As we step into 2025, design trends are shifting toward themes of nostalgia, luxury, and the ever-so-Gen Z surrealist touch. For video creators looking to build their brand, these trends are more than abstract concepts — they’re opportunities to emotionally connect with your audience. 

So, let’s explore the upcoming aesthetics for 2025 and how content creators can leverage them in visual storytelling.

What Aesthetics are in for 2025?

Below we'll break down trending colors, fonts, and design styles, along with practical tips for integrating these trends into your video content to captivate your audience and elevate your brand. Here’s a quick overview of the type of palette to consider:

• Mocha mousse
• Cherry red
• Soft pastels
• Minimalist fonts
• Retro fonts
• Surreal fonts
• Minimalism designs
• Monochrome designs

Trending Colors for 2025

For 2025, three standout colors are leading the trends: the warm and inviting mocha mousse, the bold and eye-catching cherry red, and the soft, dynamic dreamy pastel, offering versatility for any design style.

Mocha Mousse

Pantone’s Color of the Year 2025 is Mocha Mousse, a warm and silky brown that evokes the comfort of chocolate and coffee. A neutral shade of understated luxury, it's perfect for adding depth to your visuals.

To Pantone, this color reflects togetherness, community, and harmony.

How to Use It:

• Borders: Use Mocha Mousse as a border frame around your video content to add warmth and focus.
• Backgrounds: Pair it with white or beige text for slides or captions to create a grounded yet professional look.
• Avoid it for text: Brown can be hard to read, especially on darker backgrounds. Use it sparingly to maintain accessibility.
• Hex Code: #A47864.

Kapwing Tip: Use Kapwing’s Add Border Tool to add Mocha Mousse to your video by going to Canvas > Expand Padding. Finally, change your background color to #A47864.

Cherry Red

Pinterest predicts that 2025 is going to be “cherry-coded.”

While mocha mousse brings a sense of calm and sophistication, cherry red is vibrant and bold, set to dominate fashion and design in 2025. This striking color exudes passion and energy, making it perfect for capturing attention. However, its intensity means it’s best used sparingly to avoid overwhelming your designs.

How to Use It:

• Call-to-Action buttons: Highlight CTAs or subscribe buttons in Cherry Red to draw the viewer’s eye.
• Accents: Use as a pop of color in transitions, lower thirds, or animated text. It's a great color for most social media platforms and designs such as Instagram collages or Spotify cover art.
• Avoid Overuse: Too much red can feel overwhelming. Balance it with neutral tones like beige or white.
• Hex Code: #FF1744.

Kapwing Tip: Cherry red works best as an accent color, highlighting smaller elements like buttons or critical text in your designs. With Kapwing’s Brand Kit, you can save Cherry Red as part of your branded color palette, ensuring consistent use across all your projects.

Select “Save as Brand Color" when choosing a color in Kapwing's editor studio.

From then on, you can select the color in your videos as accents.

Dreamy Pastels

Another Pinterest prediction for 2025 highlights soft pastel shades like ethereal blues, pale greens, and buttery yellows, embodying the "aura beauty" trend. These soothing colors evoke a sense of calmness and positivity, making them perfect for uplifting and serene designs.

How to Use It:

• Overlays: Add pastel gradients over your footage to create a dreamy vibe.
• Text Highlights: Use pastel-colored text boxes behind white text to make your captions stand out.
• Avoid High Contrast: Pastels can wash out on bright backgrounds, so pair them with softer hues.

Kapwing Tip: Experiment with gradient effects in Kapwing’s video editor to achieve this look effortlessly. Kapwing provides a Gradient Intro Template specifically for this use.

Play around with pastels until you find the perfect pastel vibes.

Fonts for 2025

This year’s top themes include retro, minimalist, and whimsical surreal styles. These styles also reflect Instagram's recent font update.

Retro fonts bring a nostalgic charm with bold, playful shapes, perfect for evoking familiarity and personality in your content. Minimalist fonts focus on clean, simple lines that exude modernity and professionalism, ideal for creating sleek, distraction-free visuals.

On the other hand, surreal fonts introduce whimsical, dreamlike elements that push creative boundaries, making them a fantastic choice for artistic or experimental projects.

Retro Fonts

Vintage-inspired typefaces like Coiny, Chicle, and Yesteryear are making a comeback. These fonts add personality and nostalgia to your designs.

How to Use It:

• Titles: Use retro fonts for video titles to set a playful or nostalgic tone.
• Avoid Subtitles: Retro fonts can be hard to read at smaller sizes. Stick to clean, sans-serif fonts for captions.

Kapwing Tip: Access all Google Fonts (like Coiny and Chicle) directly in Kapwing’s editor. You can even upload custom fonts if desired.

In Kapwing, head to Text and either “Add Text” or select a preset style.

After you add your text, on the right, you can change your text to a different, retro font:

Minimalist Fonts

Heritage-inspired fonts like Garamond bring a timeless and classic aesthetic to your videos. With their refined serifs and balanced design, these fonts exude understated elegance, making them ideal for professional, educational, or storytelling content.

These fonts align with the "luxury" trend and can be used for everything from business videos to high-end sales.

How to Use It:

• Overlays: Use Garamond for overlays on muted, monochrome backgrounds.
• Avoid Bold Styles: Minimalist fonts work best in lighter weights to maintain a subtle aesthetic.

Kapwing Tip: Save minimalist fonts in your Kapwing Brand Kit to apply them consistently across projects.

When selecting a font in Kapwing, click “Add a Brand Font.” Here, you can select a font or even upload your own.

Surreal Fonts

Wobbly, distorted fonts like Doctor Glitch and Blacklisted align with the surreal, dreamlike aesthetics predicted for 2025.

How to Use It:

• Transitions: Animate surreal fonts for titles or scene changes.
• Avoid overuse: Use sparingly to keep your videos professional and not overly whimsical.

Kapwing Tip: Apply animation effects using Kapwing’s Animated Text tool to make these fonts come alive. After you’ve added text in Kapwing, you can select a variety of Transitions, such as Drop and Flicker via the right-hand toolbar.

Design Trends for 2025

How do these colors and fonts tie into your overall designs? Bring 2025's trending fonts and colors together with three overall aesthetics: minimalism with depth, monochrome pairings, and surrealist aesthetics.

Minimalism with Depth

Minimalist designs are evolving to include layers and subtle textures. This "rich minimalism" creates visual interest without overwhelming the viewer.

How to Use It:

• Background Layers: Add semi-transparent shapes or patterns to give your videos dimension.
• Textured Overlays: Use light grain effects over your visuals for a sophisticated finish.

Kapwing Tip: Use Kapwing’s Background Remover to isolate subjects and layer textures underneath. You can remove backgrounds to place your subjects in center stage.

Monochrome Pairings

High-contrast monochrome palettes are making a statement in 2025. These designs are clean, bold, and timeless.

How to Use It:

• Text-Background Pairing: Pair black text on white backgrounds or vice versa for maximum readability.
• Avoid Overcomplication: Stick to two colors to maintain clarity.

Kapwing Tip: Kapwing’s color adjustment tools allow you to test different monochrome pairings effortlessly.

Edit a video’s saturation via the "Edit" function on the left-hand toolbar and Kapwing will automatically adjust to monochrome.

Surrealist Aesthetics

Inspired by dream-core and aura aesthetics, surrealism is gaining traction in video design and editing. Think of whimsical animations and optical illusions.

How to Use It:

• Transitions: Incorporate flowing, morphing transitions between scenes.
• Animations: Add surreal elements like floating objects or distorted perspectives.
• Wallpapers: Making surreal backgrounds for a phone or watch

Kapwing Tip: Use Kapwing’s animated tools like “Hue Rotate” to generate surreal visuals and integrate them into your videos.