petrol dominate the cool colour spectrum
- Orange-red, violet and ochre add warm notes
- Neutral, metallic tones in zinc, iron and bronze grey
Technique:
- This trend uses graphic elements such as marble grains, wood structures and overlapping grids for moiré effects.
This festive trend is perfect for designers who love bold colours and striking statements.
Themes and styles for Christmas 2023
- Scandinavian style: Delight your fans with charming Scandinavian designs. The hallmarks of this style are simple elegance and natural elements such as wooden details, soft, neutral colours, lush green foliage, snowy wreaths and delicate white berries.
- Rainbows: Immerse your fans in the full colour spectrum of the rainbow – from bright reds and cool blues to playful pinks and vibrant orange. This feelgood concept celebrates bold colours, vintage materials and striped decorations and includes designs using the colour of the year, Viva Magenta.
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- Christmas lodge: This theme draws on the traditional Christmas colours red, green and gold.
- Winter’s tale: A frosty white colour palette combined with metallic, light blue shades – a blizzard of beauty!
![](https://sprdblog-res.cloudinary.com/image/upload/f_auto,q_70,t_postImgF_d/AUM/UK/2023/11/MP-3236_gfx_winter-frost.jpg)
- Futuristic Christmas:Modern holographic elements and 3D designs.
Festive design tips
- Take inspiration from nature: Sustainability and nature-inspired designs and decorations are bang on trend again this winter. Use colour palettes inspired by nature and create designs in the popular Scandi style.
- Make it metallic: Nothing lightens the mood and creates a festive feel like a touch of glitz and glitter. So when it comes to metallic elements, you don’t need to hold back. Metallic and grey tones are also among the trend colours for this autumn/winter season.
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- Don’t focus on just one holiday: Work out whether going all in on the Christian festival of Christmas is appropriate for your target audience. At the same time, most people are sure to welcome you getting into the festive mood in some way. You can do this with wintry landscapes, colours and pictures, for instance. This means fans are sure to get into the festive spirit, irrespective of the specific winter holiday.
- Let fonts do the work for you: Festive graphic design presents a unique opportunity to experiment with creative fonts. On other occasions, you might not consider them. However, at Christmas, you can consciously choose elegant fonts and playful, child-like hand lettering. Festive messages like “Merry Christmas” and “Season’s Greetings” are so familiar you can consciously play with a font that’s a little less easy to read. The idea: while fans decipher the lettering, the typography has already begun evoking pleasant festive feelings.
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- Go beyond red, green and classic symbols: Leave traditions behind and create modern, extraordinary festive designs. You can use cool trend colours and patterns to do this. Inspiration can also be found in our blog featuring the design trends for the latest autumn/winter season.
We hope our tips have helped you find your festive flow. Have fun getting creative this Christmas! We also recommend keeping the practical, organisational side of things in mind: Here you’ll find an overview of order deadlines. This will be updated on an ongoing basis from now on. That way you can make sure your brand-new Christmas creations make their way under the tree in time for the big day.
The post Design trends for Christmas 2023 appeared first on The US Spreadshirt Blog.
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