Every era is defined by the tools we had at hand during that process. While Memphis is basically pixel art, Y2K was defined by the gradient and mask tools on Photoshop, and Aero was a victim of skewmorphic design trends pushed by the commodity of 3D tooling. Flat design took prevalence because raster-based products felt weird when seen on retina displays.
I wonder how design will be affected when AI tools become the norm.
Everything will have extra fingers.
Seriously tho I think there will be a flight to intricacy.
Memphis was not pixel art.
Windows/BeOS/MacOS 6 to 9
If you hewed to the ops memes incorrect description, Memphis would have been the 80s and mid 90s. It’s interesting that the meme takes into consideration the concept of the long 70s but then just goes back to ten year distinctions. windows 3 (I assume you’re not talking about the early dos shell stuff because no one ever is and you put it squarely amongst the contemporaries of 95, but I’ll give the benefit of the doubt since we’re talking design language) went from ‘90-2003 (with ME) macos 7-9 spanned ‘91-2001 and beos was 95-2000.
It’s possible you aren’t sticking to that flawed understanding though, so let’s talk about design language and Memphis. You’re right that designs are informed by their tools and mediums. For Memphis group those tools were drafting paper and those mediums were chipboard and naugahide. Memphis group made couches and shelves, not software or digital art.
Now that’s not to say that only stuff from a specific cadre of Italian designers made during a short period is Memphis and everything else is sparkling crayon scribbles, only that the stuff we actually recognize as Memphis wasn’t pixel art by any measure.
Most of what is in the meme under Memphis isn’t even Memphis though, it’s pop art. I think the pants are a haring print…
With all that said, what about windows (were you talking about windows 3+?), macos 7-9 and beos would you say were sparkling crayon scribbles, pop art or genuinely drawing from the design language of the Memphis group?
I was taking about icon packs. I didn’t know about the Memphis designers, thanks for the nice write-up
It would be cool to have as much information about the icon design and window decorations of those oses as we have about the windows startup sound (look the making of that up sometime if you want to know the absolute heights of decadence software development hit and what Microsoft could do when they were really trying to compete with Apple).
Reading back, I was a jerk in my response to you, getting all “well actually” over a meme about 90s kids because it used the wrong name for the language of different designs.
Mea culpa. Im sorry.
all good! :pixelated-hug-emoji:
Perhaps there will be a time in the future when we look back to when everything was “just” flat design. Meanwhile the UI will adapt the aesthetics of AI generated imagery which will be the new design thing then. Everything will look overly saturated but also a bit blurry, like AI generated landscapes. .
Or not. It depends on what data an AI will be fed with. Maybe it goes Frutiger Aero all over again (at least what the AI interpretation of Frutiger will be) since AI generators could be fed with the existing examples of such an era. We would have gone full circle.
Late 90s decided that everyone had to dress up in silver
Far and away the 90s and it’s not even close. We had the internet but it wasn’t stalking us. We had cell phones but your parents couldn’t drop a tracker app on it to see if you were actually at Doug’s house. Gas was cheap. Airports were better, flying was better, fewer people, god I miss the 90s.
That, and internet in the late 90s started to get really fast. Some blokes sat in their rooms for days on end, downloading music or movies, as there were no laws against it yet. Or at least they were not enforced. In other words, those were the days when average Joe could still be one step ahead of The Man. You know, before he turned against us with a vengeance, everywhere, 24/7.
Give me the 90s with today’s safety standards (for things like car/aircraft/etc)
Don’t forget about the banning of indoor smoking in public places. God the 90’s were a horrible time for that although it was winding down.
It wasn’t so great if you were gay, either. Racism was mostly passe, but everyone thought Columbus was a cool guy and the natives disappeared on their own, which is not ideal.
Not being poor and the blissful delusion that history is over sound lit, but there are some hard edges to the era I hear about occasionally, as a Zoomer. And WTF is up with that song about rubbing your boner on people?
I was fortunate to have grown up in the pacific northwest where being gay was mostly fine, racism was mostly absent and we learned about smallpox blankets in school.
Dope. I grew up in a rural area where even in the 2000’s homophobia lingered pretty good. I could be wrong about Columbus in the 90s, I guess, but he was definitely a hero at some point.
I grew up pretty rural as well but in a very liberal state and since course standards were set at the state government level, the education definitely leaned that way. I think Columbus is still celebrated in certain parts of this country where they refuse to acknowledge indigenous people’s day.
Can I get a link to the dick-rubbing song?
Yep, the other guy’s got it, it’s Too Close.
It’s subtle, so really listen to the lyrics
Edit: Actually, think it’s too close
Yep, Too Close.
It was in Leave the World Behind, and if the characters weren’t taking it seriously I 100% would have thought it was a parody song.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
It’s subtle, so really listen to the lyrics
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
I think they’re talking about the designs, not the whole decade.
Boy did I miss that by a mile.
Yeah but you’re right.
You’re still right. You forgot just deciding to rent a place out downtown with your girlfriend on a whim. How life is supposed to be.
It’s an interesting idea, though, that one’s preference for a particular design or aesthetic, especially when that design or aesthetic is emblematic of a particular historical or cultural moment, is never wholly isolated to its visual or material components, but also innately tied to our memory and understanding of that moment. I personally don’t think you can extricate a particular aesthetic from the psychic background noise surrounding it. Our minds don’t work that way. It’s always forming these subconscious or unconscious connections, binding events and memory to abstract signifiers.
We don’t like the 90s aesthetic because it’s “better” or even attractive. I mean, nobody has wallpaper in their home with those pastel and neon triangles. Many of us like it because it reminds us of childhood, of not having responsibilities other than waking up early enough on Saturday to catch all your cartoons and of not complaining too much when you have to go visit your grandparents who can never remember your birthday and who always ask you how old you are this year, of finishing Super Mario on the SNES before your friend does so you can brag about being better at video games than him. It’s of a simpler time and place, because we were simpler. And it was, in retrospect, of an America briefly sandwiched between the end of the original “Forever War” that was the Cold War, and the beginning of the 20th Century’s new “Forever War,” that is the War on Terror.
Amazing time for music as well.
and real original movies. and tv shows with writing. and music videos. and exciting new progress in video games. and cheap live music. and thongs under low rise jeans.
Then the 80s show up and takes your lunch money, by blinding you with our awesome fluorescent clothing
Ha!
Memphis design will always win my vote. The weird ass electronics, the ground breaking UI components, just absolutely nutty decisions and insane product concepts built on everyone’s wild dreams of the future. I even think the same forward looking design concepts carried into the Y2K designs— particularly with personal electronics like phones.
90s because they used logic in designing things. Now they change for the sake of change.
Y2K would like to have a word…
Y2K was fine. We fixed it in the '90s, it employed practically the entire tech workforce for all of '98 and '99. It made it so easy to get into that industry for people like me
Like how there was a damn good reason for the start menu button to be on the button right: you could fling your mouse the lower left and no matter if you did it too far or fast, it would always hit the corner, and be at the start button. You never had to “target” the start button, you simply went all the way down to the left. Didn’t even have to look.
So obviously, they must of had an equally smart, thoughtful reason to put it in the middle, right? That’s a decision born from utility, not aesthetics. Clearly not making a painfully obvious attempt at copying their main competitor.
What on earth are you talking about? What start button is in the middle?
Windows 11 Windows button is now in the middle of the taskbar, as opposed to where it’s been for literally 30 years.
Although you can change it to be bottom left again. But it should be the default.
Hey that’s a nice ilustration!
90s, BeOS
I gravitate towards the ones I came up in, and that’s probably not a coincidence. I will say that flat design becomes self-defeating sometimes. Every damn Google icon looks the same.
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It’s about 30% of what I listen to. A lot of ATCQ, Digable Planets, Wu-Tang Clan and such.
Twinz by Fat Joe and Big Pun is almost on repeat for me, as well.
I miss hip hop
Translucent electronics FTW
Frutiger Aero was when design peaked
Tbh I kinda like flat design if done tastefully and within a confined scope, but that Alegria/Globo Homo bullshit from evil corporations and the weird full plastic boxes of nothing can rightly go to the dump.
I will hate the decade though for its prevalence of the bland beige and off-white interior design.
