Design has become mass-produced at an internet scale. Minimalism was introduced to better deal with - vector design tools - visual stability across multiple siz

Design has become mass-produced at an internet scale. Minimalism was introduced to better deal with - vector design tools - visual stability across multiple sizes, including small/tiny smartphone app icons. We are likely going to see a counter reaction. But this trend had lots of practical and technical reasons to exist - we needed very small icons and illustrations that would be readable even in small sizes, and we needed to produce more design using vector graphics tools. The idea of blaming some company or another is easy thinking. I work in the area and “flat” and “minimalism” are just ways to speed things up and make them more legible. This article just has an agenda. “Design has always loved minimalism” isn’t even a true thing to say. There are plenty of designers particularly in the 90s who were maximalists - look at print design during this era, look at stuff from Paula Scher and look at any design mag from the 90s to see Photoshop insanity, distorted and cut up fonts. Lots of other eras had similar ideas - look at the 1950s illustrated magazine ads, the 1980s use of photography, Toulouse Latrec’s poster design. But looking at magazine design in the 90s this was again a technical/practical design innovation - Photoshop and desktop publishing had become real alongside digital printing, so suddenly you had the opportunity to do anything and print anything. So the end result was an explosion in garish absurdity, some of it quite interesting.