Engage in playful escapism with Surreal Silliness
Adding playful elements to an otherwise simple photo transforms the setting from carefree charm to curated chaos in seconds. This invitation to lean into unapologetically unpredictable design choices paves the way for one of our 2026 design microtrends: Surreal Silliness.
Laughter is a welcome break from mindless doomscrolling. Sparking the imagination makes your audience do a double-take and helps you stand apart as a brand that’s far from basic — one that can roll with the punches and find the silly in the simple.
Overview
Surreal Silliness, explained
Surreal Silliness uses unpredictable, freeform composition to evoke laughter and ride the line of reality and fantasy with delightfully distorted fonts, vibrant patterns, and maximalist design choices. It’s weird and eccentric, leaning into memetic, rebellious, tongue-in-cheek style choices.
These creations are like digital carnivals, and they’re more achievable than ever with AI-generated textures, silly stickers, and exaggerated object sizes. Through absurd illustrations and surreal icons, you get a design that doesn’t take itself seriously — encouraging you to laugh a little and relate a lot.
Why playful design matters right now
For better or worse, always-on news is a tap away. With constant information overload, it’s nice to give your brain a break and simply smile. AI tools are a great way to create things that you can’t find in real life, like people skiing down the slopes of a soft-serve ice-cream cone.
Surreal Silliness reminds us to find humor in the mundane. Rather than sharing a poster of basic fruits and vegetables, what if lettuce became a stylish dress or a pepper was imagined as a fancy pair of pants?
This design trend invites viewers to stretch their imaginations and place everyday objects in unique settings and outrageous sizes. Yes, an orange could serve as the sun peeking over a canyon with various fruit hot-air balloons circling the sky. Bright colors, collage layouts, and cartoonish or exaggerated letterforms create a believable illusion that lures you in.
The 2025 design trend Warp and Wonder is similar in that it depicts scenes with surreal, dreamlike features. Floating objects and fantastical elements join these two trends together in a whimsical world beyond your wildest dreams.
The main distinction is the humor that comes with Surreal Silliness. The 2026 trend often has visual jokes or “Easter eggs” within the design, and while there is some silliness in Warp and Wonder, the surrealism isn’t always joined by laughter. Surreal Silliness chooses to be larger than life while calling for a giggle or two along the way.
Every cozy coffee shop invites customers to curl up with a latte and enjoy good conversation. Now imagine a coffee shop that leans into the downsides of caffeine. Perhaps they offer a “free anxiety upgrade” (aka an extra shot) with every cup, or they relate to the inevitable burnt tongue after the first sip. By poking fun at the shared chaos of coffee culture, the shop turns a daily ritual into a shared inside joke, making it feel like a place customers want to return to daily.
How to add absurdity into your art
There’s a fine line between something being absurd and something being completely unnatural. To successfully create a reality-bending design that’s still easy on the eyes, you may want to combine real-world elements with imaginative or exaggerated features to curate a mixture of fantasy and reality.
Use collaging techniques or AI-generated visuals to craft surreal compositions. Try incorporating bright, bold, or unusual color combinations, including neon shades or unique pairings, to evoke a sense of fun and absurdity.
When working with animation, use smooth transitions and easing movement to maintain a playful and intentional feel. Choppy or overly fast movements could make the design feel chaotic.
This style works best for casual, lighthearted brand types. Even if you're a more lighthearted brand, avoid using the style for more formal or important content — it could undermine the intended tone.
Most important of all, approach Surreal Silliness with an open mind. There are no strict rules, so have fun with it and don’t take the design (or yourself) too seriously.
The skater community doesn’t need a halfpipe to have a good time. A Skater Brunch poster with a skater doing a trick next to giant breakfast foods invites the local crew to a gnarly get-together. Dairy is sold at any grocery store, but does every grocery store have a goofy cow with pink glasses? A basic brand can be crowned as the best with a few silly stylistic choices.
Surreal Silliness in action
Surreal Silliness converts curated chaos into cheesy chuckles with a few simple adjustments that bring fantasy to life. Entertainment and lifestyle brands are a perfect match for Surreal Silliness.
A music festival full of artists and vendors could promote the event with a collage of headliners with ridiculously large heads. A restaurant could make chicken wings the actual wings on a french fry fairy in a promotional poster.
This design style invites you to push creative boundaries and dream up playful possibilities to make the impossible a reality. So go ahead and unleash your inner silly goose.