Micro trends: Typographic influences

6: Shake mistake

Mistakes are being intentionally introduced by designers keen to celebrate the beauty of error. This trend is also known as glitch design, and is derived and inspired by the pre-digital days of analogue when mistakes were more easily made. The style is reminiscent of the DIY aesthetic seen in cheaply-made pamphlets and zines, and designers are replicating their photocopier machine mistakes. To modern creatives, these mistakes highlight imperfection and faults, and add depth to the creative process. This is seen in the recent typographical trends for jumbled texts, type experiments, and using high-tech processes to achieve low-tech aesthetics.

The Onstrike A/W 2011 lookbook by Ontour truly reflects this raw, DIY feel. It is inspired by the resistance, protests and riots that we see in the news today, capturing the chaos of the world through design. Ontour created the look by using printed paper and a photocopying machine.

The Metaphysics series by designer Matthew Edwards is an image and type experiment based on the work of metaphysics theorists Ren Descartes, John Locke and Baruch Spinoza, and really plays with the idea that mistakes can create original content. The DIY aesthetic comes through with his prints, which challenge the cookie-cutter approach of mass-production.