Spring call for content: Signs of renewal

Now is the time for Adobe Stock, when clients are looking at new beginnings and looking for designs that capture the season of rebirth.

Image source: Adobe Stock / Jimena Roquero/Stocksy.

With subzero temperatures chilling much of the northern hemisphere, spring can seem ages away. But now’s the time at Adobe Stock when everyone is looking at new beginnings, planning their campaigns, and looking for images, designs, illustrations, and videos that capture the sparkling excitement of the season of rebirth.

While you will find a need for classics like colorful eggs, gingham blankets, and bundles upon bundles of flowers (after an especially isolated and static winter), visual trends are urging us towards a spring that is richer, more colorful, and more dreamlike than before. Here are some of the key topics and themes for spring 2021 at Adobe Stock.

Image source: Adobe Stock / Antonio Rodriguez.

Spring 2021’s exuberant colors

Traditionally, the arrival of spring brings cheerful pastels. The soft and creamy roses, lavenders, buttercups, and blue bells we see sprouting each year find a home in everything from Easter eggs and linen dresses to macaroons.

This year there is a thirst for the most saturated and rich possibilities of these vernal mainstays. Perhaps it is a response to our dull, monochrome days behind a screen, but people are gravitating towards images, designs, and creations that convey vibrance and brightness. These rich colors play alongside the more muted pastel members of the same family, seen in the luscious Soft Start color palette.

Desire for energetic and flashy colors this spring can be seen as part of the 2021 Mood Boosting Color trend. After a stressful and challenging 2020, artists and clients are letting a sense of optimism, pride, and exuberance glow through their color choices.

Image source: Adobe Stock / Jimena Roquero/Stocksy.

Expanding the family bubble

One upside to our lifestyles in a time of quarantining, restricted travel, and social distancing, has been a renewed appreciation for the communities we live with every day. Roommates shared our birthdays, holidays, griefs, and joys with us.

Building a bubble together helped us appreciate the sense of connection we get from shared spaces and activities. Stock images, videos, and designs will reflect our expanded and enriched sense of communal life.

Image source: Left: Adobe Stock / Audrey Shtecinjo/Stocksy Right: Adobe Stock / ADDICTIVE STOCK.

As we head into the warmer months, we expect a transition from solitary exercise to group activities and play. Creatives can turn to the nostalgic appeal of sports like roller-skating, badminton, cycling, and jump rope to offer us new ways to explore the same backyards and local parks. Meanwhile more adventurous outings like paddle boarding or surfing give people more opportunities to play together in a socially distant setting. The Back in Action stock collection showcases these shared ways of getting fresh air into our lungs.

Families have also adapted to our new reality. By July 2020, 52 percent of young adults resided with a parent, up from 47 percent just four months earlier. Even before a global pandemic, a record 64 million Americans lived in multi-generational housing (a kind of family life that has been popular outside the West for centuries). The Family Circle collection at Adobe captures these larger, more diverse, and multigenerational families in a world of images and designs that celebrate the junctures between children and grandparents as they emerge into a new season.

Image source: Adobe Stock / Granger Wootz.

The delights of small things

In our screen-focused lifestyles and work environments, our day-to-day stimulation takes on a kind of visual monotony. Netflix following Zoom following social media. But the blooming of flowers, chirping of birds, and thawing of soil reminds us of the inexhaustible simple pleasures that surround us. As we emerge from our comfortable winter havens, spring offers a whole new dimension of experiences.

There is a new kind of intensity to all kinds of sensory pleasures and delights this spring, engaging not only the eyes but the senses of sound, taste, smell, and touch as well. The artwork in the Spring Awakening collection evoke the scent of freshly picked herbs and lettuces and brewed tea, the tarty sweetness of young berries, and the bracing flutter of wind blowing through fields of grass.

There is a focus on ways to experience nature closer to home and in simpler ways: planting a new patch of oregano in your garden or windowsill, or picking local wildflowers as opposed to flying across the world to a foreign land. And as we bring this embodied approach inside on the cool nights and blustery days, we bring with us a desire to nourish our senses with playful luxuries like baking, fort-building, and drawing.

Image source: Adobe Stock / SUPERMAO.

Reveries of spring

We often describe spring as the season of rebirth and new life. This year, it is also the host to our most sumptuous dreams and fantasies. If our bodies are stuck in place, our minds are wandering to worlds that are sun-drenched, saturated, soft, and luxurious.

The Dreaming of Spring Adobe Stock collection communicates a cottagecore-inflected fantasy — a sense of being in places unstuck from time and technology. People wander in endless fields of daisies, poppies, and dandelions wearing simple rustic fabrics. Chickens and sheep remind us of our connection to the rest of nature’s creatures. Friends and lovers picnic in lush and picturesque settings where time seems to have stopped. There is a freedom and creativity that these dreamlike themes allow, with images that employ double exposure, abstraction, and playfully surreal compositions.

Image source: Adobe Stock / Jovana Rikalo/Stocksy.

Get inspired with our Spring 2021 Collection gallery on Adobe Stock. You can also join our Discord channel for stock artists and follow the #call-for-content channel. When you are ready, submit your latest content to Adobe Stock.