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Goodbye, clean-girl minimalism. Hello, AI-inspired futurism.
As marketers work on crafting their 2025 campaigns, the simplicity of the past year’s design styles might just give way to more futuristic aesthetics, Adobe predicts in its 2025 Creative Trends Report. While the company broke down its design trend findings into four categories—Fantastic Frontiers, Levity and Laughter, Time Warp, and Immersive Appeal—all four are united by the undeniable influence of AI.
“This is the year that using AI to push the boundaries of creativity has cemented itself as a scaling trend,” Claude Alexandre, VP of digital media, B2B product and campaign marketing at Adobe, said in the report’s foreword. “AI is already having a profound effect on the output of businesses, brands, and creatives, from design and video to animation and marketing.”
AI’s artistic effect: So how exactly will AI appear in creative campaigns? Adobe’s report suggests that more brands will show off product images “against ethereal backdrops,” creating an “otherwordly” experience around their products.
Emma Chiu, global director of VML Intelligence, wrote in the report that generative AI will play a major part in creating these surreal images, as the tool helps allow “for more complex subject matter to be brought forward because it’s more accessible visually now.”
Adobe Stock/Addictive Stock
Even if generative AI isn’t used to actually create brand images, the tech could still affect the traditional creative process. According to Adobe, the growing presence of AI in the creative industry is fueling a renewed appreciation for “sleek and surreal design.”
This prediction does conflict with some other not-so-favorable attitudes toward AI-generated art. Instead of any distaste for the over-saturation, incongruent lighting, or too-perfect quality that can be typical of an AI image, Adobe suggests that consumers and brands alike will welcome its “newfound relevance.”
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Back to the future: As far as other aesthetic shifts go, AI may also play a part in powering a retrofuturism trend that “blends classical and iconic imagery with futuristic elements,” Adobe predicts.
This design trend also plays into the continuing urge for nostalgia among people under 35, Chiu wrote in the report. By mashing together recognizable images and newer realities, Chiu anticipates that audiences will experience nostalgia even for things they’ve never experienced.
Adobe’s report also goes beyond the look of branding, also emphasizing how AI could impact brand strategy moving forward.
Namely, the company called out the importance humor and experiential marketing will have in 2025. Though taking the funny approach to advertising is nothing new, Adobe proposed that creatives in the marketing industry will use tools “buoyed by advancements in user-focused AI” to more quickly respond to the most topical humor trends and memes. .
And as “world building” continues to grow in popularity as a strategy, Adobe predicts that brands will activate across multiple channels and platforms, creating even more opportunities to use AI.
Whether it’s the way brands might look or the methods they’re using to create their campaigns, Adobe seems all-in on 2025 being the year brands step into the AI-fueled future.
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