Curvilinear: Containing or consisting of curved lines (Cambridge Dictionary)

Do you love soft and organic shapes as much as I do? Do you find yourself adding a corner radius every time you design a square to make the shape more fluid?

As designers, we’re in luck because curvilinear design has indeed become a trend to behold.

An excellent example of endless curves

The London staircase

The interior helical staircase of London City Hall is a superb architectural example of a seemingly infinite curved line.

Looking up at the spiral staircase in City Hall, London. ©Colin / Wikimedia Commons

This helical walkway is 500 metres long (1,640 ft) and spans the ten stories vertically. At the top, it features a public exhibition space. The building is designed by Norman Foster, a visionary modernist architect, who is also the founder of the Norman Foster Foundation. The promotion of interdisciplinary thinking among the younger generation of architects, designers and urbanists alike is Foster’s vision for the future, a dream for all designers.

Needless to say, the sheer sight of the helical stair formation provides much inspiration for any creator. The curves and round shapes let the eye wander into infinite space.

As designers, how can we create digital fluid shapes?

The most basic design can adapt itself to flowing shapes. Without much effort, a square can be made round-ish.

A square morphing into a soft-edged shape.

Similarly, a soft shape can turn into an organic shape.

Simple organic shapes rendered by haikei.app.

With a few clicks, haikei.app renders a abundance of organic shapes as web-ready png or svg files.

Haikei.appnot only renders shapes, but also a multitude of curvilinear compositions that can represent waves, oceans, landscape undulations, or other fluid formations. The color palette can get customized, and contrast and number of layers are set by the user.

Soft landscapes

Curves can be subtle or complex. Wave counts, complexity, and contrast all add to define the characteristics of a curvilinear environment. This can be used as a background, an illustrative feature, or a pattern design.

Fluorescent, curve-based cloud shapes

Curvilinear design shapes lend themselves well to render jewel-like objects. In Photoshop, effect filters such as blur, warp and skew can create stunning effects, especially when manipulated further with layer effects such as vivid light.

Three varying soft, rainbow-colored shapes seemingly floating in space like dew drops.

Fluid dreamscapes appear out of nowhere, reminiscent of the great Aurora Borealis lights in the northern skies.

Try these vividly colorful elements as accent colors, backgrounds, or in environmental illustration.

Inspiring spiral curves

Like the helical staircase, spiral design elements are fascinating as organic design objects.

We may have heard of Fibonacci and the magical numbers he studied as a mathematician in medieval times. Fibonacci discovered these numbers around the year 1200 which have become the key to the golden rectangle, the golden spiral, to life, and even to the entire universe. Read about this most interesting story on Fibonacci and his golden spiral here.

For this story, I refer to the special Adobe Illustrator spiral draw feature, which renders a spiral vector shape according to the user’s input.

Especially in decorative design, spiral design patterns impress by their fluidity and easy elegance. A plethora of motifs can easily get drawn up.

Two spirals mirroring each other forming a face-like structure.A variation of a spiral motif.

Fluid objects in product design

Much inspiration can be drawn from fluid design objects. This mobile sculpture reminds one of deep sea formations floating in space. It is mesmerizing and calming at once. The mind is not fixed on any one point or straight line, rather, it delights in the undulations and spaces these quasi-creature formations display.

A photo of a hanging mobile made of round metal shapes. Artist unkown.