Why is Tech Illustration Stuck on Repeat? (protocol.com) 52
You may not have heard of "Corporate Memphis," but you've almost certainly seen it. From a report: The illustration style can be found in the trendiest direct-to-consumer subway ads, within the app you use to split restaurant tabs or on the 404 page that attempts to counter your frustration with cutesiness. In fact, Corporate Memphis has become so synonymous with tech marketing that some illustrators simply know it as the "tech aesthetic." But Corporate Memphis has also become a victim of its own success. The once-whimsical, fresh style now feels safe and antiseptic. More conspicuous iterations of it get roasted online, if they get noticed at all; one popular tweet asks, "Why does every website landing page look like this now?" Illustrators are just as often tired of Corporate Memphis, but tech companies continue to commission it.
So why can't tech wean itself off of Corporate Memphis? Part of it has to do with the practical aesthetic considerations that gave rise to the style. But Corporate Memphis has primarily stuck around because tech executives continue to overlook the value of illustration, according to several of the illustrators interviewed for this story. Illustration work is increasingly awarded to the lowest bidder on gig platforms, using tools designed to standardize output. For the few companies that recognize the value of illustration, however, investing in creative talent has paid considerable dividends -- just not in ways that are easily measured.
So why can't tech wean itself off of Corporate Memphis? Part of it has to do with the practical aesthetic considerations that gave rise to the style. But Corporate Memphis has primarily stuck around because tech executives continue to overlook the value of illustration, according to several of the illustrators interviewed for this story. Illustration work is increasingly awarded to the lowest bidder on gig platforms, using tools designed to standardize output. For the few companies that recognize the value of illustration, however, investing in creative talent has paid considerable dividends -- just not in ways that are easily measured.
Name (Score:3, Informative)
I heard it referred to as "alegria." link [aiga.org]
It's cheap, it's "hip", it's inoffensive, and it's somehow both bland and quirky at the same time. Last year I urged artists to parody and mock the art style to hasten its death. You're welcome.
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It's cheap
Mostly this I'd guess. Web devs don't want t answer to management about why they spent so much on an arty 404 page.
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Geez, how did we get to where we are so screwed up so quickly?
This wasn't even a problem only what 3 years ago?
I keep waiting for the pendulum of common sense to swing back hard again....but, what's taking so long?
Re: Name (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe I don't get around enough, but the offended by the easily offended seem much more prevalent today than the easily offended themselves.
I mean there's always been the easily offended. When I was growing up they were usually led by old women who spent all their time writing to newspapers and complaining to TV regulators. They were always on TV panels when anything moral was being discussed and always seemed to have undue influence for what seemed like a crackpot minority. What seems new are the people who hijack every conversation to moan about some cancel culture strawman, usually with partisan undertones (or blatant overtones)
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moan about some cancel culture
Cancel culture is an example of the out-sized influence and how it is used. Someone is offended by something, gets on social media where their foll
Re: Name (Score:2)
Society has changed so that the easily offended have an out-sized influence today than in the past. In the past, the easily offended were told "suck it up" and dismissed.
We still can't swear on the radio, have to paper bag our drinks at the park, can't buy liquor on sundays, or is it before noon, and I can't paint my god damned fence without someone bitching to the HOA, so I don't see how it's really different.
Maybe the only thing that changed is the next generation has different opinions.
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It really is an abomination. I've hated it since I first saw it, and it's only become more prevalent. It's supposed to make companies feel more "fun" and "quirky", yet it accomplishes the opposite: using it makes a brand feel utterly soulless.
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I'd use a different adjective: to me, it makes a brand feel frivolous. But yeah, it is awful.
I prefer monospaced font and lineart (Score:3)
My favorite is when the former looks like it came from a manual typewriter with a few misaligned levers, the latter like it was done by hand on a drafting table, and both with that slightly splotchy mimeographed/blueprinted look.
Everything else is too Hollywood to be a product of a mind focused on communicating the most important bits and not wasting time on needless extravagances like color or fill.
LaTeX comes close to this look, and Gnuplot can be made to produce output of this form with careful settings and font package curation.
Now get off my lawn.
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Now get off my lawn.
This was already implicit from the rest of your post.
Re: I prefer monospaced font and lineart (Score:3)
No...in my experience there's an even split between get off my lawn, get off my mom's lawn, and get out of my bus shelter.
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My favorite is when the former looks like it came from a manual typewriter with a few misaligned levers, the latter like it was done by hand on a drafting table, and both with that slightly splotchy mimeographed/blueprinted look.
Reminds me of the days when graphics was difficult to do, so what graphics used had to be well thought on how to convey the subject of the article.
Now get off my lawn.
You mean because it hasn't been watered for months and don't want the kids kicking up dirt causing dust?
Re: I prefer monospaced font and lineart (Score:2)
You could have gone with "because your lawn has a thousand and one pieces of junk on it and you don't want the kids spoiling it" and it would have gotten modded up.
You're asking a bunch of techies? (Score:2)
Style goes in and out all the time. Ever looked at movie posters over the last 10-12 years? They look cookie cutter as hell with too much blue and random posing by the actors.
Expensive (Score:3)
Yeah you have two options: Pay $30,000 for a "unique" library of branded illustration. Download a pack of perfectly serviceable illustrations.
The point of ads isn't to entertain users, it's to make money. Why spend $30k on illustration when 99% of the customers just want something that looks professional and delivers the information needed.
I say that as a commercial artist. The ROI on art always feels a little questionable to me and my job depends on companies deciding it's worth it.
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Some people barely notice the artwork. Others will look at the cookie cutter art and assume the company will do the bare minimum in everything else as well.
Ambiguous Children's Books (Score:5, Insightful)
It appears they think this design won't offend anybody and it'll appeal to overgrown children who have some spending money.
Perfect for Corporate America.
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It appears they think this design won't offend anybody and it'll appeal to overgrown children who have some spending money.
Perfect for Corporate America.
You have a pretty good point.
Especially the part about not offending. And it's sticking around because it's the latest version of conform or be cast out.
Might there be a bit of the concept that people believe that you buy a software, and you suddenly become a design genius as well?
Sample one - Adobe Illustrator splash screen - you'd think the biggie program would have a really impressive splash screen. Nope, basic Memphis corporate. A androgynous - possibly a woman - wearing sunglasses with stran
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TFA says there is some kind of app for generating this crap. It's the lowest possible effort that avoids paying someone to design something.
If you see it on a corporate website then it's probably a scam.
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TFA says there is some kind of app for generating this crap. It's the lowest possible effort that avoids paying someone to design something.
If you see it on a corporate website then it's probably a scam.
I mean it's right there every time I open Illustrator. First thing you see when you open while program as it is loading. Artwork done by a person named Jade Purple Brown, who is an actual person. https://jadepurplebrown.com/ [jadepurplebrown.com] .
Art is always subjective of course, but I can certainly say that the work is derivative, and can't imagine why a person would choose Memphis corporate derive their own work from.
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You anti-woke people see woke everywhere. Being cheap is cheap. Paying for real people and editing real photos costs money. You can be woke or not with cartoons or people. It just costs more with images of real people. A lot more.
In my replying to Bill McGonigle's post about Memphis Corporate's desire to not offend people, I was agreeing with him on that point. And now you just proved my point by getting triggered. What caused you the existential angst? Has androgynous become a forbidden word, to be wiped from the lexicon for some reason/ Or are you just suffering from deep insecurity masquerading as righteous anger against imagined insults to your own narrative?
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Ambiguous? Like Brenda's Beaver Needs a Barber [youtube.com]?
Another field of endeavor gone to pot (Score:2)
For more examples of what it looks like, see Google Images [google.com].
Flat? Yes. Gross? Yes. Looks like it was done by the lowest bidder? Yes. Sadly, most examples include unattractively-rendered human figures.
"Illustration" doesn't have to be this way. Norman Rockwell considered himself an "illustrator," for pete's sake.
Had to Google it (Score:1)
I had to Google this since the article had no link to an example but once I did, I immediately thought of the Google Fi phone TV commercials which I find annoying and perhaps dated. Did Google think this was a good way to sell the product or did they not want to spend money on live actors (or perhaps COVID prevented them from doing so).
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The article did have "examples" in the form of a quoted tweet bitching about the style with an image of made-up examples of the style strewn about a light green canvas. I almost missed it too.
Cost. Risk. (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course. Why spend money when you don't have to?
And risk. Nobody is going to try anything that's different. If it's not a dead cert, it's not happening. Look at music, movies, just about anything these days. All bland, formulaic, inoffensive. No fun.
...laura
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Many recent movies and TV shows have been very controversial. Just ask me what I think of The Last Jedi, or check the user reviews of the new Masters of the Universe.
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Maybe they where controversial, but mainly because the where formulaic an bland, and trying to be inoffensive.
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TLJ was controversial because it wasn't the formulaic bland mush that people came to expect from the EU.
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Look at music, movies, just about anything these days. All bland, formulaic, inoffensive.
Oh not like there aren't any groups in this country to offend. And you want to spend money poking the bear and encourage others to do so.
Re: Cost. Risk. (Score:1)
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Risk? If advertising does anything to improve sales--and I'm not convinced it does--then the risk in using this style is that your brand looks like a bunch of other brands. IMHO.
BTW, one "movie" ("TV series") that isn't bland, formulaic or inoffensive is The Man in the High Castle. One of my favorites (not that I'm biased).
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A company had to apologize for a commercial because of "racist symbolism". [nytimes.com]
A car company had to apologize for a sexually suggestive song about a mechanic and a car [businessinsider.com]
The lip balm company that had to apologize because an ad had a black family without a father [blackenterprise.com]
The soft drink company that had to apologize for an ad created by a black hiphop group that was called it "arguably the most racist commercial in history." [go.com]
A car company apo [adweek.com]
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It's just not good enough. I demand every 404 not found page has a unique and insightful illustration that lifts my day and inspires me. Won't somebody think of the poor starving artists.
And if you haven't changed your apps UI this year then, WHY NOT!
Simple (Score:2)
So why can't tech wean itself off of Corporate Memphis? Part of it has to do with the practical aesthetic considerations that gave rise to the style. But Corporate Memphis has primarily stuck around because tech executives continue to overlook the value of illustration, according to several of the illustrators interviewed for this story. Illustration work is increasingly awarded to the lowest bidder on gig platforms, using tools designed to standardize output. For the few companies that recognize the value of illustration, however, investing in creative talent has paid considerable dividends -- just not in ways that are easily measured.
Why invest a lot of resources in developing a new visual aesthetic (of which 90% will be crud), when in the event that you do find the next new hotness it will just be ripped off by everyone else who invested nothing and just buys the work from the lowest bidder on gig platforms?
What's the big deal? (Score:3)
Everyone knows you only need three design elements per page:
1. Papyrus for headlines
2. Comic Sans for body text
3. The first piece of public domain clip art that comes up in an image search on the topic
Why overthink design when you could spend the time learning the latest hot language or framework to get you the next gig when this one implodes?
Wikipedia page only created earlier this year (Score:5, Interesting)
If you search for "Corporate Memphis", you find a wikipedia page that was only created a few months ago - and a number of bloggy posts, all made the last several months. This smells suspiciously like a marketer's attempt to push a phrase into the vernacular for which they can claim some sort of creator credit... trying to jump start their own 15 minutes of fame, in other words.
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2019 or earlier [archive.org]
I think the term was intended to be derisive
Apparently it's effectively free (Score:2)
Based on what I just found with a quick google search, it looks like some guy has a "humaans" database that you can download for free and use to create these graphics for private or commercial use.
https://pablostanley.gumroad.c... [gumroad.com]
I didn't look any further than that since I have no need for this stuff, but it appears that any idiot can download this library and create trendy graphics. Therefore, any idiot is probably downloading this library to create his trendy graphics.
Hippies did it (Score:2)
just a blantant ad article - not fooled (Score:2)
never saw those crap page illustrations anywhere and never heard of those illustrator companies.
fake news. and fugly art.
Why is this fad (Score:2)
that will almost certainly go away in a few years but has been around about 6 months later than I think it should not gone yet.
Hard hitting article you got there.
Globohomo (Score:2)
I usually see this style being called "globohomo", short for "globalized homogenization".
AirBnB site's hypocrisy (Score:3)
If you click through to one of the design houses that uses the modern diversity
style, I was struck by their examples of diversity and if you want to work with them, their instruction is to "Tap on Accept".
Interesting how the tech-style doesn't include the 50% of people who don't have smartphones (recent demographics tout that 50% of "people" (?US?) have smart phones now -- the converse being that 50% don't. I probably wouldn't have noticed the discrepancy had they not been emphasizing the importance of diversity and their implicit exclusion of the 50% of the people who don't have smart phones.
I doubt many readers here care, but I spend most my time at home on a desktop computer (another outdated concept), where I don't get great cell reception. Being able to look at sites and watch movies on 5-6" screen just doesn't interest me compared to 9.2 sound and a wall mounted screen...
The Memphis style is appealing, partly, it seems, due to the low-detail in images that are boring in a larger format, but well situated on a hand-held.
Avoiding racial bias is biased? (Score:2)
Not that long ago. Jennifer Hom's work would have been labeled as racist because those a
It's safe and gets the job done (Score:2)
Read TFA: Still Don't Know Why "Corporate Memphis" (Score:2)
The article talks about Humaaans, Alegria and a bunch of other tools that produce images like this, but I did not see any explanation of why it is being calle "Corporate Memphis". In fact the only person using the term "Corporate Memphis" in the piece is the author. Not a single person quoted uses the term. The author seems to be just dropping this term in from nowhere.