Creative Design Trends
With Director Macauley Johnson
Director Macauley Johnson was tapped to weigh in on some of 2025's hottest creative trends.
Depositphotos, the world’s leading stock content platform, has released its annual trends forecast, "Creative Trends 2025: Elevated Perspectives." In collaboration with global industry experts, Depositphotos examined key aesthetics, themes, and ideas for the year ahead.
They explored the evolving landscape of marketing and creativity by analyzing search requests from over 41 million clients in a vast library of 300 million+ files. Each of the seven trends is accompanied by in-depth analytics, visual mood boards, expert commentary, and curated content collections, offering a high-level overview and detailed insights into emerging topics.
The main trends for 2025 include:
The New Contemporary // Cluttercore // Getting Sentimental // AI-Fueled Art // Crafted Harmony // Embracing the Dark // Look from Above
The forecast anticipates a year marked by hyperjumps between eras, philosophies, and artistic movements in the creative industry. High-tech, ultra-contemporary art will coexist with ancient and traditional Wabi-Sabi. Noir-inspired stories will go hand in hand with hyper-sentimentalism, which depicts everyday life in warm, light colors. TikTok will bring the “friendly chaos” aesthetic to the table, while advances in AI technology will pave the way for projects that mix fantasy and reality. Finally, we will try to put the puzzle pieces together—by observing the world from a bird’s eye view.
Read Mac's in-depth interview on the trend he chose, "Look from Above," below, or check out all the trends in Metal Magazine or DepositPhotos directly.
What advantages do elevated angles offer in emotionally and visually engaging audiences?
In the literal sense, the aerial vantage point brings with it a lay of the land. It instills a sense of wonder and majesty, teasing what’s in store for scenes to come or summing up everything we’ve just experienced–bringing with it all the emotion from along the way, hitting a final crescendo. Digging deeper, floating the audience above it all can be spiritual. Freeing. It unlocks the senses and says we won’t be grounded by reality, opening the door to even more surreal and hair-raisingly thrilling moments.
In your experience, how does experimenting with unique angles impact storytelling and creativity in brand campaigns?
Half the fun of writing and storyboarding a new project is reaching into its messaging to pull out creatively refreshing and eye-catching ways to tell its story. It’s through unhinged experimentation and collaborative creativity that I find those ah-ha moments that solidify our purpose or widen our reach with any given project. That might boil down to where we position the camera.
When's the best choice, in terms of getting attention from an audience, to explore a scene from above?
A look from above grants a fresh perspective from product to talent. Capturing a kaleidoscopic array of perfectly arranged shapes and colors can liven up any film or ad, and an overhead reveal of your subject in context can twist a narrative or set emotions free. The question is less of “which type of spots” and more of “where in any spot will this elevate the storytelling.”
How do you envision the trend evolving, and what new creative opportunities might emerge?
We’ve seen the full acceptance of drone photography across media, which has primed the creative space for innovation. Audiences are keeping up with evolving tech and, in most cases, moving faster than the trends, so dynamic creative direction and adventurous campaign perspectives should push beyond the limits of reality, welcoming an intersection of technology and technique. This serves as even more license to push the envelope and tell your story in whatever wild style is required of it.