6 ms·

There is a sort of “post-corporate Memphis” design style and marketing language that I’ve been paying more attention to for some time now. It discomforts me.

rambambram 4y ago
I'm curious what you are up to. Care to tell some more?
- CharlesW 4y ago
  "Corporate Memphis"¹ refers to a style of art. I don't quite see how the woodcut-style images used on this site would be considered a descendant of that. ¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_Memphis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_Memphis
  - the-printer 4y ago
    My interpretation of “Post-corporate Memphis” basically involves everything about corporate Memphis minus the imagery. It’s more about how the style is conveyed without the use of that sort of art work.
    - rambambram 4y ago
      Ah, clear now. I think it's in the wording then, and some emoji's here and there.
- the-printer 4y ago
  I suspect that there is a sort of “design language” that more or less unabashedly targets the psycho-social state that many millennials (and perhaps even more youthful Gen Z and Boomer crowds; granted my understanding of how “generations” work isn’t a great) feel about the world. I shouldn’t have to to think about dopamine and capitalism when I’m looking for a social network; on the other hand I do, kind of, but being introduced to software or a service shouldn’t be presented as such an emotional experience as I think it is.
  - ElevenLathe 4y ago
    Do you also feel that other types of art (movies, music, architecture, video games, etc) "shouldn’t be presented as such an emotional experience"? If not, can you unpack why you think software should be treated differently? I'm not trying to be combative, just to understand.
    - the-printer 4y ago
      That’s a good question and it helps me think my way through how Bonfire (at least it’s website) makes me feel. I have long divorced myself from the consumption of film, games and music; so when it’s understood that without the presentation of an emotional experience the appeal of these three things would effectively be neutralized, I’m fine with that. My observations are less targeted at software as an art form. I think it’s more about how it’s being marketed and what the effectiveness of a software’s marketing suggests about its targeted audience. I would be more interested in Bonfire if they had a plain web page that just said for example, “Bonfire is a social networking service that can communicate with the ActivityPub protocol and does X, Y, Z and we are working on W. We named it Bonfire because bonfires are like quaint parties but with a raging flame in the middle of it.” To summarize, maybe I prefer certain software that advertises itself plainly by its merits than…I guess more “psycho-social” sort of attributes?
      - ElevenLathe 4y ago
        Interesting, I guess I can understand that approach for non-media-like software (not a great coining, but I mean things like operating system kernels, DBMS, batch accounting jobs, etc.). That said, I don't see the point of divorcing media-like software (by which I mean at least video games and social media, like Bonfire, and possibly other types of software) from its emotional content. Just as the entire point of a movie or a record is basically only its emotional content, the entire point of using social media software is the emotional content of the interactions with others, right? And, if the emotion is the point of the software, why is it out of bounds to advertise it with that slant? Movie trailers and novel jackets are entirely emotional in their language. Are those somehow bad or immoral? Or are you simply saying that emotional marketing of software isn't to your personal taste?
mkmk3 4y ago
Why does it discomfort you? You think it's a poor aesthetic, or you just recognize it's associated with a product, or something else?
- _chu1 4y ago
  It is dystopian, lacking of soul, and created to be interchangeable and and indistinguishable.
- the-printer 4y ago
  The aesthetic is poor IMO in the sense that it is hackneyed. I’m not too familiar with CSS frameworks to immediately point out bootstrap from tailwind from another, but we should all agree that there are groups of websites that use a common layout and visual style which leverages typefaces like Inter, or San Francisco, or other “Sweatpants Grotesks” (think of Helvetica in a pair of tapered sweatpants with grey new balances and an unbuttoned Cardigan waiting for his Tesla to charge). I do immediately recognize that a product is being offered in some fashion, but it’s more about how it’s being offered, as if it is something ostensibly, potentially life-changing. I think there a few HN members who know that there are plenty of products shown on HN that use emotionally jarring language that dances around the fact that the product is something that functionally is not as enigmatic as it’s advertised. There is plenty of something else mixed in there also, but if you can’t tell I’m working off of a hunch right now. I would need to sit down and do a concentrated analysis to get everything that I feel across to you, if I ever had the chance to do so.
uoaei 4y ago
I think you are experiencing the limits of HTML-derived typesetting. This seems (empirically) to be a happy medium between effort and glamour for a lot of designers. As a personal sidenote: I quite like the woodcut aesthetic generally and the design shift combined with the evocative imagery does more for me than the typical Meta- or Google-style branding.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
yamtaddle 4y ago
All the animals-doing-human-stuff art made me think of how popular alt-social-networks are with the furry community.

rambambram 4y ago

I'm curious what you are up to. Care to tell some more?

CharlesW 4y ago
"Corporate Memphis"¹ refers to a style of art. I don't quite see how the woodcut-style images used on this site would be considered a descendant of that. ¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_Memphis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_Memphis
- the-printer 4y ago
  My interpretation of “Post-corporate Memphis” basically involves everything about corporate Memphis minus the imagery. It’s more about how the style is conveyed without the use of that sort of art work.
  - rambambram 4y ago
    Ah, clear now. I think it's in the wording then, and some emoji's here and there.
the-printer 4y ago
I suspect that there is a sort of “design language” that more or less unabashedly targets the psycho-social state that many millennials (and perhaps even more youthful Gen Z and Boomer crowds; granted my understanding of how “generations” work isn’t a great) feel about the world. I shouldn’t have to to think about dopamine and capitalism when I’m looking for a social network; on the other hand I do, kind of, but being introduced to software or a service shouldn’t be presented as such an emotional experience as I think it is.
- ElevenLathe 4y ago
  Do you also feel that other types of art (movies, music, architecture, video games, etc) "shouldn’t be presented as such an emotional experience"? If not, can you unpack why you think software should be treated differently? I'm not trying to be combative, just to understand.
  - the-printer 4y ago
    That’s a good question and it helps me think my way through how Bonfire (at least it’s website) makes me feel. I have long divorced myself from the consumption of film, games and music; so when it’s understood that without the presentation of an emotional experience the appeal of these three things would effectively be neutralized, I’m fine with that. My observations are less targeted at software as an art form. I think it’s more about how it’s being marketed and what the effectiveness of a software’s marketing suggests about its targeted audience. I would be more interested in Bonfire if they had a plain web page that just said for example, “Bonfire is a social networking service that can communicate with the ActivityPub protocol and does X, Y, Z and we are working on W. We named it Bonfire because bonfires are like quaint parties but with a raging flame in the middle of it.” To summarize, maybe I prefer certain software that advertises itself plainly by its merits than…I guess more “psycho-social” sort of attributes?
    - ElevenLathe 4y ago
      Interesting, I guess I can understand that approach for non-media-like software (not a great coining, but I mean things like operating system kernels, DBMS, batch accounting jobs, etc.). That said, I don't see the point of divorcing media-like software (by which I mean at least video games and social media, like Bonfire, and possibly other types of software) from its emotional content. Just as the entire point of a movie or a record is basically only its emotional content, the entire point of using social media software is the emotional content of the interactions with others, right? And, if the emotion is the point of the software, why is it out of bounds to advertise it with that slant? Movie trailers and novel jackets are entirely emotional in their language. Are those somehow bad or immoral? Or are you simply saying that emotional marketing of software isn't to your personal taste?

mkmk3 4y ago

Why does it discomfort you? You think it's a poor aesthetic, or you just recognize it's associated with a product, or something else?

_chu1 4y ago
It is dystopian, lacking of soul, and created to be interchangeable and and indistinguishable.
the-printer 4y ago
The aesthetic is poor IMO in the sense that it is hackneyed. I’m not too familiar with CSS frameworks to immediately point out bootstrap from tailwind from another, but we should all agree that there are groups of websites that use a common layout and visual style which leverages typefaces like Inter, or San Francisco, or other “Sweatpants Grotesks” (think of Helvetica in a pair of tapered sweatpants with grey new balances and an unbuttoned Cardigan waiting for his Tesla to charge). I do immediately recognize that a product is being offered in some fashion, but it’s more about how it’s being offered, as if it is something ostensibly, potentially life-changing. I think there a few HN members who know that there are plenty of products shown on HN that use emotionally jarring language that dances around the fact that the product is something that functionally is not as enigmatic as it’s advertised. There is plenty of something else mixed in there also, but if you can’t tell I’m working off of a hunch right now. I would need to sit down and do a concentrated analysis to get everything that I feel across to you, if I ever had the chance to do so.

uoaei 4y ago

I think you are experiencing the limits of HTML-derived typesetting. This seems (empirically) to be a happy medium between effort and glamour for a lot of designers. As a personal sidenote: I quite like the woodcut aesthetic generally and the design shift combined with the evocative imagery does more for me than the typical Meta- or Google-style branding.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

yamtaddle 4y ago

All the animals-doing-human-stuff art made me think of how popular alt-social-networks are with the furry community.