Why do "Corporate Art Styles" Feel Fake?

recently there's been a wave of corporate hate with small businesses closing down all across the country and with headlines talking about how the rich are getting richer during this pandemic online things like the grubhub ad have been made the internet's laughing stock for the past couple of weeks and for good reason this is a pretty terrible advertisement from the consumer's point of view the music is ear grating the characters ride around in unsettling ways the attempts at humor are pathetic and when i first watched it by the time it was over i barely even understood what they were trying to sell me a vast majority of the ad is taken up with characters dancing with food providing next to no information about their service or their perks in the little time they have like many ads it's colorful brain rotting nonsense but from the company's point of view this ad did exceptionally well because it cemented itself as a meme spreading the grubhub name everywhere which leads some to wonder whether it was made bad on purpose for this very reason i have my doubts there's nothing in this ad that jumps out to me as uniquely bad the premise has been done over and over and the art style they use is the safe kind of squishy 3d you've seen countless times it's actually kind of generic nothing makes it obvious it's asking to be made fun of and if something is clear it wants to be a meme the more likely it won't be people would see through its act and recognize it as a forced meme but it also strikes that perfect balance to be frank it's just eye-wateringly cringe-worthy enough to paint a target on its back whoever was in charge of its production would have to have unusually insightful information on how memes develop and get it approved by undoubtedly several committees and focus groups grubhub itself has sort of embraced the meme but it seems more like they're capitalizing on unintended fame than on any actual plan it seems more like an annoying ad that got lucky and boy did it get lucky i doubt i'm going to be forgetting these ads anytime soon now yes ads there's at least 5 more of these things and wait a minute there's lore there's grubhub lore the cosmos is all it is forever was or ever will be i don't know about you but i speculate that growing inequality during the pandemic has really brought out a kind of hyper awareness in people if this ad was made a year ago i don't know if it would have gotten the same amount of attention i think because of the time it was released people find it especially insulting pockets of hatred have also formed over the past few years noticing the presence of something many refer to as corporate memphis globo homo the big tech art style or more simply the corporate art style this flat vector-based brightly colored style with drastically disproportionate people and noodle arms is everywhere from the occasional magazine and website article to the endless policy updates and user interfaces the average person has to navigate through in their daily online life people have begun to notice it and criticize it more and more even this amusing image was made to parody it at first this hatred might seem odd i would hesitate to call this art style bad it's not badly designed it's easily readable it's everything you would expect from modern graphic design the closest thing i would make to a criticism of the illustrations themselves is that characters never seem to stay still or come together in a meaningful way they run jump scatter themselves evenly throughout the composition while undoubtedly intentional this trend leaves little room for pleasing alignments or dynamic compositions this kind of art style is by no means new it's likely rooted in modernism with schools like the bauhaus that influence basically everything about graphic design you see today parallels can be drawn to art deco posters from around the early 20s and 30s graphic design has been on a flat geometric simplified route for a while and this art style can be seen as a natural progression of that although with more emphasis on mass appeal before flat design for user interfaces there was skeomorphism which used 3d looking icons to imitate their real-life counterparts such as the newsstand app looking quite literally like a physical shelf currently some of that visual language has been maintained but drastically flattened in 2017 the design firm buck created the art style allegria spanish for joy for facebook on buck's website you can find a manifesto of sorts of their design with their core principles for the style flat minimalist geometric shapes with oversized limbs and non-representational skin colors to help them instantly achieve a universal feel buck's website proclaims there's many imitators but there's only one alegria and that is definitely true these other styles might as well belong to the same alegria family once you know alegria you'll start recognizing its brothers sisters and cousins all around the internet and occasionally outside of it there's also a lot of underlying cynicism for it this art style has become synonymous with big tech companies such as google and facebook businesses that have become worryingly more and more prominent in our daily lives and in our politics and if we have even a little bit of concern for the health of our society we should all be scrutinizing regularly by contrast the styles they use are almost aggressively happy and friendly with their utopian scenes it's as if the oddly proportioned people are caressing you from the screen and telling you through four smiles trust us to say this is the illustrator's fault would be very unfair this is simply the current trend it's what clients pay for it's what these businesses want and their designs for the most part are effective for what they intended what else were they supposed to come up with to please their clients big tech corporations have absolutely adopted them with open arms and for many technical and aesthetic reasons these vector-based styles are simple easily scalable easy to animate easy to replicate they're safe inoffensive and so inclusive that by trying to be inclusive they end up designing people that don't even exist and with available and relatively easy to learn programs like adobe illustrator large amounts of iterations can be made and saved according to the whims of the client at a much faster and consistent rate than traditional mediums designers can use things like layers and shortcut tips and tricks to greatly increase their speed all these factors combine to form an army of styles that kind of look the same because at their fundamental makeup they are that's not to say illustrators can't change up textures proportions colors or some details when their clients allow them to in the little time they have before the deadline but as much as these differences exist when you take a quick glance over these styles a kind of homogenization takes place it's kind of all just been a big game of follow the leader for me this is probably the biggest reason i've grown disillusioned with this kind of illustration it's become generic bland to a depressing extent you can even find websites that collect instances of these similar styles even finding specific scenarios and while you would expect that kind of thing from simple user interfaces or advertisements it's odd to find it leaking into magazines where you would expect a bit more creative freedom again it's not badly designed and it's effective communication but the over-saturation and connotation have become overpowering to me i want to be very clear on this this isn't to say any flat geometric work automatically falls into the same corporate art style category take the youtube channel kurzgesgot which uses similar flatness but is so carefully animated and packed with detail it's effectively separated itself from this category this isn't minimalism anymore this is like maximalist minimalism there are all kinds of inventive flat designs illustrators have made that are able to impress when taken out of their rigid user interface people-pleasing context this style is here to stay because these businesses have figured out what is currently effective but every trend has a shelf life and people are starting to notice its presence i would prefer if the internet was designed with diverse art styles and innovation but that's probably not going to happen until this kind of graphic design's appeal truly starts to wear off on the majority of its target audience until then in case it seems like i'm coming off as just trashing this broad type of graphic design we can appreciate different minimalist graphic design in higher creative contexts and or with the luxury of the reference of time in surface elements the poster art of am cassandra and the big tech art style is similar flat shapes simplified icons limited colors but in substance they are vastly different cassandra put a lot of stock into the organization of elements to create his own visual language paying careful attention to alignment and rhythm using modular grids and combining basic shapes to produce representations often delving into mathematical obsession with proportion you would think this would make things look stiff but through his talent cassandra could obtain expressiveness spirit and above all else visual interest his posters of ships and trains especially are favorites of mine sure my appreciation for them stems somewhat from the mythos of luxury transportation and art deco of the 1920s and 30s but that perception of industrial might is also conveyed just by design the vehicles are seen in a worm's eye view the cruise liners and trains are allowed to overwhelm you with monolithic black shapes a famous poster of a ship called latlantic uses just a single large rectangle in the center of the composition to stylistically form one side of the cruise ship making it tower over the ocean and the tugboat like a skyscraper floating on the water it might be the most clever use of a single rectangle i've ever seen i am especially struck by how clean and modern they look even today even almost a hundred years later they still have their power in the 20s these designs had the advantage of being public pieces that would catch the eye and be thought over in stark contrast to the quickly seen and quickly readable images usually seen when skimming through uis in the 21st century film and video game poster art from people like ollie moss has extremely clever use of the references in the topics he tackles turning them into flat shapes and creating layered illusions then you have the insanity of ori tour who uses flat design elements but multiplies their detail and quantity until you have essentially visual feasts of color and complexity that is able to restrain itself enough by using only flat colors and a handful of highlights and lines to give texture when needed the logos and patterns of jay fletcher also have a pleasing art deco appeal using dozens of flat minimalist designs to create intricate carefully thought out patterns his logos especially have the kind of refinement and soothing rustic colors i wish i would see more often corporate art styles currently represent nothing more than a brand image that they want to sell to you they want their websites to be seen as trustworthy and approachable in the simplest safest easiest way possible you aren't going to get much artistic flair out of them because that's not what they want but it's gotten really annoying just how omnipresent they seem in a slightly unnerving dystopian sense so when youtube decides to roll out their next website destroying policy update with these soulless illustrations i think i would prefer to just get a written message you

Channel: Solar Sands

Views: 3,173,549

Rating: 4.9526544 out of 5

Keywords: Solar Sands, Art Style, Art, Drawing, Grubhub, Grubhub ad, Big tech

Id: lFb7BOI_QFc

Length: 12min 11sec (731 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 06 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/bluesheep123]

The video uploader wasn't happy with their original upload. He took the criticism people had and made this improved version.

[u/wrenwron]

I blame art directors over the illustrators here. Most of the illustrations he's referring to have most likely been repeatedly critiqued and revised by committees of noodling art directors all trying to make sure they don't offend their bosses, and that pattern probably follows up the chain of command, in addition to whatever focus grouping or other testing they're doing. All that being said, I think there are much more generic art styles out there, and I'm still glad companies feel its worthwhile to use illustrations at all.

[u/knightofcookies]

I gotta say, I'm impressed. Not many people can so effectively take in criticism. This is much more cohesive and I think it makes the point that the first video was attempting to make.

[u/grahamulax]

Awesome! I showed my design team v1 of this because I wanted their take on it but alas.... no answer...lol. I do think we gotta switch it up in the industry from time to time, but most of it is because clients want that specific style and because it's fast to animate and has tools created by/for the community kinda driven by that art style to make it efficient. It takes about 5-10 years for styles to change in this industry from what I've seen and I think the next style is going to be something with a little bit more mixed medium going into it. Real time 3D is going to push the industry into something else that's going to change our everyday lives in the far or nearish future. Gonna be cooooool~

[u/turbodude69]

TLDW; there are trends in advertising and everyone copies each other, and currently this flat/vector style is what's popular and art critics are pissed about how unoriginal it is.

[u/GhostGo]

The memes are part of a viral marketing campaigns. Crazy that people still don't know this. Memes are really low effort and spread easily. Many corporations are using it as much as they can.

[u/SirPenrose]

Maybe because those artists' "Soul" isn't in it, since it's just an illustration job to make a buck?

[u/TheMightyWill]

My theory on grubhub guy is that they deliberately made it cringe so people would meme it and give it free publicity.

You know how it works? Because we're talking about it right now after someone made a video essay about it

[u/CosmoFishhawk2]

The king hath returned! I'm happy :D