With attention spans shrinking, chaotic visuals dominating social platforms, and a demand for shareable visual content, there is a big shift in how young designers are creating and communicating. 

Although the Canva Visual Economy Report 2023 found that 89% of business leaders think communicating visually is the key to collaboration and customer engagement, UK design schools remain rooted in formal techniques. Though this isn’t deterring graduates from breaking the mould and redefining how they create. 

Where previous generations historically shaped design, Gen Z, who are now between their late teens and late 20s, are rebelling and designing for the scrollers.

While Gen X (born between 1965 and 1980) came of age in a pre-digital world, they defined their own version of design with a background of scarcity and protest. Millennials (born between 1981 and 1996) were raised on Apple and Microsoft and created new rules, focusing on more polished, seamless designs. They wanted beauty and perfection.

Gen Z has flipped this completely, making design messy, interactive and more immediate. They’re fluent in raw culture and their aesthetic is intentionally chaotic because perfection is corporate and they find power in realness - authenticity is everything.

And it’s this organic content that’s now outperforming, way beyond the design teams who have previously been producing polished, carefully considered campaigns.  

New design preferences 

Those 'messy' designs by Gen Z are shaking up the UK’s creative scene, leaving designers and brands scrambling to keep up. 

Those who have steered it beautifully are vibrant brands like Crocs and Duolingo, whose bold colours and garish designs have now become their biggest selling point.

Crocs’s rebranding strategy became all about embracing their ‘ugly’ aesthetic and trying to be different, which resonated well with younger customers, while the option for customisation was perfect for those who value self-expression. Crocs were suddenly cool again. 

In a similar vein, Duolingo celebrated individuality and made learning fun through entertainment. They used slightly weird and unhinged language which became their whole brand personality. They proved you don’t have to be serious for people to engage with your brand.

I recently showed a Gen Z group a beautifully crafted brand video that featured soaring music, rich colour grading and an emotional arc. It was designed to impress and leave the viewer wowed by its beauty.

Yet, I received the response: ‘It’s nice, but I wouldn’t share it.’ The person didn’t say it was bad, but called it uninviting and irrelevant. This proves this generation doesn't want to be sold to. They want to be given a role in the brand’s narrative and have it match their mindset. They want to connect with a brand and want it to be relatable, rather than pushing a polished and carefully curated ideal.

Impact on branding

Some marketers are still hesitant to embrace these “messy” aesthetics because they fear ridicule or client pushback. Whereas others are moving away from polished visuals to create more genuine, spontaneous work in the hope it will align more with younger audiences.

Fenty Beauty is a perfect example of a brand that hit the mark with being raw and inclusive. Offering customers 40 foundation shades it achieved something the beauty industry had tried and failed to achieve for decades. Everything from the packaging to the campaign and branding was stripped of elitism and extravagance. It was built on relatability and representation, which is exactly where its power lay. 

The brand and their whole design language made people feel like they belonged, that their needs mattered and that’s what designers and marketers should be aiming for - design that doesn’t just look good, but feels like an open door too. 

Spotify Unwrapped is another strong case of not just a marketing win, but a design win. It’s turned seemingly boring, irrelevant data into a cultural phenomenon that gives its users a story about themselves. It’s personality driven, it’s design is bold and colourful, it’s shareable. 

Something like this doesn’t need a massive budget but the ingredients are simple, focusing on data, visualisation and customisation, and it's tailored. This is exactly what modern design has become. 

A ‘keeping it real’ strategy

The lessons for marketers is in ensuring they use real voices and a relatable design language. Real people should be at the heart of their branding and messaging with unscripted moments and authentic engagement front of mind. 

The way Gen Z has disrupted the design industry has shown us that brands need to continuously evolve and question their design decisions, striking the right balance between timeless design values and generational authenticity. 

Marketers and brand leaders have been forced to keep up - to re-examine their methods and ideals with each generational shift. By understanding the different emotional and cultural values each generation places on design, it can help a brand mould a strategy relevant to their product and customer base.

Design is a cultural language, it looks different to every generation, and that’s not a problem, but the point is that with each shift comes a new way of working, new considerations and exciting conversations about engaging designs.

Ultimately, good design doesn’t belong to a generation. It’s timeless and belongs to everyone.