discopawbs

i just think these labels fail to perform any useful descriptive art historical function beyond "some things looked similar at the same time"

yeah i mean the point though is that most trends are more or less organised. the periodisation and categorisation happens after the fact when we move away from past trends; they crystallise and their broad themes become more obvious. one of the purposes of art history is to understand this

getting my order in now for the monumental decade-in-the-making monograph, 'A Review of Glupshittism: 2018-2025'

and like, to point, even the inclusion of Frutiger in this. obviously it's because of its association with 2000s UI design, but Frutiger was invented in the 70s, and has a long history before the 2000s. the specificity of the term feels flattening of what could be an interesting history

they're unfortunately the target of my criticism hahahaha. some of the entries are better than others, but they rarely go beyond "here's a collection of stuff and some superficial characteristics." some terms are framed in a basic context, and designers can be listed, but they're generally sparse

having said that a t-shirt with "German Postwar Modern Architecture" in helvetica might go kind of hard idk

yeah, it's like a kind of "brand" people can leverage for various purposes? maybe that's what's been bothering me too. you can sell them in the same way you can sell t-shirts with memes on them, and in a way you couldn't with "German Postwar Modern Architecture"

american illustration showcase! there's loads of volumes from throughout the 90s and they're huge. The 1994 one I have I picked up for really cheap at a random second hand bookstore, but it looks like there's plenty to buy or rent online www.abebooks.com/book-search/...

thinking about the fact ive seen stuff marketed using these terms (cassette futurism for starfield comes to mind) i think you might've hit the nail on the head

The need for categorisation has accelerated a lot. feels like continuation of general commodification of culture, esp thru a social media lens: it collapses cultural criticism and advertising, less distinction between analysis and "selling"; products need categorisation to reach the right markets

something i wasn't privy to before was that a lot of the people doing these labels are apparently (ex) tv-tropers, which would explain the proliferation of these witty but otherwise ungrounded and unhelpful terms lmao

but then this doesn't work as well for e.g. layout design, or lettering, which have distinct movements (e.g. swiss design) but which are very much tied to commercial publishing. other stuff like bauhaus was very concerned with unifying design with mass production across many areas

reappraisal is all about coming back to the art with a fresh eye and without the contemporary baggage i suppose

i think the complaint you've expressed here is exactly why these things remain unrecognised and ignored until well after the fact!! they're ubiquitous and designed for mass-consumption and turnover, which means they're actively ignored if not hated for the duration of their life

Wikipedia screenshot. The text reads: "The actual term Art déco did not appear in print until 1966, in the title of the first modern exhibition on the subject, held by the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris, Les Années 25 : Art déco, Bauhaus, Stijl, Esprit nouveau, which covered a variety of major styles in the 1920s and 1930s.[13] The term was then used in a 1966 newspaper article by Hillary Gelson in The Times, describing the different styles at the exhibit."

i need to find a more detailed historiography of this, but even Wikipedia suggested the appreciation and periodisation of famous labels like 'art deco' only appeared 30-60 years after the fact

it could be this, but did critics ever rate or appreciate stuff like this in the past? i could be wrong but lowbrow advertising consumer design has always been fairly marginalised, and mostly the contemporary stuff I've seen are trade publications and reviews which didn't have any outside capital

YouTube video by Pages - Topic O.C.O.E. (Official Cat Of The Eighties)

also quite a tune if you've never heard it m.youtube.com/watch?v=SKRy...

YouTube video by Pages - Topic Listen for the Love (2024 Remaster)

oh dude i love these guys!! great album too. this is a fave from it m.youtube.com/watch?v=a6Pa...

but maybe the postmodernism is what makes this era tougher to categorise? it's definitely got unifying themes but perhaps the deliberate, playful anachronism makes it a bit more opaque

in that way these styles seem to fit very nicely into the model of past 'big' eras in design, like with midcentury modern or art deco, where you have a similar incorporation of the earlier avant garde for use in mainstream consumer design and advertising

yeah, they're more what i'd describe as actual 80s-90s postmodern. a very eclectic pastiche of some earlier midcentury stuff with a lot of different modernist design and painting (and also novel mediums and tech) applied to traditionally lowbrow subject matter

yeah exactly!

this is awesome!!

Memphis Bunny

YouTube video by darklorddisco Software - Island-Sunrise (1988)

also can't forget Software, who afaik invented the ~vibe~ www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSNL...

yeah honestly listening to it i still 1000% prefer the rippingtons. maybe i just find the EQ reverb thing really cheesy? my friend used to have CDJs and it was just a standard joke to crank the bass and low pass knobs on fake drops

YouTube video by Najee - Topic Buenos Aires

the other hack ive discovered is to find any 80s-90s solo saxophonist backed by a DX7 and you've basically reached the entire sound lmao www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVyk...

yeahh i mean i think it's fine, it's just extremely lazy and gimmicky lol. makes you appreciate how unbelievably cracked daft punk actually were

YouTube video by The Whispers - Topic It's a Love Thing

i've not checked but i can guarantee this has been sampled and slowed down/lightly EQ'd for like 20 "future funk" tracks www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhaH...

im joking about *the* vapourwave song which tbf is actually enjoyably transformative! but most of the rest i've listened to has just been good because the samples are good and a lot of even very forgettable 70s/80s disco/funk influenced pop had *insanely* tight production