Art & Design Consumer Insights

Trend - Health and wellness brands are rebranding with minimalist designs and simple, easy-to-read labels. This trend reflects a commitment to transparency and authenticity, aiming to create a clean, modern, and approachable aesthetic for consumers.

Insight - Older consumers often seek products with labels that convey simplicity, authenticity, and transparency, While health-conscious individuals appreciate straightforward information for informed choices. The demand for natural and clean products influences this shift. Minimalist designs reflect purity and integrity, addressing the desires of a fast-paced society for clarity. By adopting these designs, brands enhance their image, cater to modern consumer values, and stand out in a competitive market.

Trend - Aloe-infused linens are becoming a popular choice in the bedding industry due to their numerous benefits. Aloe is known for its soothing and healing properties, which can help improve skin health and provide a more comfortable sleep experience. These linens are designed to provide improved comfort.

Insight - Consumers are increasingly seeking products that offer added health and wellness benefits in their daily lives. These health-conscious individuals are particularly drawn to products that promise improved comfort and health with minimal effort. This rise in awareness about skin health has led to a growing market for innovative bedding solutions. Aloe-infused linens cater to the desires of these consumers by providing a blend of softness, skin benefits, and improved sleep hygiene.

Trend - Audio hardware brands are now looking to the 90s and 2000s for tech inspiration, rather than the 70s-inspired record players, leading to the revived popularity of both desktop and portable CD players. These devices blend 90s nostalgia with modern features.

Insight - Nostalgia is an evergreen motivator for consumers making purchase decisions. This is due to many consumers seeking comfort, familiarity, and safety rather than taking risks. Combining this motivator with the fact that millennials and Gen Z consumers are now reaching their 30s and 40s, there is a growing market for nostalgic products that harken to the 90s and 200s. In order to market to and appease this subset of consumers, brands are releasing retro-inspired CD players with modernized features.

Trend - Brands are infusing copper into pillows, as copper is known for its antimicrobial properties, which helps in reducing odors, keeping the pillows fresh, reducing inflammation, and enhancing comfort. These pillows are designed for consumers with sensitive skin or trouble sleeping.

Insight - Consumers are increasingly prioritizing health and wellness in their daily lives, and this trend extends to their sleep environment. Health-conscious consumers are particularly drawn to products that offer added benefits beyond basic functionality. The rise in consumer awareness about the importance of sleep quality has led to a growing market for innovative sleep products. Brands are addressing these needs, as well as providing a heightened wellness experience, with copper-infused pillows.

Trend - Brands are infusing their bedding products with aromatherapy, incorporating soothing scents that promote relaxation and improve sleep quality. These scented blankets offer the same warmth and coziness while creating a more immersive bedtime experience, helping users look forward to a restful night.

Insight - Many consumers struggle to fall asleep at night due to the mental load and stress that comes with work, school, and daily life. In response, brands are integrating aromatherapy into their bedding products, offering soothing scents to promote relaxation and improve sleep quality, even during high-stress periods. The brands that capitalize on the growing wellness market are able to stand out in a competitive industry, achieving greater visibility and appeal among sleep-conscious shoppers.

Trend - As AI-generated content becomes increasingly prevalent across industries, brands are intentionally showcasing human messiness, imperfection and emotional authenticity in their marketing and products. This manifests through interactive retail experiences that encourage emotional expression, social campaigns highlighting real consumer mishaps, and products designed to celebrate human quirks.

Insight - The rapid advancement of AI and algorithmically perfect content has created a cultural tension where consumers feel disconnected from authentic human experiences. For many, particularly younger demographics, digital perfection has become synonymous with artificial and inauthentic. This is creating demand for brands that acknowledge and embrace human complexity, vulnerability and emotional authenticity. By celebrating imperfection, brands can help consumers reclaim and express their fundamental humanity in an increasingly AI-driven world.

Trend - Robotics companies are creating AI-powered laundry robots designed to achieve the goal of full laundry automation. These robots go beyond simple AI-powered washing machines, and are capable of loading, switching, and unloading laundry for convenience.

Insight - One of the largest parts of artificial intelligence features that leads to consumer pushback is when AI is used as an alternative for arts and entertainment. Many consumers reject AI when used to replace artists, animators, and editors. However, one feature that consumers nearly unanimously desire AI to do is automate mundane tasks, such as laundry, dishes, or cleaning the house. Brands are responding to this by creating robots designed to automate laundry.

Trend - The traditional benefits of Mini PCs are low costs and low space requirements. Brands are now adding modularity and swappable components to this list, with mini PCs focused around upgradable RAM, SSDs, CPUs, and more, gaining popularity on the consumer-focused side of the industry.

Insight - When choosing a personal computer, customers are faced with a wide array of options for form-factor before they even consider specifications. Form-factor options include laptops, full-size desktops, mini-PCs. Customers that opt for Mini-PCs often do so because of the compact, portable design, the low cost of entry, and the greater performance when compared to a laptop. However, one drawback that prevents more consumers from choosing mini-PCs are their short lifespans and non-upgradeable parts.

Trend - Housing development companies are more heavily investing in 3D-printing solutions. 3D printing offers more energy and cost-efficient methods of producing houses, while also making it easier to make compact houses, or develop houses in remote locations.

Insight - Housing development companies produce mass amounts of homes in a wide range of locations. These companies are interested in prioritizing cost and energy-efficiency. Combining these desires with the need to reduce construction time, minimize waste, and offer design flexibility, these companies are being led to embracing 3D printing solutions. In awareness of this, 3D-printing companies are creating sustainable yet reliable materials for housing-related tasks.

Trend - The design industry is experiencing a resurgence of psychedelic aesthetics, particularly evident in the rising popularity of mushroom-inspired decor and products. This visual movement is characterized by vibrant colors, organic shapes, and kaleidoscopic patterns that draw from both natural and hallucinogenic influences.

Insight - Contemporary consumers are seeking ways to incorporate elements of counterculture and altered states of consciousness into their everyday environments without directly engaging in psychedelic experiences. This desire reflects a broader cultural shift toward accepting and exploring previously taboo subjects, while also indicating a growing interest in creating immersive, emotionally evocative spaces at home. The popularity of these designs suggests that consumers are looking for ways to inject wonder and escapism into their surroundings, particularly as they spend more time in domestic spaces.