Oh crap, that “2024 design trends” article is due in like, a week

Matt Lauritz

Matt Lauritz

— 3 min read

Are we doing gradients again? 

I don’t know how, but it’s the second week of December. And that means my “Top 10 design trends to dominate 2024” article is due in like four days. I haven’t even started. 

But fortunately, web design has kinda plateaued. Right? It’s not like the internet feels like an inherently different place than a year ago. (Unless I’m getting old, in which case I’ll never be able to trendspot again and should just retire into an in-house corporate gig.)

To help you crank your way through a top 10 design trends article, here are some tips you can copy/paste into ChatGPT as you work on your own observations. 

Let’s be honest, content is mostly about headlines

Sure, your boss will push you to include things like “meaningful insights” and “actual value to the reader”. But your readers don’t care, and you don’t report qualitative feelings – you report page views, baby!

Just amp that FOMO, curiosity gap, or ragebait to a 10, and you’ll be off to a good start. Here are some ideas to get you going: 

  • “Industry in Turmoil! The Explosive Top 10 Design Trends of 2024 That Are Toppling Giants – What They’re Desperately Trying to Hide!"
  • "Last Chance to Stay Relevant! These Top 10 Design Trends of 2024 Are Revolutionizing Everything – Miss Them at Your Own Risk!"
  • "Mind-Blown! The #1 Design Trend of 2024 Will Redefine Reality – Uncover the Top 10 Trends That Are Shaking the Core of Design World!"
  • “Prepare to D*e (if you don’t follow these 2024 design trends)” (make sure to use an asterisk to edit trigger words – while the moderator bot can instantly detect banned words and de-prioritize them for the algorithm, it’s somehow able to be defeated by an asterisk. It’s called the Sunday Comic Effect.)

Don’t worry if you can’t possibly live up to those implied promises. No one can! But it’s all part of the game.

In fact, yo8ur audience would probably be confused if you didn’t use backhanded techniques to promote your corporate blog.

Linking to smart sites makes you look smart! At least, that’s what I heard at a conference once and believe to this day.

Instead of spending valuable time creating good content, you can just regurgitate what your boss thinks is a trend. Try using these questions to generate the content of your article: 

  • “What do you think are the top trends this year?”
  • “Oh that’s such a smart one, how about another one?”
  • “Cool, cool, do you know where you’ve seen this on the internet?”
  • “Hm, okay. In that case, I’ll have to ask around. Who else should I talk to for these brilliant insights?”

You still need more? Just look at reddit

Sort by “Top” and view links from the “Past year” for any subreddit related to your industry. 

If you still need more, repeat the same for YouTube, Designer News, LinkedIn, and other top sites that do your work for you.

Throw in some evergreen topics

Some trends never go out of style (because no one seriously implements them). Here are some examples you can always include and stay relevant:

  • AI: Can you believe chat GPT is only a year old? I know, it’s been a helluva year. This means there’s still just enough time to talk about AI and come across as relevant. But hurry, we’re about to get sick of it!
  • Personalization: Because middle managers lack the ability to empathize with experiences that aren’t their own, the idea of “telling individual people things they care about” still feels novel. Just re-use your content from 2020.
  • Dark mode: Lol you think we’ll pay for twice the design work? Though it first arrived on iOS in 2019, dark mode still isn’t widely-adopted despite looking really cool but also having a positive lift on conversions in some cases.
  • Accessibility: Like personalization, acknowledging different people don’t think like you is a thread that could pull apart your entire life. “People might have vision impairments or use a screen reader? I’m not a stand-in for the universal human experience? Was the fight at Thanksgiving my fault? Will my kids stop talking to me the same way my brothers stopped talking to mom?” Because accessibility is something people have to care about at all levels – from the accounting goons down to the lowly content manager intern – it’s going to be a consistent problem.
  • Gradients: This year, some brand will implement gradients well. Most will not. But that one that does it right will let us point and go, "Hey! We were right!"

Like most problems at work, this one is fake. No one is going to die if your 2024 trends article doesn’t somehow perform at the same level as an incumbent blog with millions of monthly hits. 

You’re not hubspot, you’re not Dribbble, you’re not Designmodo. You’re an in-house marketer in a job your parents probably don’t understand. So don’t stress.

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