An element not mentioned much in this thread is the significant challenges in using actual photography/people: expensive and time-consuming for custom work, super choppy legal waters (can't tell you how many times the subject of a photo pulled from Unsplash reached out asking how we got their pic), and paltry options for online buying ("free" sites like aforementioned Unsplash or expensive Getty and their craptastic library).
Why does every advert look the same? Corporate Memphis
81–90 of 195 posts
Re: Why does every advert look the same? Corporate Memphis
#82"a few years ago he might have been complaining about the glut of owls and foxes wearing monocles"
foxes with monocles? When was that a fashion? In what context? I am most curious.
Re: Why does every advert look the same? Corporate Memphis
#83If your company's reach is limitless, you need to appeal to everyone. If your company's offering is wide and disparate, you need a visual brand that offers cohesion. If you want to fit in and belong, you need to employ the same visual vocabulary as everyone else.
This trend is a symptom of the system business currently operates within.
Re: Why does every advert look the same? Corporate Memphis
#84"a few years ago he might have been complaining about the glut of owls and foxes wearing monocles" foxes with monocles? When was that a fashion? In what context? I am most curious.
'Folk naivete’ definitely seemed to be a cliche style employed to disarm the consumer thinking of themselves as 'individual'.
Re: Why does every advert look the same? Corporate Memphis
#85A lot of the reason for these design trends is that no one has the courage to think differently, so you get huge numbers of companies all looking virtually identical. It's a bit like 'nobody gets fired for buying IBM/McKinsey' etc...no one challenges product managers and marketing when yet another adobe illustrator generated Memphis style brand identity & UI is unveiled, complete with multi cultural inclusive visual…
I think it's more ultitarian than that. Companies have traditionally got what they need by using these conventions.
Hopefully that will change, because it sure is boring.
Re: Why does every advert look the same? Corporate Memphis
#86"a few years ago he might have been complaining about the glut of owls and foxes wearing monocles" foxes with monocles? When was that a fashion? In what context? I am most curious.
It was a cutesy art trend. This is the first artist I noticed doing it:
https://berkleyillustration.com/
It spread from there and became ubiquitous, at least in the Pacific Northwest.
Re: Why does every advert look the same? Corporate Memphis
#87"a few years ago he might have been complaining about the glut of owls and foxes wearing monocles" foxes with monocles? When was that a fashion? In what context? I am most curious.
It was a cutesy art trend. This is the first artist I noticed doing it: https://berkleyillustration.com/ It spread from there and became ubiquitous, at least in the Pacific Northwest.
Really? I think this might be known as spam.
Re: Why does every advert look the same? Corporate Memphis
#88> When you see the CEO of tech companies talk in private or to one another, the way that they frame their view of the world is fascinatingly opposed to the world depicted in a Corporate Memphis illustration
I see a CEO who won’t squirrel away over details that are irrelevant to making money, isn't married to a company as their baby, and has in particular let go of the design process and given it to designers or design firms because that CEO doesn't actually care. And that’s perfect.
I think of companies as short expeditions to the New World to get the gold, return, and everybody disbands and never talks to each other again. Imagine if Columbus instead told the Queen of Spain that he wanted frills on the sails of the Nina, and that the typography needed changing. Would be absurd. Same for companies.
This view of reality has been a highly effective for me.
Re: Why does every advert look the same? Corporate Memphis
#89Find it weird how similar this is to 90s era software box art, things like Adobe Acrobat 5.0 [1]
[1] https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/adobe/images/d/da/Adobe_Ac...
Re: Why does every advert look the same? Corporate Memphis
#90When paging the old magazines, I noticed that until about the mid-eighties the focus of an ad was on a product. An ad would even boast of the technical specs of a car or an audio system.
A prominent display of people in the process of consuming, or even just people, puts the marketing focus on lifestyle, brand identity and the alignment with some values.
I hate Corporate Memphis the same way I hate the other attempts to hack my reptilian brain and build an emotional connection with a brand.