this post was submitted on 05 Jun 2024
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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.
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.
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: