#memphis.

[swankyangles]

Speaking of design in general, not necessarily graphic design, my wife sent me the most unhinged multi-level pun of a cosplay I've ever seen.

It's Memphis Pyramid Head

[pollard-zero]

𝙼𝚎𝚖𝚙𝚑𝚒𝚜 “𝙸𝚣𝚣𝚢” 𝚆𝚢𝚕𝚋𝚘𝚞𝚛𝚗𝚎.

𝐁𝐄𝐅𝐎𝐑𝐄 𝐃𝐔𝐒𝐊 𝐒𝐄𝐓𝐒 𝐈𝐍

[darkpastelpurple]

Jerma Memphis

[dozydawn]

[waffled0g]

Everyone gets “The 90s” look wrong and I hate it

Couple years ago I saw these two board games at the store back to back. Well, not saw them per se, but ya know. Spied them out of the corner of my eye. And for a moment without reading the text, I couldn’t tell you which was which decade at first. Funny. Either they were in a rush to get these out the door or they wanted their throwback trivia game boxes to look uniform. I didn’t think too much of it.

Only, from then on I started seeing it MORE. Every time someone markets a 90s or 80s throwback...

Goddammit they’re identical! What??! How did we let this happen? As a 90s survivor and a designer, this drives me up a wall.

Look, I know I’m late to the party to complain about “the 90s look” when we’re just starting to get sick of the Y2K nostalgia train. But c’mon, the 90s were not The 80s: Part Two™ 

Trust me when I say that we weren’t all wearing neon trapezoids up until the year 2000. The 90s look being peddled is so specific to the tail end of the 80s and an early early part of the 90s - a part of the 90s when it wouldn’t stop being the 80s. This is Memphis design being conflated with the wrong decade.

Keep reading for a long ass graphic design history lesson and pictures of old soda and fast food.

Specifically, the look is Memphis Milano, self-named by the Italian design house Memphis Group. Starting in the early to mid 80s, they made all sorts of furniture, fabrics and sculptures that were like a Piet Mondrian grid painting under heavy radiation. Their whole deal was defying the standards of existing industrial design up to that point on purpose. Chairs had weird arches, bookcases would be in strange alien colors, unusual materials like plastic or elastic were used in place of metal or wood, that sorta thing.

Memphis quickly became the signature look for the decade. You can tell something’s influenced by Memphis design from it’s telltale trademarks:

Clashing, neon colors.

Use of diametric shapes.

Contrasting patterns like zebra print stripes, confetti squiggles and checkerboards.

It wasn’t long before Memphis Milano-inspired design was everywhere in 80s pop culture:

It was a special time, yes.

I was a kindergartener at the tail end of the 80s, so I knew Memphis mostly through the lens of kids media. Toys, clothes, games, tv shows used it like candy colored catnip. Cable channel Nickelodeon more or less adopted the Memphis aesthetic as their signature in-house style and practically built a monument to it at a Florida theme park:

I think this is why folks mistake what decade Memphis is representative of - 90s staples like Nick, Saved By The Bell, Fresh Prince - they all stayed around much longer than the design trend’s expiration date. 

Couple that notion with the fact that companies are slow followers to design trends. Something gets popular and they want to get on the bandwagon? Gotta wait for the ink to dry, gotta wait for the production molds to be made. It would take a few years for them to completely work Memphis outta their system.

Now, this is not to say Memphis is bad! Personally I’m a fan of the aesthetic, if my neon-drenched artwork wasn’t a tip-off already. But it is a trend, and trends never last forever.

So what took the Memphis Milano look down for good? This part’s up for debate, but I personally think it had something to do with this dude:

It’s that grunge music from Seattle that’s so popular with the kids these days dontchaknow.

Once Smells Like Teen Spirit hit in 1991, the Nirvana tone drove the rest of the decade. Clean geometry became weathered, grainy and organic. Bright neon pastels became more bold. Bubblegum pop music sounded fake and manufactured. Attitude and apathy was authentic. Whatever.

Things got grungy. Things got grimy. Olestra was invented.

I think the best way to visualize this transition is how Cherry Coke entered the decade and how it left it:

1992 Memphis on the left, 1998 grunge junkie on the right. Fitting that the 90s would end with a design that looked like Darth Maul’s lungs.

Okay, so what should 90s retro design look like?

Continue on to PART TWO! Spoilers: No VHS filters or vaporwave needed, but maybe bring an antacid.

[eightsixxx]

XXX; (Memphis.)

[vintagehomecollection]

Interior Visions: Great American Designers and the Showcase House, 1988

[justseventeen]

"January 1985. 'A Sure Cure for the "Bed Room Blahs" -- New Wave Novelties!'

[toshootforthestars]

(X)   (X)

ALT TEXT:

Jack Mirkinson on 27 Jan 2023 posted:

a lot of people will say that these things are very complicated but it’s actually pretty simple: this is who the cops are and this is who they will always be

the cops have been indiscriminately killing and brutalizing black people for approximately their entire existence. at a certain point maybe people might want to accept that this is one of their core functions

Bree Newsome Bass on 27 Jan 2023 posted:

“How can it be racist if the police are Black?” BECAUSE THE INSTITUTION OF POLICING ITSELF  IS RACIST

This is why it never works when people try to deflect from the fact that policing itself is the problem & therefore can not be reformed into a solution

There were Black people who worked on the slave patrols & who were hired to help kidnap Africans too. What is difficult to understand?

Who actually controls the institution of policing? The white elite & the ruling class. Who is most impacted by the violence of policing? Poor people, the working class and Black people. Again, what is not clicking here?

[warakami-vaporwave]

Summer 92

[polksaladelvis]

the hottest day in history

august 1st, 1969 at the international hotel ⚡︎

[haveyouheardthisband]

[anthonypresley]

The Plot Thickens

Part of my Memphis Noir Photography Series. Memphis, TN.

2024

Website Facebook Instagram Twitter Redbubble Prints

[nocternalrandomness]

The Memphis Belle taxis back to the ramp after a media flight from MCAS Cherry Point

[mysharona1987]

[bobdylan-n-jonimitchell]

“Speaking to some french girl, who says she knows me well”

Bob Dylan & Françoise Hardy, 1966.