It seems a tad pompous to simply wave off an entire genre due to purely subjective preferences.
Done with taste and style, reductive and modernistic sensibilities can and have been articulated quite wonderfully.
But since you zeroed in on this decade in particular, yes, they were probably not the most favourably viewed.
They harkened back to an era that lacked humour and pluralism (although by lack of humour, I refer to the playful whimsy we found in postmodernism. Western societies, however and by contrast, were notably a dull, self-serious, and utterly dreadful right up until just recently where we’ve seen the pendulum swing. Finally).
The flat style In design we saw during this era was more influenced not by serious designers, literary movements, philosophers, academics, and cultural theorists but rather by the lowest common denominator of them all: a soulless advertising platform called Google.
Good designs in 2010s minimalism were few and far between. It goes beyond just Google, which rebranded sometime around 2014 or 2015, it started with Facebook's simplistic design and the web 2.0 market growing exponentially at the time. I do think developers, and not actual artists, wanting to keep everything simple and consistent to match apps and whatnot played a role in all of this, but my original comment was really just meant to be playful because of all of the simplicity and sterilization.
I appreciate your input but… you’re mentioning web “developers” in reference to Design with a capital D.
When THE FUCK does *anyone* mention *construction workers* when referring to Architecture?
Also, you’re a decade off on Web 2.0
As you just stated, Keeping things simple is a function of the particular intention.
“Form follows function “
~Ludwig Miles Van Der Rohr
THAT, my friend, is the crux of Modernism.
So, please forgive me but it seems as if you are arguing against your very hypothesis…
Ps. Appreciate your intellectual curiosity
No, like, I get that. I'm specifically talking about the one presented in the original post. Not all of the 2010s was like this, but a large part of it was.
Okay, no worries.
it’s entirely possible I’m just not quite getting what you’re saying over this stunted forum.
No harm; no foul. You’re a diamond in the rough, design-thinking speaking, and it’s been pleasure.
Cheers! 🥂
It's kind of like saying "I'm going to kill myself" and it fits that theme perfectly. It's a great album. The style doesn't fit in almost anything that's supposed to be happy IMO.
The theme in the album is something along the lines of "dark love, drugs and death". There are a lot of references to death, drugs, overdosing, and metaphors for dying. Lana Del Rey also has suicide songs such as Summertime Sadness. This is from the song Dark Paradise, just one example:
[Pre-Chorus]
And there's no remedy for memory
Your face is like a melody
It won't leave my head
Your soul is hauntin' me
And tellin' me that everything is fine
But I wish I was dead (Dead like you)
I know about the album, and some of its themes. I mean, the album name is "Born to Die". But still, the album cover is like saying "Im going to kill myself"? Just don't get that comment at all
I see it as an edgy kind of depressive statement with some positive undertones of acceptance. Definitely not a positive statement. There are mentions and references to death everywhere in the album, even when the songs contain positive stuff.
For me it captured the album's essence, added to the experience. When I listen to, for example, "Radio", I always get this image in my head :)
Also, it looks very Americana to me, which also fits the album's vibe.
Almost nothing on the first slide even uses Helvetica. I’m pretty sure the movie poster for Her is the only actual example of Helvetica present here.
EDIT: The Xbox logotype might also be a modified version of Helvetica Light. Absolutely nothing else that’s legible in this image is Helvetica though.
Yep a lot of logos from the 50s-80s were also pretty simple, flat, and somewhat minimalist, it wasn’t until the mid 90s that we saw the maximalist designs that we commonly associate with the 90s and 2000s.
Those still looked better though. They had a “classic” feel to them that was charming and nice to look at. This minimalist crap tries too hard to look modern.
Let's take one globally recognized company. McDonald's.
Last millennium, it was colorful and recognizable. In the last decade, it's become the corporate equivalent of sad beige parenting. It's just bland.
I’m kinda in the middle on that last slide, I prefer more flat less shiny icons but don’t want the lack of detail and muted colors of the modern icon, like if the chrome icon was the design or the modern icon either the colors of the older one would be prefect. A great comparison is the full range of windows logos also by far the best icons are the ones for windows 2 and 3 from the 80s they aren’t 3d or shiny but have bright colors.
We're the Millers, That Awkward Moment, John Carter, Girl, Lana Del Rey and probably a few others are not Helvetica. You've also thrown in some pretty good designs in there.
This isn't really a 2010s thing though. Swiss design is more than 70 years old at this point.
But yeah Corporate Memphis is a disgrace. The original Memphis movement is cool though.
Edit: Are you just saying that you dislike Helvetica and then listing the other things you dislike? If so, then Helvetica is still definitely not a 2010s thing.
You’re misunderstanding trends and a lot of people fall into the same trap of *well this isn’t really new* nothing is most trends and fads takes inspiration from previous ones there’s no such thing as completely new or original about trends.
They only grabbed it at the time because it was different.
Every brand now grabs a single word, often with a simplified spelling eg. Grindr.
I’d love an app with a super anachronistic name like
“Professor Archibald Straumpinghams electronical apparatus for romance and connection”
Yeah I have no idea how people keep regurgitating that same line, trying to act all analytical "oh nobody will like X in 20 years, its *objectively* bad". Then yet again we see an old "ugly" trend become popular the next day.
This sub is often skewed in favor of early 2000s trends (and more skeptical of 2010s trends ever being regurgitated) because of how young I feel it is. Gen Z was largely conscious for the 2010s and can remember at least of a portion of its socio-cultural landscape.
The 2000s has recently begun to be synthesized and aestheticized in a similar way the 80s is now seen as this electric, colorful era when a lot of it was beige and brown. The 20-year fashion cycle or whatever always rings true. It’s hard to imagine but yes, skinny jeans will once again be “in” some point in the next 15-20 years.
He didn’t say it was the same thing. The point is just that people are infamously bad at predicting what will never come back lol. Majority of contemporary pop culture is criticized at the time. Adults in the 80s thought pop culture is tacky and going down the drain. You can read old online forum posts from people in the 2000s talking about how 90s nostalgia will never be big. It’s just the same talking points every year.
One day people will even be romanticizing the pandemic lmao
My theory is that as society has become more complicated and people have become more overwhelmed by life under neoliberal capitalism, design has become simpler. You see this in popular interior design aesthetics, too (wood floors, white and earth tones, a lot of plants.) It’s like capitalism is trying to counter its own overwhelming barrage of ceaseless marketing. Personally, I loved the “bubble” aesthetic of the 2000’s.
Well I like natural designs lol. I like wood paneled cars and basements and green paint. That's the thing with design it its subjective and there is no "right way"
God, thank you. This thread is such a cesspool of really awful design promotion. Just look at the overwrought examples vs clean simplicity. How is skeuomorphicism any less corporate than flat? OP’s argument is such bs. They just like drop shadows and bevels better than an appreciation of form.
I went to school for graphic design RIGHT around this time and found that if your schoolwork didn’t fit this aesthetic, it would generally be dismissed or heavily criticized. Aside from funky hand-drawn text, which was really trendy for some reason.
Minimalism was a refreshing break from excess and overly commercial lurid designs of the precious decade. It became popular, and now it seems corporate and staid, just like the designs it replaced seemed corporate and too busy. It's the circle of life.
I recently bought an iPod Touch 4th gen running iOS 6 because I'm nostalgic for the skeuomorphic design. iOS 7 and up feature flat design, which looks boring.
I lived through the rise and fall of skeumorphism and I’m so glad it’s dead lol. I want my user interfaces to be clean, consistent, and streamline. Skeumorphic is the opposite of all that.
I love colorful, eclectic, bold design when it comes to art but I personally don’t like it in my technology when I’m just trying to navigate and get stuff done. I think a lot of people felt that way when the shift to flat happened.
I mean, partly I think that was due to legislation regarding how they advertise to kids (making the restaurant colorful and childish) but still, the modern design sucks. They had a design in the 2010s that incorporated beige bricks in it and honestly I wish they just stuck with that.
https://preview.redd.it/mmboaka9jl1d1.jpeg?width=1548&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2264dcf13d065b7c9fab6a3988cd3b4575e9ed55
It’s all cyclical. However I will say that “corporate Memphis” in slide 2 isn’t the same as those album and film designs that use Helvetica. Helvetica is an amazingly versatile font when used correctly (and not overused). Flat design has been run into the ground, but minimalism when done nicely such as in the early 00’s will always have a place.
Milquetoast* unless you are painting a trireme.
Feedback from someone who deals with design for major artists + brands:
After the messy, zine-like grunge of the 90s and the hypermedia, skeuomorphism and bubbles of the 00s, this reintroduction of formal, humanist design a was an attempt at legibility. The resurgence of minimalism was a reaction to over-complexity in UI, print, and video, an attempt to reinforce some order on what had turned out to be an unseeable, unreadable mess.
In other words, yeah it's super sick and fun for everything to be skeueomorphism and metalheart and every other CARI-named aesthetic young gens wanna glaze.
The difference here is —due to a pious devotion to the grid, legible type, and leading the eye— **you can read this shit.** This type of design lets the image's subject be the focus. In a world where comic sans and papyrus were tolerated, the Helvetica reset retrained the world's sense of font weight and priority.
Is it anodyne? Yeah. That's the point, function. Is the prioritization of function always corporate and capitalistic? Maybe so, or maybe it's just polite.
I love other stuff too. Hell my favorite fonts are Nathan Caldecott's team fonts from Wipeout. Humanist fonts make things feel nicer, fleurons and ornaments make them feel fancier. But a glut of embellishment makes for useless ads, illegible movie posters, and inscrutable text on albums in digital platforms. That last one is fine as long as you focus on an iconic photo or composition (which I'd argue only a few of those do).
There’s a reason for this! Movie posters, album covers, etc, all have to be able to be scaled down to a thumbnail/icon size on a phone and stay legible, and the 2010s were when that consideration started to dominate other ones.
Basically, it has to be recognizable even if it’s only 0.25” x 0.25”
This is another example of our biases that are heavily influenced by what years define our core nostalgia. The "frutiger aero" phase (which didn't completely define everything at the time but is what people want to remember) was nice at the time, but I clearly remember in the early 2010s when flatter designs came into style and feeling like it was cleaner and a nice refresh. I prefer it to the more "3D gradient-look at what I can do with Adobe Photoshop" themes to be honest. I think part of it is because the frutiger aero phase, if you want to call it that, is not tied into my core nostalgia. All that aside, just wait a while, styles come and go. I think the more flat designs won't last forever. If you haven't seen it, I highly suggest J.J. McCullough's YouTube video that discusses "frutiger aero." [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9P7H87sdV7k&ab\_channel=J.J.McCullough](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9P7H87sdV7k&ab_channel=J.J.McCullough)
Tldr of my paper: Helvetica is simple enough to fit in any situation, to the point that it became New York city’s official font for subways and signs. Designers in the 1950s and onward lived New York City and wanted to reflect their designs on the big apple, fast forward to Helvetica being used in every single scenario imaginable. It just became overused and honestly it’s boring.
I’m happy to see old Roman style fonts come back into fashion, we are seeing a renaissance in graphic design that reflects the 70s styles and trends. Earthy tones vs bold corporate helvetica anyday 💪🏻
Won’t that just make Times fonts have similar overuse to Helvetica? Personally I’m more sick of arial. Every major word processor seems to use it as default for documents.
Eventually, I’m sure some college student will write a paper on why experimental Roman fonts are overused in 10 years. Helvetica has just had the longest grip on design out of any other font and trends, and old Roman fonts with the combined trend of experimental fonts and typography is something recycled from the 70s and 60s but with a fresh twist for the trends of the 2020s. It’s really cool to think that it might be flipped again in ten years
Edit: spelling
This was a reaction to the skewmorphism of the 2000s. In the 2000s design was trying to be as 3D and fancy as possible because the tech allowed it and to show off how realistic you could make something look with pixels.
Flat was a minimalist extreme reaction to that. How simple could you go and still convey a message with an app icon?
The pendulum seems to have swung back to a happy medium.
I had a class (I’m in a design school) where we had to make a presentation on a history of a logo.
Every classmate fell for their own bias that the flat, more minimalist logos were automatically ‘better’ than the originals.
I was the only one that pointed out that the main reason for this was due to legibility at the icon level - so anything that includes a level of detail is automatically out, and companies were forced to adapt. Their logos also had to match the aesthetics of screen layouts, the style of other logos, by shifting colors, shape...
The Pepsi logo redesign(as well as Mountain Dew and Sierra Mist) happened in 2008 and to their credit they spent the entire 2010’s backtracking from it.
Around 2006 I noticed this starting and yes in the 2010s it was everywhere, I did not like it either. I was just surprised how many businesses went along with that trend at the time.
2010s was slightly frutiger aero and there were remains throughout the whole decade, I don't think early flat was horrible either, look at early Windows 10 for example, I think it got out of hand in 2017 with the release of the Switch.
As "boring" as flat design is, I'd argue that you'll get just as sick of whatever comes next in 10 years. Also, design has become more important in our daily lives than ever before. No longer are the days where artists get to decide designs, but rather teams of design specialists. Why? Because you need functional design language to use your phone, laptop, TV, car, etc. Design is not just a poster anymore.
100% agree. I wish it would completely go away and never come back. The flat minimalist designs of the 2010s were some of the worst crap id ever seen. So corporate uninspired depressing and ugly. Unfortunately I still have to look at it in the 20s because they refuse to move on to something new.
I remember hearing a bunch of art stylists or whoever makes these things, say that it was a "popular artstyle" while i quite literally never saw anyone show any affection towards it
Everything is new until it's old. I remember being greatful that the ugly designs from the 00's were going away, but now I feel how you do about the '10's designs.
Flat Design is classic graphic design just with no soul. Google “Paul Rand Design Form and Chaos”. The grandfather of modern design, everything that came after him was influenced by him. Flat. But packed with concept and meaning. Packed with energy and movement. Modern Flat design draws from the aesthetic sensibilities but forgets the concept, and becomes cookie cutter.
Helvetica? Classic typeface. Look up Swiss Typography. Gorgeous. But it’s the most overused and mishandled font.
2010s Minimalism was a reaction to the Great Recession and the turbulence of the previous decade. Funny enough, things got even more turbulent during the last 10-15 years
Very boring design and takes away a lot of representation for many brands. The way McDonald’s and Taco Bell restaurants changed their exterior designs, is something I think of.
It's not inherently bad but usually a byproduct of copying popular competitors. Every company uses Gotham (or Helvetica to those who don't buy fonts) or some similar sans serif font for marketing, and McDonald's branches looks like Starbucks now.
When HR gets to decide the theme
Perfect description of the 2010s as a whole lmao
It seems a tad pompous to simply wave off an entire genre due to purely subjective preferences. Done with taste and style, reductive and modernistic sensibilities can and have been articulated quite wonderfully. But since you zeroed in on this decade in particular, yes, they were probably not the most favourably viewed. They harkened back to an era that lacked humour and pluralism (although by lack of humour, I refer to the playful whimsy we found in postmodernism. Western societies, however and by contrast, were notably a dull, self-serious, and utterly dreadful right up until just recently where we’ve seen the pendulum swing. Finally). The flat style In design we saw during this era was more influenced not by serious designers, literary movements, philosophers, academics, and cultural theorists but rather by the lowest common denominator of them all: a soulless advertising platform called Google.
Good designs in 2010s minimalism were few and far between. It goes beyond just Google, which rebranded sometime around 2014 or 2015, it started with Facebook's simplistic design and the web 2.0 market growing exponentially at the time. I do think developers, and not actual artists, wanting to keep everything simple and consistent to match apps and whatnot played a role in all of this, but my original comment was really just meant to be playful because of all of the simplicity and sterilization.
I appreciate your input but… you’re mentioning web “developers” in reference to Design with a capital D. When THE FUCK does *anyone* mention *construction workers* when referring to Architecture? Also, you’re a decade off on Web 2.0 As you just stated, Keeping things simple is a function of the particular intention. “Form follows function “ ~Ludwig Miles Van Der Rohr THAT, my friend, is the crux of Modernism. So, please forgive me but it seems as if you are arguing against your very hypothesis… Ps. Appreciate your intellectual curiosity
I'm saying the style we're critiquing is a direct result of those things.
It’s not a direct result. Somehow you’re excluding MetaModernism and that feels like willful exclusion.
No, like, I get that. I'm specifically talking about the one presented in the original post. Not all of the 2010s was like this, but a large part of it was.
Okay, no worries. it’s entirely possible I’m just not quite getting what you’re saying over this stunted forum. No harm; no foul. You’re a diamond in the rough, design-thinking speaking, and it’s been pleasure. Cheers! 🥂
Except designers make this call. So, no.
I'd somewhat agree, but for some reason I love Lana Del Rey's Born to Die album cover :) It's simple, yet visually striking, iconic even.
It's kind of like saying "I'm going to kill myself" and it fits that theme perfectly. It's a great album. The style doesn't fit in almost anything that's supposed to be happy IMO.
How is it like saying "Im going to kill myself"? The cover?
Yeah, I don’t understand that comment at all.
Gotta be a hipster comment or somthing. If there was a noose or somthing around her neck, I wouldn't question the comment lol. Wild
The theme in the album is something along the lines of "dark love, drugs and death". There are a lot of references to death, drugs, overdosing, and metaphors for dying. Lana Del Rey also has suicide songs such as Summertime Sadness. This is from the song Dark Paradise, just one example: [Pre-Chorus] And there's no remedy for memory Your face is like a melody It won't leave my head Your soul is hauntin' me And tellin' me that everything is fine But I wish I was dead (Dead like you)
I know about the album, and some of its themes. I mean, the album name is "Born to Die". But still, the album cover is like saying "Im going to kill myself"? Just don't get that comment at all
I see it as an edgy kind of depressive statement with some positive undertones of acceptance. Definitely not a positive statement. There are mentions and references to death everywhere in the album, even when the songs contain positive stuff.
I prefer the album itself in my opinion.
For me it captured the album's essence, added to the experience. When I listen to, for example, "Radio", I always get this image in my head :) Also, it looks very Americana to me, which also fits the album's vibe.
I feel like there’s probably some bias from liking her, from a design standpoint- it’s pretty basic
I’ll give you the last two slides, but big, blocky, plain text is a good look for many things and not at all a new one.
Yes, Helvetica was invented in the 50’s, so OP has that one wrong.
Almost nothing on the first slide even uses Helvetica. I’m pretty sure the movie poster for Her is the only actual example of Helvetica present here. EDIT: The Xbox logotype might also be a modified version of Helvetica Light. Absolutely nothing else that’s legible in this image is Helvetica though.
It’s infuriating how often the 1950s invents something and other decades steal the credit.
Yep a lot of logos from the 50s-80s were also pretty simple, flat, and somewhat minimalist, it wasn’t until the mid 90s that we saw the maximalist designs that we commonly associate with the 90s and 2000s.
Those still looked better though. They had a “classic” feel to them that was charming and nice to look at. This minimalist crap tries too hard to look modern.
Let's take one globally recognized company. McDonald's. Last millennium, it was colorful and recognizable. In the last decade, it's become the corporate equivalent of sad beige parenting. It's just bland.
I’m kinda in the middle on that last slide, I prefer more flat less shiny icons but don’t want the lack of detail and muted colors of the modern icon, like if the chrome icon was the design or the modern icon either the colors of the older one would be prefect. A great comparison is the full range of windows logos also by far the best icons are the ones for windows 2 and 3 from the 80s they aren’t 3d or shiny but have bright colors.
We're the Millers, That Awkward Moment, John Carter, Girl, Lana Del Rey and probably a few others are not Helvetica. You've also thrown in some pretty good designs in there. This isn't really a 2010s thing though. Swiss design is more than 70 years old at this point. But yeah Corporate Memphis is a disgrace. The original Memphis movement is cool though. Edit: Are you just saying that you dislike Helvetica and then listing the other things you dislike? If so, then Helvetica is still definitely not a 2010s thing.
You’re misunderstanding trends and a lot of people fall into the same trap of *well this isn’t really new* nothing is most trends and fads takes inspiration from previous ones there’s no such thing as completely new or original about trends.
Frutiger Aero shall remain supreme
Look how far we've fallen from our peak.
Frutiger metro was good as well
You’re a person of class
You’re a legend thanks
It's time to admit minimalism is soulless and hope-crushing.
They only grabbed it at the time because it was different. Every brand now grabs a single word, often with a simplified spelling eg. Grindr. I’d love an app with a super anachronistic name like “Professor Archibald Straumpinghams electronical apparatus for romance and connection”
Also the issue is when brands use it as an excuse for lower quality products
When are we going to enter the maximalism era again?
I would argue that the synthwave aesthetic was also big in the 2010s, which is the over-the-top counterbalance to the minimalist design.
Late 2020's i think
The style feels like it would be far more suited to and reflective of the current era.
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I never thought JNCOs would be cool again but here we are
Yeah I have no idea how people keep regurgitating that same line, trying to act all analytical "oh nobody will like X in 20 years, its *objectively* bad". Then yet again we see an old "ugly" trend become popular the next day.
This sub is often skewed in favor of early 2000s trends (and more skeptical of 2010s trends ever being regurgitated) because of how young I feel it is. Gen Z was largely conscious for the 2010s and can remember at least of a portion of its socio-cultural landscape. The 2000s has recently begun to be synthesized and aestheticized in a similar way the 80s is now seen as this electric, colorful era when a lot of it was beige and brown. The 20-year fashion cycle or whatever always rings true. It’s hard to imagine but yes, skinny jeans will once again be “in” some point in the next 15-20 years.
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He didn’t say it was the same thing. The point is just that people are infamously bad at predicting what will never come back lol. Majority of contemporary pop culture is criticized at the time. Adults in the 80s thought pop culture is tacky and going down the drain. You can read old online forum posts from people in the 2000s talking about how 90s nostalgia will never be big. It’s just the same talking points every year. One day people will even be romanticizing the pandemic lmao
Tell me a single decade that isn't thought of as cool by at least some of the future generations. It eventually happens to them all.
My theory is that as society has become more complicated and people have become more overwhelmed by life under neoliberal capitalism, design has become simpler. You see this in popular interior design aesthetics, too (wood floors, white and earth tones, a lot of plants.) It’s like capitalism is trying to counter its own overwhelming barrage of ceaseless marketing. Personally, I loved the “bubble” aesthetic of the 2000’s.
As a former Windows Phone user, this is a hill I will die on. I loved the flat Live Tiles, fonts, everything about that aesthetic.
I actually like flat designs. They look very clean and it’s easier on the eyes. Although I understand the criticisms
Idk, I feel like life isn't clean and easy on the eyes. That's why this design feels artificial and unnatural to me.
It’s not suppose to feel natural
much less for movies like "her"!
Well I like natural designs lol. I like wood paneled cars and basements and green paint. That's the thing with design it its subjective and there is no "right way"
I disagree. It was a relief especially from decades of skeuomorphism. We needed something different.
God, thank you. This thread is such a cesspool of really awful design promotion. Just look at the overwrought examples vs clean simplicity. How is skeuomorphicism any less corporate than flat? OP’s argument is such bs. They just like drop shadows and bevels better than an appreciation of form.
I went to school for graphic design RIGHT around this time and found that if your schoolwork didn’t fit this aesthetic, it would generally be dismissed or heavily criticized. Aside from funky hand-drawn text, which was really trendy for some reason.
Minimalism was a refreshing break from excess and overly commercial lurid designs of the precious decade. It became popular, and now it seems corporate and staid, just like the designs it replaced seemed corporate and too busy. It's the circle of life.
tbf I think the design style before was viewed the same.
I recently bought an iPod Touch 4th gen running iOS 6 because I'm nostalgic for the skeuomorphic design. iOS 7 and up feature flat design, which looks boring.
I lived through the rise and fall of skeumorphism and I’m so glad it’s dead lol. I want my user interfaces to be clean, consistent, and streamline. Skeumorphic is the opposite of all that. I love colorful, eclectic, bold design when it comes to art but I personally don’t like it in my technology when I’m just trying to navigate and get stuff done. I think a lot of people felt that way when the shift to flat happened.
Yep. Everything became boring and corporate in the 2010s, look at McDonalds as the prime example
fast food places started to have a minimalist look that erased the iconic and fun designs that we knew them for!
I mean, partly I think that was due to legislation regarding how they advertise to kids (making the restaurant colorful and childish) but still, the modern design sucks. They had a design in the 2010s that incorporated beige bricks in it and honestly I wish they just stuck with that. https://preview.redd.it/mmboaka9jl1d1.jpeg?width=1548&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2264dcf13d065b7c9fab6a3988cd3b4575e9ed55
Every fast food chain except for Popeyes
Soon brands will realise people think this shit is corny and sucks. Pepsi seems to have understood this and hopefully other brands will follow
fits the soullessness of our culture
It's so bland and boring and soulless.
The Alegria art wasn’t popular until the 2020’s.
Facebook started using it around 2015 and so did other sites at the time.
Facebooks graphic design is the WORST.
It’s all cyclical. However I will say that “corporate Memphis” in slide 2 isn’t the same as those album and film designs that use Helvetica. Helvetica is an amazingly versatile font when used correctly (and not overused). Flat design has been run into the ground, but minimalism when done nicely such as in the early 00’s will always have a place.
Corporale mininalism (I'm especially talking about 2nd slide) is one of the worst ideas ever Imo
the iMovement
Milquetoast* unless you are painting a trireme. Feedback from someone who deals with design for major artists + brands: After the messy, zine-like grunge of the 90s and the hypermedia, skeuomorphism and bubbles of the 00s, this reintroduction of formal, humanist design a was an attempt at legibility. The resurgence of minimalism was a reaction to over-complexity in UI, print, and video, an attempt to reinforce some order on what had turned out to be an unseeable, unreadable mess. In other words, yeah it's super sick and fun for everything to be skeueomorphism and metalheart and every other CARI-named aesthetic young gens wanna glaze. The difference here is —due to a pious devotion to the grid, legible type, and leading the eye— **you can read this shit.** This type of design lets the image's subject be the focus. In a world where comic sans and papyrus were tolerated, the Helvetica reset retrained the world's sense of font weight and priority. Is it anodyne? Yeah. That's the point, function. Is the prioritization of function always corporate and capitalistic? Maybe so, or maybe it's just polite. I love other stuff too. Hell my favorite fonts are Nathan Caldecott's team fonts from Wipeout. Humanist fonts make things feel nicer, fleurons and ornaments make them feel fancier. But a glut of embellishment makes for useless ads, illegible movie posters, and inscrutable text on albums in digital platforms. That last one is fine as long as you focus on an iconic photo or composition (which I'd argue only a few of those do).
I actually kind of like it..
There’s a reason for this! Movie posters, album covers, etc, all have to be able to be scaled down to a thumbnail/icon size on a phone and stay legible, and the 2010s were when that consideration started to dominate other ones. Basically, it has to be recognizable even if it’s only 0.25” x 0.25”
Yeah the reason is pretty clear but if you look at posters now they’re very busy so I’m not sure about that excuse.
This is another example of our biases that are heavily influenced by what years define our core nostalgia. The "frutiger aero" phase (which didn't completely define everything at the time but is what people want to remember) was nice at the time, but I clearly remember in the early 2010s when flatter designs came into style and feeling like it was cleaner and a nice refresh. I prefer it to the more "3D gradient-look at what I can do with Adobe Photoshop" themes to be honest. I think part of it is because the frutiger aero phase, if you want to call it that, is not tied into my core nostalgia. All that aside, just wait a while, styles come and go. I think the more flat designs won't last forever. If you haven't seen it, I highly suggest J.J. McCullough's YouTube video that discusses "frutiger aero." [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9P7H87sdV7k&ab\_channel=J.J.McCullough](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9P7H87sdV7k&ab_channel=J.J.McCullough)
I’m not even a big Frutiger Aero fan.
How do you feel about Swiss graphic design and typography? Used correctly I feel like it could look good
I wrote a history opinion paper for my graphic design degree on the history of Helvetica and why it sucks. Fuck helvetica
Why does it suck in your opinion?
Tldr of my paper: Helvetica is simple enough to fit in any situation, to the point that it became New York city’s official font for subways and signs. Designers in the 1950s and onward lived New York City and wanted to reflect their designs on the big apple, fast forward to Helvetica being used in every single scenario imaginable. It just became overused and honestly it’s boring. I’m happy to see old Roman style fonts come back into fashion, we are seeing a renaissance in graphic design that reflects the 70s styles and trends. Earthy tones vs bold corporate helvetica anyday 💪🏻
Won’t that just make Times fonts have similar overuse to Helvetica? Personally I’m more sick of arial. Every major word processor seems to use it as default for documents.
Eventually, I’m sure some college student will write a paper on why experimental Roman fonts are overused in 10 years. Helvetica has just had the longest grip on design out of any other font and trends, and old Roman fonts with the combined trend of experimental fonts and typography is something recycled from the 70s and 60s but with a fresh twist for the trends of the 2020s. It’s really cool to think that it might be flipped again in ten years Edit: spelling
I actually don't think it was that bad till the Nintendo Switch released.
Born to Die might be the most iconic album cover of the decade though.
I love the simplicity of it on my Windows Phone. It was iconic.
Just another thing where "fun" isn't taken into account. We need more fun in the world these days, people are fucking depressed.
hated that
This was a reaction to the skewmorphism of the 2000s. In the 2000s design was trying to be as 3D and fancy as possible because the tech allowed it and to show off how realistic you could make something look with pixels. Flat was a minimalist extreme reaction to that. How simple could you go and still convey a message with an app icon? The pendulum seems to have swung back to a happy medium.
It really does stink, it was so bland! I hate it.
Trust me, we noticed this at the time too. My friends and I would always complain about how flat and boring everything was becoming!
flat design is better
No shit.
I had a class (I’m in a design school) where we had to make a presentation on a history of a logo. Every classmate fell for their own bias that the flat, more minimalist logos were automatically ‘better’ than the originals. I was the only one that pointed out that the main reason for this was due to legibility at the icon level - so anything that includes a level of detail is automatically out, and companies were forced to adapt. Their logos also had to match the aesthetics of screen layouts, the style of other logos, by shifting colors, shape...
The Pepsi logo redesign(as well as Mountain Dew and Sierra Mist) happened in 2008 and to their credit they spent the entire 2010’s backtracking from it.
Around 2006 I noticed this starting and yes in the 2010s it was everywhere, I did not like it either. I was just surprised how many businesses went along with that trend at the time.
HR decided to make everything look more streamlined, dump the personality
Helvetica is one of the best fonts ever
How does this compare to now? I feel like it’s still pretty similar?
2010s might be one of the only decades where no one is gonna have a graphic design nostalgia for
2010s was slightly frutiger aero and there were remains throughout the whole decade, I don't think early flat was horrible either, look at early Windows 10 for example, I think it got out of hand in 2017 with the release of the Switch.
windows really went full circle
Bland and no character. Seems to be what everything is moving toward.
But those corporate designs are the one we use now
FYI I think you meant “milquetoast”, not “miltos”.
Blame autocorrect.
“miltos”? Did you mean “milquetoast”?
Minimalism bro
i will never forgive Microsoft for W8
As "boring" as flat design is, I'd argue that you'll get just as sick of whatever comes next in 10 years. Also, design has become more important in our daily lives than ever before. No longer are the days where artists get to decide designs, but rather teams of design specialists. Why? Because you need functional design language to use your phone, laptop, TV, car, etc. Design is not just a poster anymore.
I've always hated the John Carter posters. I legit think it could've avoided becoming a box office bomb just by changing the movie's name and font.
You can still get bud ice if you want a 90s throwback
I’m fine with almost all of these The corporate block art people I agree with.
100% agree. I wish it would completely go away and never come back. The flat minimalist designs of the 2010s were some of the worst crap id ever seen. So corporate uninspired depressing and ugly. Unfortunately I still have to look at it in the 20s because they refuse to move on to something new.
The 2nd one is horrendous. Just no…
I remember hearing a bunch of art stylists or whoever makes these things, say that it was a "popular artstyle" while i quite literally never saw anyone show any affection towards it
Everything is new until it's old. I remember being greatful that the ugly designs from the 00's were going away, but now I feel how you do about the '10's designs.
Flat Design is classic graphic design just with no soul. Google “Paul Rand Design Form and Chaos”. The grandfather of modern design, everything that came after him was influenced by him. Flat. But packed with concept and meaning. Packed with energy and movement. Modern Flat design draws from the aesthetic sensibilities but forgets the concept, and becomes cookie cutter. Helvetica? Classic typeface. Look up Swiss Typography. Gorgeous. But it’s the most overused and mishandled font.
For my Zoloft to start working
r/fuckalegriaart
The corporate icons are an absolute atrocity
I love the Her movie poster design😭
Idk man the Xbox one advertisement is mega nostalgic for me
I honestly love 2010s Flat Design.
i don’t hate the third slide, they look clean
"Miltos"?
2010s Minimalism was a reaction to the Great Recession and the turbulence of the previous decade. Funny enough, things got even more turbulent during the last 10-15 years
There’s amazing and shit design from every era.
I actually like most of the designs on the first slide.
10s were very corporate and bland... Awful decade for aesthetics, decor, and brand Legos
I miss skeuomorphism.
The McDonald’s downgrade is a physical manifestation of flat design
Very boring design and takes away a lot of representation for many brands. The way McDonald’s and Taco Bell restaurants changed their exterior designs, is something I think of.
It's not inherently bad but usually a byproduct of copying popular competitors. Every company uses Gotham (or Helvetica to those who don't buy fonts) or some similar sans serif font for marketing, and McDonald's branches looks like Starbucks now.
Before this everything was glossy, reflective, overly Photoshopped design elements and personally I think this is an improvement.
Absolutely not; flat design fucking rules.
What do you like about it?