Gradients

What it is: A digital or print effect where one color fades into another. Typically rendered in soft or pastel tones.

Where it is: Gradients are seemingly everywhere in media and marketing. They are part of a suite of Facebook status backdrops introduced in 2017 and the branding for the New York Times' popular podcast The Daily, which displays a yellow to blue gradient.

Gradients have taken over Coachella's app and website (if you watch carefully, the colors shift). Ally's billboard in A Star Is Born is a full-on gradient, and so was the branding for the Oscars ceremony that recognized Lady Gaga.

On Instagram, they provide a product backdrop for popular Korean beauty brand Glow, and have been embraced by indie magazines Gossamer and Anxy — both designed by Berkeley studio Anagraph.

On the luxury front, Brooklyn wallpaper company Calico has released an entire collection of gradient wallpapers called Aurora. Meanwhile, Spanish fashion house Loewe has introduced a version of their trendy Elephant bag in a spectrum of pink to yellow.

Why you're seeing it everywhere: Gradients are the confluence of three different trends: Light and Space art, vaporwave, and bisexual lighting.

In the art and design world, Light and Space — developed in the 1960s and '70s — has been experiencing a revival thanks to its Instagramability. Light and Space pioneer James Turrell has been embraced by celebrities like Beyoncé, Drake, and Kanye West. Drake's Hotline Bling video was inspired by Turrell's light-infused rooms called Ganzfelds. The Kardashian-Jenner-West crew posted an Instagram in front of one of Turrell's works in Los Angeles. (I was yelled at by security for taking a picture there but it's fine.)

“Gradients are also boundaryless. In 2016, artist Wolfgang Tillmans used gradients in his anti-Brexit poster campaign. Through gradients, designers have found the perfect metaphor for subjectivity in an era when even the word “fact” is up for debate. “Gradients are a visual manifestation of all of these different spectrums that we live on,” including those of politics, gender, and sexuality, says Lorenz.

James Turrell's works come with a warning because the visitor quickly loses all depth perception. Soft gradients are alluring because they cut through the noise of social media, but they also are disorienting. The Twitter bot soft landscapes operates on a similar principle, but some days the landscape all but disappears.

“It's nice to see calming things amongst all of the social ramifications of Instagram,” says Rion Harmon of Day Job, the design firm of record for Recess. Harmon compares the Recess branding to a sunset so beautiful you can't help but stare (or take a picture) however busy you are. Changes to the sky are even more pronounced in Los Angeles, where Harmon's studio is now based. “The quality of light in LA is something miraculous,” he says. The Light and Space movement was also started in Southern California, and it's in the DNA of Coachella.

Gradients might be a manifestation of longing for sunshine and surf. But they also belong to the placeless digital citizen. 1980s and '90s kids may remember messing around in Microsoft Paint and Powerpoint as a child, filling in shapes with these same gradients. It's no surprise that this design effect is part of the technological nostalgia that fuels the vaporwave movement.

Vaporwave is a musical and aesthetic movement (started in the early 2010s) that spliced ambient music, advertising, and imagery from when the internet started. Gradient artwork shared by the clothing brand Public Space is vaporwave. So is this meme posted by direct-to-consumer health startup Hers.

As Know Your Meme explains, “bisexual lighting is a slang in the queer community for neon lighting with high emphasis on pinks, purples, and blues in film.” These pinks, purples and blues often fade into one another — appearing like a gradient when rendered in two dimensions. Bisexual lighting shows up in the futuristic genre cyberpunk, which imagines an era in which high technology and low technology combine and cities are neon-bathed, landmarkless Gothams. (Overlapping with vaporwave.) Mainstream examples of cyberpunk include Blade Runner, Ghost in the Shell, and Black Mirror (specifically the “San Junipero” episode). Hotline Bling makes the list of examples for bisexual lighting; the gradients come full circle.

Before gradients, neon lettering was the Instagram lighting aesthetic du jour. Gradients are wordless — like saying Live Laugh Love with just colors. “There's an inherent progression in gradients, you are being taken through something. Like that progression of Live Laugh Love. Of starting at one point and ending at another point. Evoking that visually is something people are very drawn to,” says Taylor Lorenz, a staff writer at the Atlantic who covers internet culture.

At the very least, gradients offer an opportunity to self-soothe.

Calico co-founder Nick Cope says the Aurora collection is often used in meditation rooms. He and his wife have installed it across from their bed at home. “The design was created to immerse viewers in waves and washes of tranquil atmospheric color,” Cope says, adding, “Regardless of the weather, we wake up to a sunrise every morning.”

My Reflection

"Gradients demonstrate a level of blurred lines and definitely mirrors the current state of the world especially in American Society."

Color plays a pivotal role in influence and decision making extending far beyond design and marketing. The reading highlights how the past continues to shape today's visual culture which still stands true in 2025 and this article was written in 2019. Gradients can mirror today's society and provide representation in themselves.

Gradients are not only in digital/print media, film, branding and products but also in cultural trends like the popularity of ombre hair where bold color choices were used to stand out. Attraction itself is multidimensional and the reasoning behind is not always clear. For instance, I often choose branding based on color themes, layout and boldness rather than the quality of the product.

Some of the best products have what looks like the weakest branding but in a way, that simplicity becomes the brand itself. A brand could focus more on expertise rather than marketing in which the lack of branding could be a deliberate choice and uses quality as the brand identity.

The writer mentions how the use of color represents gender, sexuality and political expression which is a valid point. Gradients demonstrate a level of blurred lines and definitely mirrors the current state of the world especially in American society. From my perspective as someone in both Arab and American worlds, this idea resonates deeply because it sort of echoes how I experience identity.

I often find myself living in-between space where cultures meet. In Arab culture, there's a strong emphasis on family, tradition and shared responsibility while in American culture, individuality and independence are more valued.

My day to day life blends those values together. Differences between cultures exist but can overlap whether its identity, culture, work-life balance, truth and misinformation as well as underlying politics because there is no definitive line of separation in today's age or maybe it has always been that way.

“Gradients don't have hard lines and allow colors to transition fluidly. In the same way, my identity, cultural experiences and how I interpret the world can not be placed in neat categories. They overlap in ways that aren't always clear which has shown me that life is more of a spectrum than separate blocks of color. ”

An example of this overlap is something as small as coffee culture. For me, coffee in Arab cafe's feels less like a caffeine fix but more like a tradition of welcoming people, connection and conversation. But in the U.S., coffee is branded as a quick energy fix. I navigate both and neither feels wrong but they just fade into each other, the way colors do in a gradient.

This is why the metaphor of gradients feels so impactful to me.

Ultimately, colors can trigger emotional responses and shape our decisions which is why gradients feel so relevant as both a design trend and metaphor. Just as gradients blend, branding shapes how we feel and respond. For example, the branding of cozy coffee shops like Starbucks (though I'm not a fan), Qahwah House and Mokafe in New York use warm color palettes that encourage settling in and indulging. In contrast, Dunkin's bright neon pink and orange branding signals a “grab and go” vibe. There is science and strategy behind color choices and impact matters because they influence us in ways that we don't always notice.

- noor abdussaboor