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Why does every advert look the same? Corporate Memphis

wired.co.uk

151–160 of 195 posts

Re: Why does every advert look the same? Corporate Memphis

#151

I think its interesting that the flat look was pioneered by Microsoft going back to the days of the Zune2 and later lumia phones that had the first Metro interface. Then google and Apple and everyone else started following. People don't think of Microsoft (and especially Zune...) as a leader in design, but I think they have had a big impact on the industry, and deserves some recognition.

Metro was minimalist in a highway sign sense - less color, lots of emphasis on text and distinct shapes/outlines. I don't think flat designs we have now are all that similar.

Re: Why does every advert look the same? Corporate Memphis

#152

The irony is that there's nothing Memphis here. It's all corporate. Original 80s Memphis was migraine-inducingly Weird As Fuck. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memphis_Group A very heavily watered down version influenced MTV and an even more neutered version was splattered across numerous corporate brochures and reports in the 90s. But it was only Memphis in the most superficial sense, riffing off bright colours, geome…

Losing all identity is the final fate of anything that becomes corporate.

Re: Why does every advert look the same? Corporate Memphis

#153
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

reminds me of the now-infamous Pepsi "Breathtaking" design document https://www.goldennumber.net/wp-content/uploads/pepsi-arnell...

This document is insane. It feels like everyone involved in the production of it is so utterly disconnected from reality. That first page “Trajectory of innovation” with the pseudograph is an utterly hilarious distillation of the madness yet to come. The deeper I read into the document the worse it got. Golden ratio, Patterns being found where there were none to begin with (“perimeter oscillations”), Pepsi Energy fie…

The pepsi universe and magnetic fields parts are utter bs but there's some stuff in there that I feel matters, the shelf angles and golden ratio basis.

Rebranding and changing such an iconic logo would go all the way to the top, quite doubt such BS would fly with execs. I'm not a designer and I don't work at pepsi so who knows though.

This seems to have been created by a design company Arnell group for Pepsi. I wonder how much Pepsi paid them

Re: Why does every advert look the same? Corporate Memphis

#154

I hate Corporate Memphis as much as the next person but > “Isometric perspective is interesting, because nothing recedes to a vanishing point,” Rudnick says, “and therefore it also eliminates the variable of time.” He points out that this type of design is particularly popular with fintech and mortgage companies – playing down the passage of time is particularly advantageous to firms selling financial products that y…

I'm glad I wasn't the only one who detected the scent of what I call "arthouse wankery" here. This is popular for the same reason flat UIs are popular - they're easy to create, blandly inoffensive, and convey "modern" to the viewer.

It can be, and generally is, both (if by "arthouse wankery" you mean design theory).

Re: Why does every advert look the same? Corporate Memphis

#155

I hate Corporate Memphis as much as the next person but > “Isometric perspective is interesting, because nothing recedes to a vanishing point,” Rudnick says, “and therefore it also eliminates the variable of time.” He points out that this type of design is particularly popular with fintech and mortgage companies – playing down the passage of time is particularly advantageous to firms selling financial products that y…

No, this is a very well-troden component of visual design. Depth is used to portray passage time. You even see it in Byzantine religious iconography.

I'm an Orthodox Christian and was starting to write a really long post bordering on an essay about it. Yes, absolutely. Thank you for bringing it up.

I am not an iconographer, but I know that we hold onto a perspective with multiple vanishing points, creating intersecting diagonal perspective lines that closely resemble an isometric view precisely to create a timeless, comprehensive view of a liturgically significant event.

Re: Why does every advert look the same? Corporate Memphis

#156
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TFA wrongly credits Apple with the flat trend.

You don't get credit for being the first, you get credit for being significant. Zune and Windows Phone didn't get "people" into flatter aesthetics, Apple did.

I would argue that Android got there before iOS did.

Re: Why does every advert look the same? Corporate Memphis

#157
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This document is insane. It feels like everyone involved in the production of it is so utterly disconnected from reality. That first page “Trajectory of innovation” with the pseudograph is an utterly hilarious distillation of the madness yet to come. The deeper I read into the document the worse it got. Golden ratio, Patterns being found where there were none to begin with (“perimeter oscillations”), Pepsi Energy fie…

The pepsi universe and magnetic fields parts are utter bs but there's some stuff in there that I feel matters, the shelf angles and golden ratio basis. Rebranding and changing such an iconic logo would go all the way to the top, quite doubt such BS would fly with execs. I'm not a designer and I don't work at pepsi so who knows though. This seems to have been created by a design company Arnell group for Pepsi. I wonde…

Do we have any data to show a correlation between golden ratio basis in branding and higher sales?

Re: Why does every advert look the same? Corporate Memphis

#158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm glad I wasn't the only one who detected the scent of what I call "arthouse wankery" here. This is popular for the same reason flat UIs are popular - they're easy to create, blandly inoffensive, and convey "modern" to the viewer.

It can be, and generally is, both (if by "arthouse wankery" you mean design theory).

I wouldn't tar all of design theory with the brush of being Kabbalistic medieval-metaphysics-like random intuitive associations. Only some of it is like that.

Re: Why does every advert look the same? Corporate Memphis

#159
I think it's really just "pattern matching".

All design after a while is an obnoxious copy of what is popular.

Remember when what used to be popular were giant auto-play videos on the background of Bootstrap/Foundation websites?

Or before that, all the rounded corners and color gradients?

Fads will pass, corporations will soon change to something else.

Re: Why does every advert look the same? Corporate Memphis

#160
> the trend has started to consume the visual world at large. It’s also drawing intense criticisms from those within the design world... “It really boils my piss to be honest,” says Jack Hurley, a Leeds-based illustrator... “From a design point of view, it’s pretty lazy,” says Hurley.

Advertising has followed trends for many, many, many decades. There's literally no point in time where it doesn't look "all the same".

Corporate Memphis isn't "lazy", nor does it deserve "intense criticim". It's simply a style that lends itself well to the moment -- it's fresh, innocent, inclusive, simple, positive.

And like all trends, it'll be replaced with the next new trend in advertising soon enough.

This article seems to be reading waaay too much into it.

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