TikTok ruined trend forecasting—we’ll happily die on this hill.

And the year ahead promises to be a doozy for creatives everywhere. If you thought 2020 had it in for us, well, gird your loins for 2024. While it’s true that it has never been a more exciting time to be a designer, it’s also an industry—not unlike many others—going through a significant moment of great upheaval and change. And, as always, we’re here to cover it and hopefully make sense of it, good and bad.

It’s not that “trends” didn’t exist before, or they were solely limited to end-of-the-year wrap-ups, it’s just that, well, they’re everywhere now, and we’re constantly inundated with the new flavor of the week or even the next five minutes. A dragonfly, gorgeously hypnotizing wings and all, can live anywhere from one week to two months. Butterboards died a much faster death.