Like tiny green buds popping out from a grey bed of hardpan, organic design elements are sprouting up everywhere, from interior design to architecture to graphic design and illustration.
In 2024, the trend goes by the name Botanica, though the movement goes back at least to the 1930s (during another period of disillusionment with modern technology).
Put simply, Botanica is an attempt to provide an escape from a tech-obsessed, sometimes chaotic-seeming world. It’s like the design version of a “forest bath”—a way for people to connect with the tranquility and order of organic life. And the growing appreciation for organic design makes Amanda Schutz, Curio’s Owner and Creative Director, feel like it’s springtime.
“I’ve been obsessed with botanical illustration and design for years,” says Amanda. “There’s no better designer than nature. Even though it’s not all straight lines and symmetry, the natural world achieves something that every designer attempts and fails: It is a perfectly-balanced composition of elements working in harmony.”
Balance was also a cornerstone of Frank Lloyd Wright’s concept of “organic design”—in the architect’s philosophy, every part of a design relates to every other part, and those elements can be flexible and adaptable according to their environment. At the time Wright coined the term, other movements like Art Deco and Bauhaus were obsessed with a future shaped by machines and technology.
Nearly 100 years later, we are similarly preoccupied (this time by digital technology and artificial intelligence), but experts like Philip VanDusen, former Head of Design for Global Snacks at PepsiCo, believe that incorporating natural colour palettes, plant illustrations, and floral patterns in our designs will put viewers more at ease in uncertain times.
Says VanDusen: “I think [Botanica] is a reaction to the political and cultural strife in the world today and is trying to create a sense of peace and calm in the viewer and the consumer.”
To evoke these feelings through design and illustration, the creative team at Curio Studio will often incorporate into our compositions elements like:
- Smooth, rounded, or amorphous forms
- Naturally-occuring shapes
- Elasticity and free-flowing lines
For Amanda (who’s been doing Botanica WAY before it was cool), the marriage of organic life and design came, well, naturally.
“Spending time gardening or in nature is my favourite type of professional development,” she says. “No matter how clever or innovative any designer thinks they are, Nature has us beat by millions of years, and the best we can try as designers is to try and follow her lead.”
This post was last updated on April 16, 2024 by Matt Steringa