Nihilistic Esoterica Widespread

I've recently become more aware of this commonly corporate art style that most people here are certain to have seen in some form. I don't often interact with corporations, and tend to ignore much of what I do see when this benefits me, as with this corporate imagery, so I was until recently unaware of the extent to which this has spread. This has been given several different names, with claims that a true name or definition doesn't necessarily exist, befitting of subversive things. Some of the names are Alegria, Corporate Memphis, and Humans of Flat Design. Some people long for the old styles, showing that the current state need not be, yet it persists: >>5613 I'm inclined to agree with the perspective that this is meant to disempower individual artists, and even eliminate them entirely, in favour of that which can easily be generated by machine from templates. It's so vague that it can impose many different ideas, varying by the personal experience of the particular observer, but it so often has particular connotations lying underneath. A related perspective is that if art isn't respected, there's no need to hire dedicated artists, and things such as this become ever more common. It's primarily used to draw attention to products, even when no artwork would be an improvement, but businesses believe artwork is needed, and the end result is programs and collections so that this imagery can be configured and produced en masse. Follows is a website for just this: https://www.humaaans.com If the imagery communicates no information, and isn't even nice to look at, there's no point in distracting anyone with it, and a void of but one colour would be an improvement. Let this be a thread for collecting information and discussing this manner of nihilistic esoterica, widespread.

This is what globalized art looks like. Humans don't have any unique traits, they're reduced to a skin color, a body type and maybe a haircut or a beard. I think this is how the people at Google, Facebook etc actually see the world.

I've recently come across a dedicated critic of this: https://nitter.net/HumansOfFlat What's bizarre is that he seems to have been harrassed by the people who produce this style, to the extent his account has been interfered with by the moderators of the website. I wouldn't think criticizing this ugly phenomenon would be so controversial.

Probably started as repeated artist's works for Google dooldes?

>>7086 I didn't know what you mean't until I clicked that URL. Oh my god I've seen it before. fuarrrking reminds me of wetransfer. Jesus christ

>>7086 Found it on halfchan, hope it is somehow on topic.

>>7086 Would you guys consider these to be part of this Humans of Flat art movement/style? https://www.16personalities.com/personality-types

>>7095 How about the style Kurzgesagt uses? https://youtu.be/n3Xv_g3g-mA

>>7095 I think humaaans are more soulless. Humaaans have the same face and are always happy, but you can clearly see some emotions on the faces from your picrel.

>>7095 16 personalities is a step forward away from Humans of Flat. Faces have depth, edges and emotions, bodies show some dynamic poses. >>7096 Kurzgesagt is closer to flat humans, though since they have faces and emotions, it's somehwat improved. But still in that flat style.

>>7096 Kurzgesagt I think has more of a reason to use simplified art because it is animation. The problem really isn't even this simplified art that the OP posted about. It's that the globalhomo corporate world is utilizing it for political purpose and to remove art from the world - it's a big push with loads of resources and standards being applied to it. Some random dude can create simple art to put out a message and it's not a problem. But when you see corporations pushing towards this kind of thing as the new hip, then it's a problem, they always have ulterior motives.

Here is a 3d variant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2gwLMEMiwY For some reason these ads really annoy me.

>>7086 It's called flat art. >if art isn't respected, there's no need to hire dedicated artists, and things such as this become ever more common. The whole disempowering individual artists thing is mostly individual artists whining that such soykafty looking art gets to be featured on the front page of Google and a lot of big tech companies. Frankly, they're right in whining, flat art is talentless and dehumanizingly featureless, intentional or not. >>7087 this

>>7099 > they always have ulterior motives Yes, they want your money.

>>7108 It's always amusing when people think stuff like this is the result of "the deep state" or the gay agenda or something. I think the fact that It's woven into the rules of the system is far more sinister. Nobody is consciously steering us towards this future, it's just a side effect of what we've decided to optimize for.

>>7109 You are very naive if you dont see theres tons of intentional social conditioning trying to make us more feminine and docile.

>>7110 Docile, yes. Other than that they don't care, as long as you go to work and buy things.

>>7111 They want you to be a glitterboy who drinks soy and doesnt breed so they can replace you with third worlders with lower iqs who arent intelligent enough to change anything and wont care that everything around them continues to degrade until finally everyone lives in a rat box in massive squalor apartments. People with no pride, history or an identity that wasnt created and endorsed by a corporation. People like you are so dumb, you think the richest men in the world care about making more money? Im talking about rich people youve never even heard of, not jeff bezos. People whose names are never written. They are pulling strings. Its not walmart ensuring the us government doesnt do anything about estrogenic chemicals in all our food or that fluoride is in the water. Or that every corporation encourages mutilating little boys turning them into trannies. They are motivated by absolute rule of the entire planet. Money is meaningless to them. Mega CEOs are peasants compared to them. We are maggots. Even Bill Gates is just a little puppet. Thats why hes always on tv giving interviews, the real masters would never put themselves out there in public.

>>7086 It's not pretty, but you better start liking it, because it is going to be the last generation of man-made mainstream art. It will keep getting worse and become a logographic system for corporate new-speak. After that it will become even more heavily automatized and you will start getting automatically generated, customized propaganda based on your habits (ready for flat porn logograms?). Publicity art as a craftsmanship is going to die. Good riddance I say, those fuarrrkers deserve that and worse. If you don't enjoy consuming product, you might as well just off yourself right now, it will save you time.

Unironically quality thread. Lurk with interest. I've thinked about this topic yet and basically came to the same conclusions. Typically bigcorpo world org happy inclusive consumerism soykaf here.

>>7112 >ith a conthpiwathy! Come on man, if you're going to make crazy accusations at least bring some evidence. All of those things you noted can be explained by market forces and standard human stupidity.

>>7112 It must be great beliving that everything is happening for a reason, and that even if we can't see it, someone is in control, executing a specific, thought-out plan.

>>7112 lol... wow.

>>7110 >>7112 Whether such attempts are happening or not is almost irrelevant. Even if they actually are the cause for some of these trends, they can't control the population based on the rich hidden elites VS dumb sheep masses model that lower IQ third worlders like you fantasize about when you forget to take your schizo meds for a week. You should probably go back to watching SEL while people who don't think in your stead.

>>7117 LMAO, that pic is hilarious. Here's a better version

>>7126 lol

>>7107 >>7113 Has any of this actually shown up in galleries though? Some of the thread makes it sound like this genre will dominate art discourse. It'll probably get analyzed years down the line but it sounds like it's stuck in the realm of corporate art along with ad music and logos. Obviously it's soulless but the main point seems to be complete inoffensiveness. Almost literally no edges.

>>7128 Yup, I screencaped it from a propaganda vid and added the benetton logo cause I thought it fitted pretty well.

>>7130 I think corporate music is a good comparison. Nobody works in these bland corpo styles outside of their job roles. What makes me think (and worry) more is the future role of AI/automation tools in art. Depending on different work methods, a lot of the variation and decision-making is going to be automated away - in 3D modeling, illustration, musical composition, etc. (e.g. Start a 3D model, let the AI variate on it. Draw a landscape, let the program add architecture and color to it. Start a music piece, let the AI write the bassline, etc.) This is going to have many different effects. The top creative professionals are going use AI to excel even further, and even train their own models and networks in unprecedented ways to create novel work. Others are going to use AI tools to fill demands for large volumes of work and variation. And even when the originality of the concepts suffers from it, and it takes away from the passion and time needed to focus and create something original, and most importantly, actually purposeful. The least talented people are going to cluster around certain tools and flood everything with aimless/bland/tasteless work, in many domains of art. Whether the market filters most of these out, and who will actually have to compete with them and in which areas, that will remain to be seen. But as always in a knowledge economy, the top-skilled workers will excel wherever needed. So the blandness isn't going to be enforced top-down from our corporate overlords. Many of ourselves will actually create it, as people automate away their creative muscles and everything becomes flooded with automated, purposeless, repetitive, and tasteless work. All thanks to the same tools which will, paradoxically, also allow for the most new and groundbreaking art to be created at the same time. When everyone is an artist, uh... fewer people are, I guess.

>>7132 Hilariously, if it were real then it wouldn't even be their most controversial design. Although the one with the genitals may be fake.

>>7136 Horrifying. I love it.

>>7130 >>7133 I think we'll always be able to tell the two apart and appreciate true art when we see it. Look at how people react to corpo music and how turned off they are to it, and how people are reacting to alegria style, they know it's bland and generic and soulless and their minds reject it. There's a humanity to true art that I don't think can ever be automated, no matter how hard they try. That's what people will support, and creators will be forced to churn out actual quality. Then again, this is also hinging on the premise that AI will never be able to artificially infuse soul into soykaf, so I guess we have to wait and see.

>Some people long for the old styles, showing that the current state need not be I wonder if this flat artstyle will be looked at with nostalgia in 20 years by people interested in our era, similar to people today who are into 80s, 90s or early 2000s aesthetics.

>>7147 >I wonder if this flat artstyle will be looked at with nostalgia in 20 years by people interested in our era Most likely, but I'd say it takes a bit more than 20 years and it's probably going to be the kind of nostalgia with which some people regard the soviet times - not necessarily of positive longing for it, but the comforting familiarity of it (i.e. "damn, I used to hate this soykaf, but that's what made it memorable").

>>7086 Just thought I'd share a related 2019 article in order to keep the discussion going. For me it highlighted the problem inherent in the artstyle; whereas in the modernist art movements the artstyle was primarily formed in the arists' own terms (there are exceptions, but it reflected an artists' own unique take on the world and his own powers of expression), the algeria style reflects more what the market dictates, which reduces its value significantly as a phenomenological investigation to the human experience. Time for the article: Don’t Worry, These Gangly-armed Cartoons Are Here to Protect You From Big Tech You’ve seen this [pic related] flat illustration style everywhere from Facebook to Google. Here’s why Alegria is taking over tech world interfaces. In 2017, Facebook began rolling out a series of new illustrations to accompany content throughout the site. The illustration system, developed by an L.A.- and Brooklyn-based design firm called Buck, is both distinctive and consistent: A typical illustration features smiling figures drawn in a flat, minimal style, with skin in a bright, pastel blue, pink, or green, and gangly, disproportionately large arms and legs. The incessantly joyful cartoon people are never static. They’re always in motion, dancing, painting, running, or hugging one another with the expanse of their oversized limbs arching away from their bodies like giant wet noodles. Often, they carry similarly large objects: a paintbrush, a trombone, a calendar. Facebook has become closely associated with this style, which its creators at Buck aptly dubbed “Alegria,” which is Spanish for “joy.” But the company is a fairly recent adopter of what has become an overwhelming trend in editorial and web illustration over the past few years, with particular prevalence currently in the realm of tech. Airbnb, Hinge, Lyft, Airtable, Google, and YouTube are all in on the craze, along with seemingly every other new app or startup in existence. For these companies, adopting a visual language that signals positivity and connectedness is a tool to paper over the social and political harm and divisiveness their products create—and illustration has increasingly become a centerpiece of the strategy. How does a particular aesthetic achieve ubiquity in such a short period of time? There are practical answers, to be sure. The Alegria style lends itself to standardization and replication: Its flat figures are based on simple shapes and geometric patterns. On a project as large as Facebook’s illustration system, this means that many artists can contribute while keeping the look and feel of the characters consistent. Outside of the cash-flush tech sphere, in the world of editorial illustration, shrinking budgets and condensed production timelines may have something to do with the turn towards flat minimalism—more ornate artwork means more hours putting pen to paper, and fewer dollars per hour to show for it. These technical considerations, however, fall short in explaining Alegria’s omnipresence. Xoana Herrera, an illustrator who worked on the Buck team for Facebook’s redesign, says that it was paramount for the illustrations to depict human motion and energy, and therefore joy and connection. “I started to draw characters that were defined by their actions,” says Herrera, “dancing with their open arms, bending their bodies to play the trumpet, for example, human reactions that connect us. I wanted to portray that sense of joy we feel when we’re sharing things together in community, like celebrating a goal in a bar or singing a song with a crowd at a concert.” As the internet becomes more image- and animation-oriented, tech and media spheres have grown increasingly reliant on illustration to fill white space and add character to their apps and web pages. The flat Alegria style has emerged as a simple, scalable, and image-softening tool for tech companies. Social media like the “Small cartoon people building big interfaces” and “Corporate Memphis” boards on are.na as well as the abrasive “Humans of Flat Design” Twitter account have taken to documenting the trend, which has spread across different brands, apps, and websites to the point of becoming unsettling. According to Herrera, the Alegria style was intentionally modified for the sake of replicability during the development process and has since made its way through a number of illustration studios. “The style originally started as something more intuitive and complex,” says Hererra. “But after different reviews, it started to shift towards something simpler to copy and implement. There is a usage and illustration manual that has been passed through a lot of different studios around the world, so I think it’s now imprinted in many retinas at the moment.” In a case study on her website, Herrera writes that the characters are “designed for expression, rather than individual identity. They are ethnically non-specific to represent diversity.” Orange or purple skin fits in naturally to the cartoon-y style of Alegria; if characters are depicted without reference to race, anyone can see themselves reflected in the characters. This logic also influences the characters’ idiosyncratic body shapes as much as technical considerations do. How do you avoid privileging certain people’s body types over others’ in your illustrations? Give your characters a body type that no one has. While non-skin colored skin and wacky proportions characterize the vast majority of illustrations in this style, some companies have diverged from the one-sized-fits-all representation of raceless, shapeless characters. In a case study published on Airbnb’s website, illustrator Jennifer Hom noted that “a solution [to the challenge of diverse representation] that many land on is a kind of homage—a metaphor for diversity through rainbow-colored figures… Put simply, they’re not real.” Hom’s illustrations use many of the stylistic tendencies of Alegria, but opt for a wide variety of realistic skin colors, ethnic features, and body types. Like many Alegria-style illustrations systems, it’s hard to scroll through the cheerful, cooperative figures in Airbnb’s case study and not be filled with a sort of utopian optimism. Human connection! Mutually beneficial transactions! That Airbnb is currently involved in a nationwide lobbying battle to get out of paying the taxes it owes to local governments across the country is an inconvenient aside, and one that has no place in any Alegria-adjacent paradise. How do the cheerful, Mastisse-like illustrations that fill up the corners of any given Facebook page temper the expectations of people using these platforms? Their palpable joy is friendly, approachable, inviting, even—all of which translates to trustworthiness. Facebook has of course, proven to be one of the most untrustworthy public-facing companies in the world, repeatedly spying on users and leaking private data with impunity. Between the Cambridge Analytica scandal and other outrageous mishandlings like Facebook’s role in inciting genocidal violence in Burma, the company’s public persona is now more than ever in need of a face-lift. As a quasi-monopoly, Facebook seems to never pay for its sins in terms of usership decline—we’re all still there, staring at pages that have become cuter and bubblier as the company they represent grows more and more powerful. The political predicament the Alegria style faces has less to do with the aesthetic itself than it does with the harmful corporations for which it has become the happy, kinetic face. The style appears to serve as the illustrative arm of an intentional deployment of cheerful minimalism to mask the insidiousness of multinational tech corporations with friendliness and approachability. Lindsay Ballant, art director of The Baffler, connects the style’s ascension with trends in global politics at the time. “If you look at it globally, there were a bunch of austerity measures happening in 2014 in particular, and a lot of these repercussions of neoliberalism sort of hit globally then,” says Ballant. “It just seemed like there was a real concerted effort to mask that sort of stuff.” In May, Ballant sharply divided illustrators on Twitter when she expressed her bemusement at the disproportionate number of illustrators sending her their Alegria-style portfolios. That the style is being frequently pitched to a leftist magazine, of all places, speaks to its overwhelming saturation, Ballant argues. “Some areas of the design world are going through reckonings of what class and identity mean,” she says. “Especially for an industry that goes out of its way to tell itself that its doing world-changing, feel good things. But I think that maybe the illustration industry hasn’t quite had that reckoning.” In time, all trends reverse themselves, and there’s no evidence to suggest that the Alegria style will prove an exception. What the next illustration trend to take up roost in the tech sphere will communicate depends on how our relationship with technology evolves in the coming years and decades. For what it’s worth, Herrera thinks the Alegria style’s legacy will live on in the world of illustration. “I believe that, [like] many trends, this will pass,” she says. “And in the future, [Alegria] might be taken as reference for some really new and exciting style.” (From: https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/dont-worry-these-gangley-armed-cartoons-are-here-to-protect-you-from-big-tech/ )

>>7147 >>7151 You would have to look at an old art trend that completely died out and not even nostalgia was able to redeem it. In theory this is easy since not everything from the past is equally valued, Poe's law has been in effect for a very long time. But I'm drawing a blank here. Maybe even this soullessness will be missed. The 90's was a pretty commercialized decade and now you have people worshipping toys.

>>7143 You're kind of missing my point (>>7133), bland official corpo art is irrelevant in the bigger picture. Artists have long benefitted from advancements in technology. For example, right now I can compose and render very imposing orchestral/electronic music using just my computer, some easily pirated software, and personal knowledge from a few years of practice. Yet only a few decades ago, all I probably would've had is a few pages of sheet music, (maybe) some soykafty synthesizer, and my thumb up my ass. Depending on how I use these tools, they're either a gateway to exploring my creativity, a mere crutch, or often both at the same time. But what happens when these tools get even better? When I (or someone else) can click a button in a browser right now, and generate this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lJCA6aFeC0 I'm not a music expert, but that is a neat little background tune. If I had to make something in that exact scope, then I would've been pretty content if I'd composed and orchestrated that one, using just my own brain. But then there's the question of whether that song is Art (with a capital A)? I don't know, probably not. The AI didn't compose that to express something, make a statement, to vainly show off its' abilities, because it likes some genre, or even just out of pure boredom. The ideas and structures of that song weren't governed by personal taste, practice, talent, or intent. It was fed a conveyer belt of existing music, and then spat out some more as new information. However, the AI's scope is always limited - it still can't combine musical ideas, genres, melodies, samples, etc. the way a human can, in order to create something truly novel, thought-provoking, and awe-inspiring. Yet what happens if I export that composition, and use a few chords from it to compose something new? Something with which I'm trying to express an idea or emotion with - is it Art now? Is it less Art because part of the ideas came from a computer? How much of them can I use before I cross the threshold between using a helpful tool, and using a soulless automated noob crutch? What if I can't do music at all, but I've spent weeks passionately drawing and animating a scene, painstakingly laboring over each detail, in order to express everything the way I envision it - yet I don't have background music, so out of necessity I use the AI-generated song as it is? Does the AI-generated music diminish the humanity of the entire production? And what if I just shift some notes around, or edit nothing, and just release it under my name and pretend I wrote it? Incredibly hacky and talentless, right? But what if something like that becomes the new standard for many people? How would art change as a result of that, in which areas? Would the dynamic between most creators and most consumers change? If the bulk of the world's creative output becomes automated due to laziness or habit, what would the future look like? Obviously, the real professionals don't need to rely on tools like these, and they won't need to rely on them in the future either. They know how to explore and express their inner creative universe better than any other person could, let alone a computer. But everyone has creative blocks, and I know a good few are already using AI tools to mine for ideas whenever they run dry. But because they're real™ professionals, obviously they're not copypasting everything word-for-word, but transforming them in their own unique and unexpected ways. But between these two extremes: >coming up with everything by yourself (although "yourself" is relative, as we're all influenced by the culture and environment from which we've gained/developed our tastes and knowledge) >copypasting soykaf the AI made there's a huge, huge area of unknowns, and it's only growing thanks to AI tools which are being built right now. Pic related is by the legendary Scott Eaton. The grey sketches are his, the fleshy parts were generated by an AI which he trained on his photos of human models.

>>7158 I see what you mean now. It's certainly a subject that has a very fuzzy future. That track you included made me question just how much I could actually tell that it was artificial. The rules of art are changing in unpredictable ways as our culture grows more inclusive and homogeneous. Commercialization of the Internet has begun to create a global society, and the implications and consequences of that on art and culture is yet to be fully realized. But based on what I read of off >>7152 art like this will steadily become the norm to further cement diversity and identity expressed in commercialism. Self-expression is being sacrificed on the commercial front to appeal to the global community. A frightening future is definitely ahead of us.

>>7151 Reminds me of the sitcom Derry Girls when you put it that way.

>>7158 >If the bulk of the world's creative output becomes automated due to laziness or habit, what would the future look like? Out of your whole post, this stood out to me. I must consider that those annoying youtube adds years ago used to glamorize the use of writing software designed by masters of the English language or some kind of boast. But all it did was auto suggest how to compose written works to those who were bad at writing themselves. In essence, the written composition was largely composed by a computer simply plugging peoples ideas into a programmed template that would recommend a "better" way of expressing your ideas. This also leads me down a rabbit whole of the art creation dilemma. Do people use art to mimic observation, or is observation expressed in terms of perceived art (forgive me, I am probably paraphrasing it poorly). I am always captivated by the art of linguistics, and how words can have meaning. But the creative expression of words is already in decline as computers create everything from entire texts to word salad at the click of a button. Music and visual art acts the same way. I remember a computer was trained to create tshirt designs based on the most commonly sold shirts on a website, and it came up with a pleasant geometric shape iirc that was not too different from other human-generated designs. Music is generally full of patterns (otherwise it would not have style or rhythm), and because there are patterns, they can be exploited in a mathematical fashion. I once had someone pose the question: If an advertisement introduces me to exactly the thing I wanted, is it helpful, or hurtful? It might be hurtful from a consumer financial standpoint (having to spend money on something you may not need) but if it creates pleasure through the acquisition of something you enjoy, hot bad is it. These thoughts are incomplete and I apologize for the blog post.

>>7112 >They want you to be a glitterboy who drinks soy and doesnt breed so they can replace you with automation & AI Its the 4th industrial revolution & they don't need human slaves because they don't need niggers to pick cotton anymore >>7086 This art style is very similar to Bauhaus design.In Bauhaus design everything is reduced to its most basic elements like simple geometric forms,textures,materials & primary colors and then they are all tossed in together to produce something that has no aesthetic quality only form & function, the individual parts are not arranged in any harmonic composition nor do they imitate any natural form.They are also devoid of any ornamentation & they reject all traditional forms of design and aesthetics,Bauhaus design was introduced in Wiemar Germany during 1919-1929 .It was created to harness the new potentials of mass production as Germany was being industrialized during that time Both of these art styles that embraced mass production rather than solely individual artistic expression,Bauhaus design design was used to produce architecture & physical products made through modern means of production in factories & Humans of Flat Design is used for producing digital advertisement designs that can be mass produced through AI software no individual artistic expression needed. "Humans of Flat Design" is Bauhaus for the digital age for more info on Bauhaus this a nice documentary for introduction to Bauhaus The Face of the Twentieth Century Bauhaus (1994) Frank Whitford https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuaGN45mLu0

>>7175 >Do people use art to mimic observation, or is observation expressed in terms of perceived art (forgive me, I am probably paraphrasing it poorly). If I'm understanding you correctly, it's about whether "people create art to mimic what they've observed" or they "perceive the world based on art they've already observed". I don't know, it's a big question. Maybe both, but it depends on different situations? This goes way back as well, I saw a documentary once about cave paintings, and whether paleolithic artists based their drawings on direct observations of animals, or whether the drawings were recreations of their dreams and hallucinations. Based on the common psychedelic aspects of many of the paintings, and their locations in the darkest and most inaccessible parts of the caves (human brains tend to hallucinate the same things in complete darkness, or in altered states of consciousness), then it might be the latter. Here's one page which goes into it: https://www.bradshawfoundation.com/ancient_symbols_in_rock_art/visual_hallucinations_a_cerebral_source.php There's also the modern concepts of simulacra/simulation/databases, which address the question more directly. I still don't quite get it, but there's different books and videos about it, like this book which goes into the visual aspects of otaku subcultures (among other things) in a very unique way >>>/lit/5826 >I once had someone pose the question: If an advertisement introduces me to exactly the thing I wanted, is it helpful, or hurtful? It might be hurtful from a consumer financial standpoint (having to spend money on something you may not need) but if it creates pleasure through the acquisition of something you enjoy, hot bad is it. You'll likely find this documentary about psychology, propaganda and consumer culture interesting. It's more relevant than ever, and I think everyone should watch it: >>4969

>>7176 I think the take in this post is somewhat off, including from some of the points in the movie you linked. >to produce something that has no aesthetic quality >not arranged in any harmonic composition That's not the intention they were produced with, nor the result. The harmonious balance between geometric shapes and colors was meticulously developed, as it's a very challenging problem which concerns many areas of design. The designs have undeniable aesthetic qualities to them, even though they're qualities which are devoid of ornamentation. This is despite the fact that the other main purpose was, indeed, functionality and ease of production - the aesthetic purpose didn't disappear as a result. Now, whether those qualities are more pleasing or more suited to a particular purpose, that's up to the designer and the viewer/user to decide. They also vary by their application, domain, type, actual design quality, etc. A minimalist font needs to solve different problems compared to a minimalist chair, and someone might like one but hate the other. To say they lack aesthetics is just plain wrong, as that aesthetic legacy and the solutions to different design problems has been immensely influential. Just because something looks simple doesn't mean it's easy to design. If it was all about quickly arranging some shapes to fill a purpose, anyone would easily be able master minimalist typography, graphic and industrial design, etc. >"Humans of Flat Design" is Bauhaus for the digital age As all of today's minimalist design, it's descended from 20th century Bauhaus and Swiss design. In my opinion, the current flat design trend was a reaction against the more ornate/skeuomorphic design from around the turn of the millennium - although they both were/are meant to look futuristic. But besides the aesthetic reaction, it was indeed also fueled by practicality and the need to design large amounts of consistent-looking digital materials. But doesn't that contradict my earlier point - if minimalist design can be so hard to pull off, why would it become ubiquitous for its' ease of application? Well no, because you might have noticed that most of today's minimalist designs you see online (like with any popular trend) are complete shıt. With being seemingly so easy to pull off, practicality is often ignored, as well as many other practices in usability or aesthetics. The shıt spectrum is spread wide here, from the biggest tech giants sacrificing usability on the altar of trendiness, to the smallest designers and developers slapping shapes, text and colors around, both to the detriment of their end-users and the designers which are forced to imitate them. But today's flat trend will end at some point (though its' legacy will continue to influence future trends, as all past ones do), and the future face of mass-production and broad appeal will look different. Perhaps it will be in the exact opposite direction, or maybe something unexpected, nobody knows.

>>7179 >To say they lack aesthetics is just plain wrong Yes I agree they do have some distinct aesthetic quality for that art to be categorized as Bauhaus, mainly having geometric shapes & primary colors as the main components for their design.Bauhaus designs that are devoid of harmony , balance & rhythm do so intentionally to favor functionality and ease of production therefore you can say that those designs lack visual aesthetics or the intentional lack of visual aesthetics is its defining feature. >aesthetic legacy and the solutions to different design problems has been immensely influential Bauhaus designs & similar modern art styles like Abstract Expressionism. in the 50's-60's reject traditional aesthetic legacy and the solutions to different design problems that has been passed down through the traditional schools of visual art therefore traditional theory of design is completely rejected. Traditional ornamentation & pattern design is created through harmony,balance & rhythm between geometric shapes & colors most of it is based on logic & mathematics. In Bauhaus & art styles like Abstract Expressionism they "claim" to embrace complete irrationality an appeal to surreal, sensual & instinctual with some type of Twilight Language of visual design that can communicate thoughts & emotions directly into the subconscious. I don't think most designers today know how to communicate like that & most minimalist flat design like the "Humans of Flat Design" are a product of Bauhaus utilitarianism, designers being lazy or corporate cost cutting. My main gripe with this flat utilitarian minimalist design is when harmony,balance & rhythm is completely rejected for functionality or cost cutting the emotion,idea or opinion being conveyed gets lost as you can not communicate with random noise even the magical Twilight Language of Bauhaus needs some logical structure to communicate. >But today's flat trend will end at some point Maybe someday this trend will end but the worst is yet to come because now they are working on illustration systems that will automate laziness & cost cutting

Applying the term wide-appealing to this kind of art feels wrong even though it's not even incorrect. It's wide-appealing in the sense that no one will take offense to it when exposed on a passive level. It's "cute" on a very basic, surface level. Yet it's not wide-appealing in the same sense that people will love it. I can't imagine anyone below 30 wanting to save any Google art over more "traditional" art from games/comics/fanart/memes/etc. I can't see anyone above 30 wanting those things framed on their walls over paintings and posters. And art snobs obviously would hate it. I don't think this will be influential because of the style itself, but it might be a baby step towards art automatization. Which itself might not yield anything beyond just doing the work of coporate overlords, but the tools they develop might see better use outside of that environment.

>>7093 Lmao

>>7196 Inoffensive is definitely more accurate than wide-appealing, I used to work for a company that produced this kind of soykaf for their in house product and the entire appeal for them was easy scalability, minimal effort per piece with low turn around time on new content and no worries about localising things to different markets, you have one cloud platform, tenanted out to customers, and "customisation" is slapping a different logo onto the jackets of your amorphous blob people in two minutes, it kept the creative team small but output high and made soykafting out video and animation that was impressive to the braindead c suite types that approve the purchasing of this stuff incredibly easy If they had went for something more complicated, or more stylised or in any way less universal they would lower their appeal and have to sink more resources into attaining the same level of satisfaction from the clients, flat human style is the art style of mass produced, identikit product, blatantly copied and recopied over and over again

This is what Wikipedia is using to celebrate its twentieth anniversary. I couldn't help but notice it was implemented with a CSS rule, so I couldn't even right click it to get the URL. I can't find the greater assortment of artwork like this Wikipedia is using, but what's omitted in it is telling, because not a single human represented looks like Wikipedia's main contributors. This clearly isn't coincidence.

https://youtu.be/lFb7BOI_QFc Someone made a video about the topic.

>>7447 It's based on Keith Haring, pleb.

corporate art style is the blandest art style there is. Its boring and just horrible altogether.

>>7447 ISLAM fuarrrk YEA

>>7447 that looks good tho

>>7088 Interesting, the dude's gotten suspended.

>>7175 >I once had someone pose the question: If an advertisement introduces me to exactly the thing I wanted, is it helpful, or hurtful? It might be hurtful from a consumer financial standpoint (having to spend money on something you may not need) but if it creates pleasure through the acquisition of something you enjoy, hot bad is it. Depends if the advertisement is simply telling you about something that you already wanted, or if it is telling you you should want something. Most advertisement is doing the latter.

>>7088 Consider why this exists. People who cant draw can produce this. Telling people this is garbage is essentially firing the fake artists. Thats why they put as much resistance as possible up - their income is on the line. >>7086 False colors has one purpose - to avoid being offensive. Blue human cant be le wrong skin color racist so its a save choice for corporate.

>>7112 I agree with most of that, except you don't seem to understand it was the "high IQ" north hemisphere good people that led us all to this. The traditional white man sold out decades ago, his choice was consumerism instead of everything else. The average white person would give his soul to Satan in exchange of some minutes of dull pleasure and unawareness. Not cringeworthy enough, I see a lot of these fat asses praising their ancestors while consooming modern crap and eating soykaf all day long. Also, as a person that lives in a third world country, believe me, first world is starting to look a lot like us, fren. You all sold out, that's why some of you are starting to freak out. You all wanted easy, unrealistic pleasure instead of some solid and fair societal construcion, right? This is the result. We, that live in soykafhole countries, have sold out to you, to your soykafty imperialism. You all just did the same to the imperialists this anon is talking about...the silent almighty rich creeps that jerks off to behavioral analysis books. Complain, contempt or fight. I really hope that the combative spirit that existed between the 80s and 90s come back in a new and even more brutal fashion. Just wait till the first REAL global crisis appear in the next 20 years. Either would people accept things or not.

I've been seeing profile pictures like the related image around more and more, and just recently discovered that they are all generated using a service called "picrew", and it kind of reminds me of the flat art style that this thread is discussing, in some sense it is even worse because the images are just a collage or prepared drawings with the same expressions and faces over and over again, whereas most corporate, flat art seems to be drawn manually.

>>8296 > in some sense it is even worse because the images are just a collage > most corporate, flat art seems to be drawn manually I see where you're coming from but I've yet to find someone who thinks picrews are art. IME they're just profile pictures that edgy liberals use. Also... as much as I hate to defend them, the customization aspect of picrew at least encourages some form of "individuality" in the final result. Corporate art is hell bent on anonymizing who it depicts into the simplest way to depict "cop" or "girl" or "programmer"

>>7112 Whatever medication you stopped taking for your schizophrenia, please resume taking it. Our society is built entirely to funnel all resources into the owning class. They don't care what sorts of social or political agendas they're playing into as long as it makes them money. It's all just a soulless, evil machine designed to squeeze as much money as possible out of humanity and the planet. If the owning class cared about anything else, they'd already have made it happen. They wouldn't need to condition us for it. They just play into whatever is currently cool and in vogue.

i mean it certainly doesn't look good but i don't feel offended by it or anything. fun to parody though

>>8295 Western civilization was rotten from the start. Feudalism created a strong aristocracy, which constantly protested for more freedoms from their king, demanded greater control over their estates/property, and emphasized the importance of mutual consent in governance. That's the historical genesis of western individualism. It's why western culture is so hostile to the idea of shared social responsibilities and refuses to treat itself as anything but a collection of atomized individuals. Current year "just let kids be trans if they wanna lol" is the natural philosophical conclusion of this. You are right that westerners only have themselves to blame for degeneracy and that they should be cursing their ancestors for it.

I am near certain that decades from now someone will see it as art. It'll be much like how some people fetishize old commercials for having """soul""". But I doubt it will be enough that society will collectively raise them above the level of traditional art.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFb7BOI_QFc is a good summary, which points out that modernist graphic design (and bauhaus styles) are a huge influence for them. I think that it's important to put things into context. Humanity has always had artistic conventions, that is, we restrict the way we depict things "killing originality" in order to find a common ground that can convey a message in the most effective way. Art is a language, and it can be standardized to ensure maximum effectiveness in conveying a message. I'd argue that OP's point about art needing individual aesthetic conventions is actually the outliner in art history and not the norm. Egyptian art remained virtually unchanged for 3000 years, only changing significantly during the Amarna period (and even then individual sculptors and painters had to use a different style). Bizantine art, medieval illuminated manuscripts, renaissance painting, etc they all had artistic conventions which resulted in every single piece looking more or less like each other. If you're not familiar with Ukiyo-e artists, can you really tell a Hokusai from a Kuniyoshi? If you're not familiar with baroque painters, can you tell a Gentileschi from a Caravaggio? Or a Gainsborough from something painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds? No, most people can't because again, we've always had artistic conventions elaborated and popularised by an elite, which used them to promote certain agendas. In the history of art, artists were never ever ever ever hired because of their "vision". They were craftsmen, so they were hired because they were able to get the job done and because they had mastered their phisical mediums and artistic conventions. Caravaggio, Da Vinci, Boticelli, etc etc were hired hands, Anon. Nobody gave a flying soykaf how they felt or what their individual style was. And when you had an artist that wanted to go a different direction, like Goya or Turner, they basically kept all the weird soykaf to themselves. So no, it didn't kill artists and it won't kill them in the future.

>>8322 >the world is all as it seems as according to MSM. I am smart and not in any way a retard.

>>8370 Show us even one mainstream media source willing to say what that anon claimed.

>>8355 >Western civilization was rotten from the start Which civilization was not? Every one of them had their own soykaf, either slaves to work for them, castes or whatever. And feudalism is not unique to the western civilization.

>>7136 Do you have a version of that first picture in the subway by itself?

>>8979 Writing this as an OpenBSD user with a discernable user agent (Firefox/OpenBSD), I definitely believe that Google has done and is still doing a lot of harm to the internet, promoting the web where it's advertising, while Adobe was still maintaining Flash before underfunding it and actually pulling the rug, as the web had become ubiquitous. But Facebook is so much worse. It's grooming underage people into generating ads. Creating a Facebook account was the worst decision I've ever made and I've lost an entire decade of my life since. Of course, Google and Adobe, by promoting the web, have enabled Facebook to do this. For a mass surveillance company, the web is convenient: it lets them track users with third-party cookies. It's definitely empowered Adobe by creating a "we need designers" culture – this company is also an enclosures lobbyist and I'd like to read Free, Fair, and Alive on this topic. But Larry Page is only a predator as a unicorn entrepreneur is – not literally a child predator. >Free, Fair, and Alive: https://freefairandalive.org/read-it/ >Gizmodo: Leaked Facebook Docs Depict Kids As Untapped Wealth: https://gizmodo.com/leaked-facebook-docs-depict-kids-as-untapped-wealth-1847763431

>>7118 I get that the CIA did an excellent job poisoning the well when they coined the term conspiracy theory, but why do even lainons think everything that happens in a system of conscious actors is decided by market forces and trends and never, well, conscious decisions by groups of people? there are people on this site "conspiring" to do things in secret that the wider public doesn't know about.

>>7106 same >>7130 >galleries relevant to ask but its worth pointing out that a lot of moderne soykaf in galleries is gadaffle and that this art whether or not being taken seriously by serious people is something that people interact with and are exposed to more than most anything in galleries. >>9839 some things are so obvious they go without saying, obvious that a lot of these are parodies, but one need not go far to find wild examples all around. They're like the pics in this thread but less funny. Maybe corporate advertiser art is just soulless, but I do dislike the choices of traits to make exaggerated and such. Its soulless but ugly, could be soulless and pretty. The funny pics here are ugly but at least have soul so there's something going for em.

>>11336 It's interesting how conspiracy apologists always seem to work in the favor of the powerful. You never hear them poo pooing the idea that workers are getting together (conspiring) to strike at their workplace.

>>11339 That's mainly because unless you're one of the owners, "the workers are gonna strike!" Isn't some kind of sinister plot that will destroy you and everything you hold dear. The owners absolutely do go apeshit over unions, they're terrified of it, just like how we're all terrified that they're gonna eat our aborted babies or something. The main difference between a colloquial "conspiracy theory" and an actually substantiated conspiracy theory (I will use scare quotes to refer to the colloquial version from now on) is that belief in a "conspiracy theory" is almost always based on anxieties or political beliefs of the believer, not the other way around. 9/11 truthers are the most obvious examples of this. There are holes in the official story, sure; but that isn't what motivates the believer. The believer doesn't *want* to believe the official story, so they look for whatever evidence they can find, however tenuous or outlandish, to overturn it and replace it with their version, a version which validates their existing anxieties (hatred of G.W. Bush, in this case) and . An easy litmus test for whether something is a "conspiracy theory" or just a conspiracy theory is how the believer responds to reliable evidence that seems to go against their conclusion. If it's a "conspiracy theory", the believer will attack the messenger or claim that the "conspiracy" is so powerful that they could manipulate any evidence. The believer will often make use of rhetorical tricks such as the gish gallop or an appeal to pathos in their argument. If it's just a conspiracy theory then the believer will seriously try to understand the evidence and will critically evaluate the sources, and will typically appeal to logos or ethos in their argument. It takes a lot more intellectual effort to believe a conspiracy theory than a "conspiracy theory". Another easy litmus test is to see how diverse the beliefs of the believer are. Belief in any one "conspiracy theory" is highly correlated with belief in others, but most people believe conspiracy theories in isolation. For instance, believing that gas companies and stores collude to fix prices in an area is not strongly correlated with belief that your cell phone is constantly recording you. That is because both of these conspiracy theories stand on their own merits, they don't require "solidarity".

>>11342 addendum: I should note that a lot of people have a sort of "anti-conspiracy" mindset where they will ignore anything that sounds like a "conspiracy theory" because of social conditioning. They often act exactly like the conspiretard. This thread is a great illustration of that overall; almost none of the responses are by level-headed people with good reasons for believing what they believe. I would say >>8295 is the only one in this particular chain of replies.

>>7107 >It's called flat art. bruh

This style look like a mass produced and sterile version of "Global Village Coffeehouse." GVC was simply put corporate abstractionism, you can see elements of cubism, abstractionism and tribal art in it. So stylistically it's a cheap copy of a copy, with anything "offensive" removed. See the attached pic for your reference. >If the imagery communicates no information, and isn't even nice to look at, there's no point in distracting anyone with it, and a void of but one colour would be an improvement. Let this be a thread for collecting information and discussing this manner of nihilistic esoterica, widespread. I think unfortunately the imagery does carry information. The corporations give zero fuarrrks about their subjects at best, at worst they actively look down on their clients. It is not too dissimilar how universally hated post-modernist architecture is, yet we only seem to get just that. Let's not forget also that big tech tries to hide it's power concentration behind trying to appear harmless. Google for example does this Fisher Price toy design language but the company itself is sinister AF. To turn tinfoil for a bit, ugliness is good at demoralizing people. Distressed people have lower impulse control. People who have lower impulse control make more mistakes. People who make more mistakes are more easy to exploit economically and socially.