The 2025 Christmas season gave us some great commercials! And it also gave us a masterclass in how branding and graphic design are shifting in an increasingly digital world.
For years, we’ve seen a race toward hyper-realistic CGI and flashy, tech-heavy marketing. But the winners of 2025 took a sharp turn in the opposite direction, leaning into what is called tactile nostalgia.
For branding and graphic design services, the takeaway is clear: in an era of AI-generated everything, people are craving human imperfection. So, here’s what we can learn from the most successful campaigns of the year!
Lessons from the 2025 Holiday Season
The Demise of Clinical Minimalism
Branding has been obsessed with “blanding” for the last decade. This is the trend of stripping logos and packaging down to their barest, most sterile sans-serif forms. The 2025 holiday ads, however, embraced visual texture.
Instead of sleek, glossy renders, Apple used handcrafted puppets in their Critter Carol. From a graphic design perspective, this translates to a move away from flat vectors towards designs that incorporate grain, hand-drawn typography, and organic shapes.
Takeaway: Branding and graphic design services in Santa Clara are ready to embrace the messy human touch. When every brand looks like a clean tech startup, the brand that uses a hand-brushed script or a paper texture overlay is the one that stops the scroll.
From Selling to Storytelling
The 2025 John Lewis ad, Where Love Lives, didn’t lead with a product. It led with a feeling, particularly the connection between music and memory. This is a crucial lesson in emotional branding.
The graphic design supporting these campaigns followed suit. We saw a rise in cinematic branding, where the typography and color grading of social media assets felt more like a film poster than traditional retail flyers.
Takeaway: Your visual identity shouldn’t just be a logo on a box. Branding and logo design in Santa Clara are framing your identity for a story. Brands that focus on identity systems—a flexible kit of parts that can adapt to different moods—are outperforming brands with rigid, static >
The Power of Cultural Anchoring
ASDA’s use of the Grinch and Aldi’s 10th anniversary for Kevin the Carrot showed us the value of visual equity. These brands have spent years building comfort characters or partnering with existing cultural icons.
This is about brand recognition through character in brand identity and graphic design services. When you see a specific shade of green or a certain illustrative >
Takeaway: Consistency isn’t boring. It’s actually a compound interest for your brand. If you keep changing your visual language every 6 months, you never build the mental shortcuts that allow customers to recognize you instantly in a crowded marketplace.
Color Theory as a Mood Modifier
The 2025 season saw a departure from the traditional red and green saturation. Waitrose’s The Perfect Gift used a sophisticated, moody palette of deep navies and warm ambers, moving away from the loud, primary colors of typical retail.
This reflects a broader trend in graphic design toward refined seasonality. Instead of hitting customers over the head with cliches, brands are using color theory to evoke the atmosphere of the season—warmth, intimacy, and sophistication.
Takeaway: Full-service creative agencies in Santa Clara, like Copa Design, are using color to dictate how someone should feel. Colors aren’t just about matching a holiday theme! A brand that understands the psychology of its palette will always feel more premium than one that just follows the calendar.
We’re seeing a resurgence in print-making techniques, film photography, and analog aesthetics. This is a defensive move in a world where anyone can prompt an AI to make the perfect image.
So, in contrast, the 2025 holiday season proved that the most high-tech thing a brand can do is be human. Whether it’s through the tactile feel of puppet-based design or the emotional weight of a well-told story, the goal of branding has returned to its simplest form—connection.
As we move forward, the brands that win won’t be the ones with the biggest AI budgets, but the ones that use design to make their audience feel seen, understood, and a little bit more at home.
FAQs
What is "Tactile Nostalgia" and why is it replacing minimalism?
Tactile Nostalgia uses hand-drawn elements and organic textures to counter sterile "blanding." As AI content grows, consumers are gravitating toward these "imperfectly human" visuals for their warmth and authenticity.
How can a brand maintain consistency without being "boring"?
Modern branding treats consistency as "compound interest." Instead of rigid guides, brands now use Identity Systems—a flexible "kit of parts" (colors, >
Why are brands moving away from traditional holiday colors like red and green?
Brands are adopting Sophisticated Seasonality, replacing holiday clichés with color psychology. By using palettes like deep navy and amber to evoke intimacy and premium quality, brands can signal a specific mood and stand out in a crowded market.
