Top 100 Art and Design Trends of 2016

Art and design encompass a broad range, and the 2016 art and design trends reflect that breadth. The 2016 art and design trends cover everything within the spectrum of creativity, including tattoos, painting, photography, decorating, furniture, architecture, and more. These categories move from pure aesthetics without any regard for function to eventually settle into the realities of functionality, but in any case aesthetics are essential -- a fact that can be seen for oneself in our FREE 2017 Trend Report.

In the field of pure aesthetics, tattoos reigned supreme in 2016. More than any simple design, though, the tattoo trends of 2016 show artists' (and their canvasses') desires to try new things. Chester Lee's blackout tattoo designs, for example, cover huge tracts of his subjects' bodies in pure black ink.

On the more functional side of the continuum, architecture trends have centered around eco-friendliness. Whether it's ArchiBlox's house designed with an earthen berm roof or the solar powered ZED Pods, architecture is looking to provide functional and sustainable housing that is still attractively designed.