How to apply 2024 design trends to drive AI prompts

Plenty of industry visual design research data is within close reach for anyone

Peach Fuzz, Eavesdropping, and Calming Rhythms, to name just a few

Let’s look at three trending topics that the design industry has highlighted for 2024.

For illustrative purposes, an uplifting and playful hero of a bear has been selected to drive the scenes generated by the AI prompts.

1. Peach Fuzz, Pantone’s Color of the Year 2024

Kindness and tenderness, caring and sharing, community and collaboration

Pantone just announced their Color of the Year 2024, Peach Fuzz 13–2023. Pantone’s Elley Cheng, VP Pantone, announced Pantone’s Color of the Year for 2024 on December 7, 2023. She shares that… “…subtly sensual, … PANTONE 13–1023 Peach Fuzz is a heartfelt peach hue bringing a feeling of kindness and tenderness, communicating a message of caring and sharing, community and collaboration.”[1]

Pantone identified the major trend that in a time of turmoil, a need for nurturing and more peaceful lives is expressed by many people, with a focus on health and well-being.

Summarizing this insight of Pantone’s vision of the future of a warmer and more kind-hearted 2024, we can formulate a prompt with a favorite hero character, the playful bear, taking Pantone’s cues for color details and subject semantics.

The scene prompt: “A peachy bear relaxing in a bubble bath and fuzzy foam and looking at the camera.”

I write this prompt into my favorite AI vector-based image generator, Adobe Illustrator’s AI engine (accessed through Illustrator’s Properties window).

Adobe Illustrator’s AI image results

Adobe Illustrator’s AI generator is returning lovely results. All are fully editable vector graphics. I make some color adjustments to add more of the peach tone. I am satisfied with the result and love the peach-y tonality.

Bing’s DALL-E 3 image results

I also try the same prompt in Microsoft’s Bing DALL-E 3 image generator and the results are equally enticing. The sign-up to Bing’s image creator is free.

I like DALL-E 3’s images, and save them to my collection.

Pantone’s research that put Peach Fuzz on the map as a major trend in 2024 is certainly an enormous inspiration!

2. Bloomberg News’ office design trends for 2024

Green environment, coffee-shop warmth, eavesdropping

Sarah Holder from Bloomberg’s CityLab team predicts interesting trends for 2024 that include upscaled office designs that embrace more light-filled and greener environments, a coffee-shop kind of warmth, and yes, eavesdropping possibilities.[2]

The work spaces of the future invite employees to collaborate, teach, and mentor more. Eavesdropping has emerged as a major trend that encourages team members to learn as much as possible from conversations in the work environment.

Let’s use eavesdropping in our trend-driven AI prompt!

Thus, I write out a prompts that includes eavesdropping as an active engagement of our hero, keeping the color reference to the Pantone’s Peach Fuzz. I write one each for a scene prompt and for a subject prompt.

The scene prompt: “A fuzzy peach bear eavesdropping in a team meeting with other bears in an office environment with plants.”

For the subject prompt: “A peach fuzzy bear the office with plants eavesdropping on a colleague.”

Adobe Illustrator’s AI image results

Adobe Illustrator’s AI engine returns a satisfactory result, although the action of eavesdropping is subtle. The hero bear’s action would need to be adjusted to somehow highlight the act of eavesdropping.

I’m certainly amused by the playfulness of the bear hero. Adobe’s engine has rendered some very useable vector graphics!

Bing’s DALL-E 3 image results

I adjust the prompt slightly so that no real people are shown with the bear images.

The DALL-E 3 prompt: “A fuzzy peach bear in a meeting with four other bears and eavesdropping on the others in an airy and open environment with many plants without any real people.”

DALL-E 3 renders an interesting result, although it seems very close in style to the first prompt of the bear in the bubble bath. I like the scenario but again, the action of eavesdropping does not come out as a main activity, rather, listening is implied by the hero’s expression.

The insight here is that a subtle action such as eavesdropping will need to be explained more in depth in the prompt.

3. Adobe News: Visual design trends 2024

Calming rhythms, wonder and joy, dynamic dimensions

Tapping into their vast Adobe Creative Cloud communities to conduct its research using internal and external data, Adobe News is calling out 4 major design themes for 2024 . Adobe Stock also conducted interviews across channels to identify industry visual trends at large, and more specifically, brand-centric needs.[3]

These 4 innovative and inspirational trends are calming rhythms, wonder and joy, dynamic dimensions, and the new nostalgia.

Calming rhythms envelopes a vision of soothing and rhythmic visuals that support mental and emotional health.

The trend to fill life with wonder and joy in 2024 represents the consumers’ wish for a sense of awe, joy, and enchantment.

Dynamic dimensions is an emerging trend that very much embraces new technologies, such as AI, gamine, 2D and 3D visuals, as well as motion graphics.

The new nostalgia trend embraces a feeling of applying moods and settings reminiscent of eras past. That could be a Super-8 mm overlay on a social media post, or a vintage fashion design motif.

Culling from these 4 visual design trends, I put together my prompt, this time, without the peach fuzz bear:

The scene prompt: “A rhythmic wave in 3D in the sky across a soothing pastel mountain landscape.”

The subject prompt: “A rhythmic wave in 2D in the sky across a soothing mountain landscape in pastel.”

Adobe Illustrator’s AI image results

The prompt, conveying a feeling or mood rather than describing an environment with real heroes doing a task, turns out to be quite a bit more difficult. It takes me a while to hone the prompt so that I’m satisfied with the results.

Adobe’s AI generator does render some interesting compositions that could be taken for further development for an illustration.

Bing’s DALL-E 3 image results

Using the same scene prompt, DALL-E 3 does not disappoint, and renders a dreamy, candy-colored landscape full of soft peaks and valleys.

A mood of otherwordly softness, somewhere over the skies, witnessing a sunrise in an imaginary space, is rendered in a surprising way.

I’m satisfied with the results for this prompt based on calming and soothing rhythm.

Key takeaways

Using visual UX research reports from design and news companies such as Pantone, Bloomberg News, and Adobe can provide important cues and inspiration to craft exciting AI prompts.

Trends and topics in the visual industry are based on real user feedback and provide key semantics.

AI image renders take some time to evolve as meaningful visuals. Use them as foundational visual to expand upon.

Experimenting with AI visuals is an important evolution of design, even though AI-generated images can never replace the real hand-drawn, original artwork.

Stay curious and have fun exploring.

Reference links:

[1] Pantone’s Color of the Year 2024: https://www.pantone.com/color-of-the-year/2024?gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQiAj_CrBhD-ARIsAIiMxT8j2O7WbWJzhgaoamLoIqmpmI_SnJxhP2x9Gw_Js0l50q7eoNO70YoaAru5EALw_wcB

[2] Bloomberg News’ on trends in 2024 office design: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-12-19/top-trends-for-office-design-in-2024

[3] Adobe News, Adobe Creative Visual Report Forecasts Innovative and Inspirational Trends Will Dominate in 2024: https://news.adobe.com/news/news-details/2023/ADOBE-CREATIVE-VISUAL-REPORT-FORECASTS-INNOVATIVE-AND-INSPIRATIONAL-TRENDS-WILL-DOMINATE-IN-2024-/default.aspx

{All AI images created by the author. I have no affiliation with any of the mentioned companies.}