The graph presented in the source doesn’t quite give it off, but my dad, an industrial designer and professor, always mentioned how innovations in plastic, mate

The graph presented in the source doesn’t quite give it off, but my dad, an industrial designer and professor, always mentioned how innovations in plastic, materials and manufacturing in the 1960-1980’s made everyone in his field just crazy for all the new colors and shapes that were suddenly possible. I’m sure a lot of us can recall something similar in more recent niches like UI design. After a period of excitement with all the new possibilities comes a more sober minimalistic function-first approach. I don’t think this is something to lament - color has become cheap and widely available so it has lost the meaning it had in the 60’s and earlier. If anything, we could be talking about a brief color-heavy time period that is just ending. One in which everything became unreasonably colorful thanks to unrestrained consumption and petro-chemical innovations.