We hope our readers have had a fantastic start to the new year. A brand new decade – business as usual.

At iirth we love staying on top of trends – so that means keeping you in the loop as well. 2020 is no different, we expect a year where trends will dictate how businesses change the way they market themselves. One of the key areas will be branding.

Branding is the single most important aspect for any business owner. It’s what customers see first and it’s what they take into account to make their decision – if they’re willing to do business with you or not. Branding is about gaining your customer’s trust and loyalty.

Adaptable/Shapeshifting Logos

This is a trend which has gained popularity over recent years and we don’t expect that to change any time soon. In fact, we expect more and more businesses this year to revamp themselves to include some sort of adaptable logo in their branding.

These logos allow for businesses to ensure consistency across whatever medium your logo is viewed on. They keep your brand interesting by providing visual variety. They ensure your brand is recognisable in different ways and that the logo is fit for whatever purpose it is being used for.

Visual Storytelling

Customers love brand stories, they help them identify with the company and let’s be honest – it’s entertaining. In 2020, we expect storytelling in both digital and print design to gain huge popularity. Visual storytelling gives you an extra dimension to approach customers to tell the story of your brand and personalise it.

Storytelling helps breakdown brands into digestible chunks which is meant to help widen the audience in which you reach. It humanises information and content which a lot of customers prefer. With the help of your artistic side, the possibilities are indeed endless.

Minimalism

2020 holds an interesting year for the world of minimalism. We’ve seen a huge surge in 2019 of alluring iterations of minimalism. The main thing to take away from minimalism is the cleanliness and simplicity – which often results in a more luxurious brand appeal.

From taking away and substituting different aspects of alphabetical and numerical characters to adding negative space it creates much-needed variety in branding.

Social Media/Branded Hashtags

Social media is here to stay. But we all knew that already. In 2020, you can expect an even greater push towards social media from all brands, than in 2019. Now that’s going to be something huge to beat. From groundbreaking social media campaigns to the sheer amount of time being spent on social media sites such as Instagram – businesses know where the traffic is.

Here are some Instagram statistics for you to indulge yourself in…

• Number of Monthy Active Instagram Users: 1 billion
• Number of Businesses on Instagram: 25 million
• Number of Photos & Videos uploaded per day: 100 million+
• 7 out of 10 Hashtags on Instagram Are Branded

Source

Let’s explore that last point a bit further. Hashtags are so important for businesses to:

1. Widen their reach and add backbone to their content
2. Create marketing campaigns unique to your business
3. Join in on conversations and hot topics

Branded hashtags have the power to kickstart viral and genius marketing campaigns. Take Red Bull’s #PutACanOnIt for example. A funny, well thought of branded hashtag which got users uploading their own posts of Red Bull with the hashtag. Red Bull had almost 10,000 original and creative posts submitted. Sounds like a success to us…

Simplification/Blandification

Over recent years brands have moved away from the use of flashy, ecstatic, hard to read fonts to a more simpler, some may say “boring” font use. This move was used by a lot of popular fashion brands who all seem to be using either the same or very similar font. Just your typical clean, bold font – which leads to a more simplistic and luxurious look, whilst also being capable of standing out and being loud.

We expect a lot more brands to follow suit in 2020. The days of flashy fonts seem to be a distant dying trade. More and more brands are learning that scalable branding is the future. Some people like to call this “blandification” due to the nature of taking what seems to be flashy branding and making it bland – so to speak. We’re a huge fan of this and we’re interested to see which other brand powerhouses follow suit.

Get in touch with us today and find out how we can work together.