Gradients are like opinions. Everybody’s got one. Huge players in the tech space have them, your niece’s unicorn backpack has them, and even that suspicious puddle outside the gas station has a beautiful, oily gradient. How exactly did this colorful visual element come to dominate and basically define the tech space? And more importantly, who’s doing something interesting with it? Let’s dive in. Like all design trends, the use of gradients has risen and fallen in popularity over the years. But even before design, there were gradients. We weren’t able to pinpoint the very first use of gradients, but we’d venture to give that credit to our favorite collaborators: the sun and the sky. The gradients they collaborate on are exactly what make sunrises and sunsets so striking. Across cultures and generations, artists have taken inspiration from the natural world and gradient-rich skies are no exception. Some of the earliest and most refined uses of gradients are found in bokashi, a Japanese woodblock printing technique that dates back to at least the 18th century. Back then, artists couldn’t rely on Figma or Adobe, so they manually applied each ink color to create a gradient effect. You might not know bokashi by name, but you’ll surely recognize its impact—including a very famous example, Katsushika Hokusai's The Great Wave off Kanagawa. (6)

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The bokashi tradition laid the groundwork for other artistic movements. In Europe, we saw gradients in Impressionism and Art Nouveau. Fast-forwarding a bit, as mass production became possible and increasingly important, silkscreen printing and split fountain inking introduced easy-to-replicate processes that allowed vivid, bold graphic gradients to reach the masses. In the 1960s we saw a further, funkier evolution of gradients. Art Nouveau references and brightly-colored gradients came together to create the psychedelic visual language that defined this era, especially for musicians. Where would The Grateful Dead be without gradients? How else would a generation of Deadheads decorate their record rooms? Much like babies and their developing eyes, music-lovers indulging in a bit of magic mushrooms need something colorful (7) to smile at. As the following decades changed, so did gradients. In the 1970s, psychedelic gradients underwent an airbrushing treatment for a smooth, surreal effect that often depicted futuristic or cosmic themes. And in the 1980s, we started to see arcade game art, early computer graphics, and commercials (8) lean into vaporwave aesthetics. Once the digital age began in earnest, gradients were there too, because our beloved Microsoft Paint made it easy to add gradient touches to our beloved GeoCities sites. Shortly after that, mobile app interfaces, operating systems, and web design developments in the early 2000s pushed gradient use into a less colorful, more subtle direction, namely to mimic real-world textures and bring depth to digital elements. Which brings us to more recent history and the first inklings of the gradient-heavy tech space we live in today. In the 2010s, we began seeing the push-and-pull between gradients and flat design. One style becomes dominant, then it recedes. A few years of flat icons gave way to the colorful gradients of brands like Instagram, Adobe, Canva, and more. (9)As crypto, NFT, and AI brands hit the scene over the past few years, gradients have been everywhere. They work well for tech companies because they often lack photos or physical processes that tell the story of what they do, and gradients can help a brand feel futuristic and digital while also bringing a sense of motion and transformation. Much like the saturation of color in a mesh gradient, tech brands’ use of gradients is beginning to feel oversaturated. What once helped these brands stand out is now helping them blend in. However, blending in isn’t always a bad thing—especially when you’re bringing something completely new to the marketplace (like crypto). Our take? Gradients aren’t going anywhere. That oily puddle at the gas station is eternal. But when everybody’s doing the same thing, differentiating gets tricky—which is why we love brands like Twelvelabs (1) and CoinTracker (2) using gradients in unique, organic, and interesting ways. Word to the wise: if you want to employ gradients, give them an interesting job.

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Sources:

10. The Evolution and Impact of Gradients in Web Design by Bettie M. Cobb
11. The Art of Gradients in Graphic Design: A Journey Through Time and Techniques by Fuzionblog

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