The Consumer Aesthetic Research Institute Unearthing the Forgotten Design History of the Recent Past
MISSION STATEMENT CARI is an online community dedicated to developing a taxonomy of recent design aesthetics in modern consumer culture, interpreting and critiquing them in the context of societal trends. We’re designing a centralized website to present our findings in an accessible and engaging manner. Below you’ll see some dynamic logos we’ve developed that give a cursory indication of their respective aesthetic categories.
70’s Ultramodern
Factory Pomo
Gen X / YAC
Y2K
Frutiger Aero
Global Village Coffeehouse
Neoliberal Vector Minimal
Bougie Design
HOW THIS GOT STARTED
VAPORWAVE AND A BIT OF AN OBSESSION
VAPORWAVE “Vaporwave is a microgenre of electronic music and an Internet meme that emerged in the early 2010s. The style is defined by its appropriation of 1980s and 1990s mood music styles such as smooth jazz, elevator music, R&B, and lounge music, typically sampling or manipulating tracks via chopped and screwed techniques and other effects. Its surrounding subculture is sometimes associated with an ambiguous or satirical take on consumer capitalism and popular culture, and tends to be characterized by a nostalgic or surrealist engagement with the popular entertainment, technology and advertising of previous decades.�
HOW THIS GOT STARTED
VAPORWAVE AND A BIT OF AN OBSESSION The aesthetic of Vaporwave is molded from a vague melange of 1980s and 1990s postmodern consumer and early digital imagery. The predominant motifs include sunsets, computer grids, Roman busts, tropical palms, cityscapes, pastel color schemes, and kanji, as seen in the first page of Google Image search results for ‘Vaporwave’. While I enjoyed the revival of previously forgotten consumer design motifs, the lack of critical analysis regarding how this new aesthetic was formulated led me to dive deeper into the conceptual origins of the movement, and the potential for further investigation.
HYPNOGOGIA & HAUNTOLOGY
LOST FUTURES, AND WHAT WERE WE MISSING BEYOND VAPORWAVE?
HAUNTOLOGY
“In the 2000s, the term was taken up by critics in reference to paradoxes found in postmodernity, particularly contemporary culture’s persistent recycling of retro aesthetics and incapacity to escape old social forms. Critics such as Mark Fisher and Simon Reynolds have used the term to describe art preoccupied with this temporal disjunction and defined by a “nostalgia for lost futures.”
HYPNAGOGIC POP
“Pop music refracted through the memory of a memory.” Cultural sources subconsciously remembered from a 1980s and early 1990s adolescence while freeing them from their historical contexts and “homing in on the futuristic signifiers” of the period.
THE BEGINNINGS OF CARI
A CHEESY VICTORIA BECKHAM MUSIC VIDEO
EXPANSION AND CONNECTIONS
DEVELOPING DIFFERENT PLATFORMS AND FORMING A CORE GROUP 2014
2016
2019
TUMBLR
FUTURE
DISCORD DISCORD CARI SITE
FACEBOOK REDDIT
CURATION & POPULARIZATION INSTAGRAM
CONNECTIONS & DISCUSSION INTIAL EXPLORATION
CONNECTIONS & DISCUSSION IDEATION & DISCUSSION
ARE.NA CURATION & INTERACTIVITY
CURATION & POPULARIZATION
INTENSIVE CURATION
EXPANSION AND CONNECTIONS
DEVELOPING DIFFERENT PLATFORMS AND FORMING A CORE GROUP Zovi McEntee Webmaster / Project Manager
Evan Collins Lead Curator / Architecture
Max Krieger Assistant Curator / Interactive Media
Froyo Tam Lead Director / Transdisciplinary Design
Cindy Hernandez Lead Curator / Design Historian
DIVING INTO THE AESTHETICS
Utopian Ultramodern 1967 - 1977
Plastics, curves, plush materials, rainbows, inflatables, shiny metals, fibreglass, prefab everything, supergraphics galore, pleasure furniture, helvetica, icons. This style was a huge influence on Y2K aesthetic in the 1990s.
Corp. Airbrush-High Tech 1978 - 1988
Laser grids, glowing neon in a high-tech application (sometimes referencing art deco), boxy beige computers, chromed-out airbrush, robots, simple pomo shapes and compositions.
Pacific Wave/Early Cyber 1984 - 1992
April Greiman, Susan Kare, Emigre, Pacific Wave, early rave flyer graphics, The Mind’s Eye, harsh pixelated thermographic imagery with warped fonts made newly possible through the proliferation of the first wave of desktop publishing and image manipulation software.
Factory Pomo 1987 - 1995
A design aesthetic that coalesced in the late 1980s, merging Memphis motifs and the CAD technology boom with revivals of Bauhaus/Deutscher Werkbund, Russian Constructivism, WPA graphics, and general industrial vernacular & iconography from the 1900s-1940s.
Neon Ooze Surf 1986 - 1993
Bold, bright, neon-hypercolor, and radical; with proto-GVC shapes and squiggles, chunky-edged swirls, and paint splats, this aesthetic was both contemporaneous, and preceded GVC by several years. Potential Keith Haring and Prog/Punk/Zolo influences.
Frasurbane 1987 - 1998
Serif fonts abound, accentuated with underlining, italicization, and various weights. Warm sepia or black-and-white images of ‘timeless’/classical representations of basic concepts (sometimes in a surrealist manner), often in softfocus and featuring heavily-staged product photography. Astrolabes, globes, ‘Vitruvian Man’ style diagrams, textured paper, Neo-traditional architecture, relatively ‘realistic’ drawn representations of various traditional objects, plants, and animals.
Utopian Scholastic 1989 - 1999
In some ways this aesthetic is the ‘kids version’ of Frasurbane, with an emphasis on scholastic endeavors, ‘edutainment’, and an ‘end-of-history’ approach to learning. It uses the same classical and ‘timeless’ typography and imagery, adding in the aesthetic of ‘stock photography collage’ depicting the most basic and identifiable depictions of forms and concepts for quick comprehension.
GLOBAL VILLAGE COFFEEHOUSE 1988 - 1999
The common threads are a revival of ‘watered-down’ artistic movements, natural/whimsical themes, the appropriation of a hodgepodge of global aesthetics, and a reaction against the sleek, clean, synthetic, and luxurious designs of the early-mid 1980s.
CYBER/GEN-X CORPORATE 1993 - 1999
Composed of a mix of several movements from the late 1980s-onward; from the typographical experimentation of Grunge, the incorporation of computer-generated and manipulated imagery of April Greiman-style graphics, and a watered-down corporate-friendly version of early 1990s rave flyer graphics (eg. Wired Magazine). These are paired with images that are sometimes heavily-saturated, blurred, overlaid on-top of each other with various photoshop effects applied. Recurring colors are ‘acid/ infrared vision’ versions of green, yellow, orange, and purple.
WONKA POMO 1989 - 2003
That ‘wacky kidz’ marketing aesthetic prominent from the mid 1980s to the early 2000s, an amalgam of exaggerated motifs pulled from Googie, Memphis Milano, 1940s-60s comics & cartoons, Willy Wonka-esque Victorian whimsical eccentricism (including ‘Mad Scientist tropes), cartoonified industrial vernacular, and that light gross-out kids’ humor.
Y2K
1993-2003
This brief moment from the mid 1990s to the early 2000s was characterised by a distinct aesthetic period, encapsulating fashion, hardware design, music and furnishings shiny with tech optimism – sometimes literally. Synthetic or metallic-looking materials, inflatable furniture, moon-boot footwear and alien-inspired hairstyles were just a few signposts of the spirit of the age. Even popular music videos of the time had a cluster of common traits: shiny clothes, frosty hues, setpieces that resembled airlocks or computer interfaces, and a briefly omnipresent “bubble pop� sound effect in music.
GEN-X Y/AC 1992 - 2002
METALHEART 1998-2004
ZEN-X
1996-2002
MCBLING 2000-2008
FRUTIGER AERO 2004-2011
GENERICANA
2007*-2014 *EVOLVED FROM EARLIER WORK IN THE 90S
NEOLIBERAL VECTOR MINIMALISM 2010-2015
BOUGIE DESIGN 2014-
Neu-Grunge 2012-
SHIFTING SENSIBILITIES
REDISCOVERING DATED AND QUESTIONABLE DESIGNS
CONSUMER DESIGN + EPHEMERA
FAILED CONCEPTS, PASSING FADS, DESIGN ODDITIES
CONSUMER DESIGN + EPHEMERA
FAILED CONCEPTS, PASSING FADS, DESIGN ODDITIES
MODO
MYA
DIGISCENTS
SKIM.COM
LEVIS ICD+
DEVELOPING CONNECTIONS
TIMELINES, ASSOCIATIONS, INFLUENCES
DEVELOPING CONNECTIONS
TIMELINES, ASSOCIATIONS, INFLUENCES
DISSECTING MOTIFS
HOW THE DIFFERENTIATIONS BETWEEN AESTHETICS ARE DETERMINED PACIFIC WAVE / EARLY CYBER
CYBER / GEN-X CORPORATE
‘WIRED’ - JOHN DEVERAUX (1988) THE INFRARED, ACID-TONED IMAGERY ON THIS ALBUM COVER IS DERIVED FROM MILITARY AND MEDICAL IMAGING TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPED FROM THE 1960S-ONWARD. IT BECAME INTEGRAL TO PORTRAYING A ‘FUTURISTIC’ APPEARANCE IN THE 1980S. THIS MOTIF IS COMBINED WITH A DISTORTION EFFECT, STRETCHING THE ORIGINAL IMAGES BEYOND THEIR ORIGINAL PROPORTIONS; A WAY TO BOTH VISUALLY CONVEY THE POWER OF NEW COMPUTER GRAPHICS TECHNOLOGIES, AND AN EXPRESSION OF THE EXCITED EXPERIMENTATION OF THE ERA.
STOCK IMAGERY - GEORGE DIEBOLD (1998) BY THE MID 1990S, THE HARSH PIXELATED & ACID-TONED IMAGERY HAS BEEN SOFTENED, BLURRED, AND OVERLAID. THIS AESTHETIC SHIFT WAS SPURRED BY THE DEVELOPMENT OF MORE SOPHISTICATED GRAPHICS PROGRAMS.
PARSING STYLISTIC INFLUENCES
LOGO - KARL SCHULPIG (1929)
TYPESMITHS LOGO (1989)
PARSING STYLISTIC INFLUENCES
ENGAGING COMMUNITIES IN DESIGN RESEARCH USING VARIOUS ONLINE PLATFORMS PLATFORM
# OF USERS/FOLLOWERS
BEST TO USE FOR
~21,000 (MULTIPLE GROUPS)
SOME CURATION, ACCESSIBLE RESEARCH, DISSECTING EXAMPLES, GROUP DISCUSSION
TUMBLR
~47,000 FOLLOWERS
HEAVILY-CURATED, FRONT FACING FEED OF RESULTS FROM RESEARCH, MUSEUM-LIKE
DISCORD
400 USERS
FREE DISCUSSION AND SHARING OF EXAMPLES, SMALL COMMUNITY
ARE.NA
180 USERS/FOLLOWERS
BLOCK-BASED, INTENSIVE RESEARCH WITHIN A SMALL COMMUNITY
INSTAGRAM TWITTER
5400 FOLLOWERS
HEAVILY-CURATED, FRONT FACING FEED, BUT ALMOST PURELY VISUAL, LITTLE DISCUSSION
28,000 FOLLOWERS
HEAVILY-CURATED, FRONT FACING FEED, SHORT DESIGN THREADS AND DISCUSSION
RESEARCH TECHNIQUES
THE ARCHIVAL ‘BLACK HOLE’, AND PUBLIC ACCESSIBILITY IN THE TRANSITION TO A MAINLY DIGITAL SOCIETY, THERE HAS BEEN A PERIOD OF TURBULENCE IN THE WAY WE RECORD OUR MEDIA.
1980 MEDIA IS PRIMARILY PHYSICAL, AND RELIABLE AS A HISTORICAL SOURCE, THOUGH STORED IN INSTITUTIONS OR LOCATIONS INACCESSIBLE TO MANY.
2000
MEDIA IS BEING TRANSITIONED ONTO THE INTERNET, OFTEN IN LOW RESOLUTION OR OBSOLETE FORMATS. ARCHIVAL PROCESSES AND ORGANIZATIONS ARE IN THEIR INFANCY.
2020 WITH DATA STORAGE METHODS, INTERNET STANDARDS, AND ARCHIVAL ORGANIZATIONS MATURING, DIGITAL RECORDS ARE MORE ACCESSIBLE AND (RELATIVELY) STABLE.
RESEARCH TECHNIQUES
A HOLISTIC APPROACH TO AESTHETIC RESEARCH - PUBLICLY AVAILABLE PHYSICAL RECORDS (MAGAZINES, BOOKS, CD’S) - ARCHIVE.ORG (WAYBACK MACHINE) - ONLINE SCANNED ARCHIVES (GOOGLE, POPULAR SCIENCE, VOGUE, ETC.) - CONTACTING THE ORIGINAL DESIGNERS - AMAZON, ABEBOOKS, EBAY - MACHINE LEARNING ALGORITHMS (REVERSE IMAGE SEARCH, FLICKR HIVEMIND)
MEDIA COVERAGE
INTERVIEWS, ARTICLES, CONSUMER RESEARCH
INFLUENCE ON DESIGN WORK COLLABORATION, INSPIRATION
WHERE WE’RE HEADED
POTENTIAL VALUE FOR DESIGN FIELDS ANALYZING REVIVAL MOVEMENTS, RECREATING LOST ATMOSPHERES
Questions?