Apple's App Store art is fucking horrendous | Flat art / Alegria / Corporate Memphis - click for feet

[ToroidalBoat]

Seems beauty is "problematic" in Current Year.

 

[grannygoose]

it looks so much like they're plagiarising liberian county flags

 

[From The Uncanny Valley]

it looks so much like they're plagiarising liberian county flags
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Very good, Timmy! You get an A!

 

[Cheese-Loving Citizen]

People who make this shit art are only in it for the paycheck and nothing else. I can bet you an entire hundo that these soulless fuckers don't know how to draw people (if they can, they're stiff and dead as hell), nor do they know basic perspective. I'll also put in another fifty that they'll never learn that shit. Ever.

At least with artists who do the typical commissions for people, they can draw decently. And more kudos to them if they actually try to make their commissions worth more than they're being paid for and managing to make a livelihood doing that. Even more if they're doing a passion project of their own backstage.

But these corporate "artists" aren't those people (hell, they shouldn't be considered people). If they keep doing this, they'll never create something with staying power. Something that people will remember and say "you know, that was a really nice thing we had. Gosh, I wish there was more of that now."

Just keep chasing after those Zuckerberg checks, you soy-chugging, thick-framed glass-wearing, neckbeard-having soulless shitheads. Greed is definitely good for the soul.

 

[Pissmaster]

lol this shit's gotten under my skin lately

it's as if soulless mid-2010s flat design (metro, material design, etc) started gestating for a few years, bloated the fuck up, grew softer edges, and started rapidly spawning these ugly featureless facsimiles of humans in a horribly misguided attempt to differentiate itself. graphic design firms and the corporatocracy have been absolutely fucking obsessed with these things for years now and it seems like everybody else is only just now noticing - i didn't realize flat humans were fucking everywhere until discord moved away from being a "we're gamers uwu" platform and slapped fake calarts characters all over their front page

this is obviously just an attempt at "shaking things up" in the graphic design space, giving 20 something interns low-effort work for way too much goddamn pay, giving silicon valley execs an excuse to not hire large design teams by doing the bare minimum (there's an old collage that's gone around featuring an anon claiming to be an ex-microsoft dev who says that the higher ups designed the win8/10 ui in powerpoint), and simultaneously making these corps look inoffensive and inclusive, by giving these freak flat humans with giraffe necks vaguely brown skin colors and tumblr hips

i have a schizo gut feeling that lead graphic designers (aka bugmen) slowly realized that flat design is inherently boring, cold, and depressing, so to "evolve" it they decided that bumping up the saturation in photoshop, rounding all of the corners and adding FUN, DIVERSE, RELATABLE """humans""" to the mix and slapping them onto every goddamn online "service" like flex tape would magically solve everything. mozilla in particular seems to adore this garbage (btw download pale moon)

and yet i've gone through articles like this one and this one and nobody knows what the fuck to call these things. facebook calls it "alegria" design, eli schiff's twitter is named "humans of flat" (i've seen his name a few times before but i had no idea graphic designers with blue checkmarks got his account nuked for railing against this shit over several years), a few people are disparaging this look by calling it "corporate memphis" design, i've seen a few twitter far-left types calling them "neoliberal vector illustrations" (which are apparently evolving into "bougie design aesthetics"), and there are vector packs like "whoosh!" and "humaaans" which lets every y-combinator startup use these slender man looking asses on their trendy RESPONSIVE website for absolutely free!

although "art" like this has been commonplace for years and flat design has been the norm for nearly a decade, not once do i remember seeing someone other than the interns being paid to churn out shit like this actually saying that they genuinely preferred simplified flatshit. maybe it's just classic internet contrarianism, but if anything, i'm seeing a small but obsessive contingent of zoomers pining for raw beveled 90s tech aesthetics and webcore and that glossy futuristic y2k aesthetic that i seriously doubt microsoft, apple, google and amazon will ever actually try to replicate with any form of sincerity.

a couple months ago i learned about a myspace clone called friendproject and last week i just learned it had been briefly swarmed by tiktok normies. a few of these dickweeds labeled it "unsafe" because it was founded by evil christian fundies, but from personal experience, i know there's a surprisingly large number of spergs from the late 90s and early 2000s trying to tap into early web culture and revive it (neocities, etc..) - some of it is ideological, some of it is out of pure boredom, and a good deal of it is fake as all hell, but i'm at least convinced that we're beginning to see a much more public wave of backlash towards orwellian flatshit and condescending, gangly, inclusive "humans". i'm confident silicon valley billionaries will (assuming they haven't been publicly guillotined) move on as 2020s culture begins to shift and they'll cultivate an aesthetic that looks even more repulsive.

just sit back and imagine a world without smartphones... just let me have my indulgent pre-9/11 cyberutopia

Every single thing in this post is fascinating

i'm confident silicon valley billionaries will (assuming they haven't been publicly guillotined) move on as 2020s culture begins to shift and they'll cultivate an aesthetic that looks even more repulsive.

For a long time, other tech companies have tried to just use Apple's designs as blueprints, including the bad ideas. Apple axed the skeumorphic UI starting with iOS 7 in flavor of the simple, flat design, and everyone else followed. Apple added a notched screen to the iPhone X, and now screens with notches and holepunches are everywhere. So I could see obese, childish characters being the next big thing in flat design.

Just in case anyone from the future is wondering, this is what the front page of Discord.com currently looks like:
(Spot the CalArts smile!)

Yeah, it definitely looks like it's trying to be lively and fun, but it just comes off so soulless in ways I can't put into words. But at least it still looks like an artist put some good effort in, unlike the downright bizarre retarded scrawls gracing the App Store lately.

I'm hoping we'll see a strong shift in styles sooner rather than later. I really loathe the total soullessness that's so rampant in design today.

 

[Ponchik]

noticed some more TRENDY flat saturated humans on the tor project's website of all things in the midst of an insomnia induced haze. they're inescapable

not exactly surprising since tor's always been compromised to begin with (at least roger dingledine's name is fun to read out loud), and they've been more publicly woke ever since jacob appelbaum got ousted a few years ago - they're more lowkey than say, mozilla, by virtue of being a much smaller and slightly more secretive organization, but their coc is pretty sjw-y and they put out at least one obligatory tweet sympathizing with blm, kindly reminding innocent peaceful protesters to use a protocol monitored by the nsa to avoid being monitored by the nsa

now i'm being reminded of just how pozzed and connected silicon valley really is but uh... wow these flat blue gremlin people sure do look fucking gross as shit don't they...

 

[CashMoney!]

The art apple is using doesn't even fit their style. I don't understand. Facebook is guilty of this and even Canva has flatshit people stuff in it to smack on whatever graphics. Gross.

 

[Coffee Shits]

It seems like everyone I know eats this shit up because it's so "clean". "Sterile" is the word I would use.

noticed some more TRENDY flat saturated humans on the tor project's website of all things in the midst of an insomnia induced haze. they're inescapable

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not exactly surprising since tor's always been compromised to begin with (at least roger dingledine's name is fun to read out loud), and they've been more publicly woke ever since jacob appelbaum got ousted a few years ago - they're more lowkey than say, mozilla, by virtue of being a much smaller and slightly more secretive organization, but their coc is pretty sjw-y and they put out at least one obligatory tweet sympathizing with blm, kindly reminding innocent peaceful protesters to use a protocol monitored by the nsa to avoid being monitored by the nsa

now i'm being reminded of just how pozzed and connected silicon valley really is but uh... wow these flat blue gremlin people sure do look fucking gross as shit don't they...

The worst part about this is that websites in Current Year have all turned into PowerPoint presentations. Image, bullet points, takeaway. 95% shallow marketing copy for Google to chew up and spit out. The web isn't about exchanging information or ideas any more, it's about corralling retards towards the big colored button.

 

[Quijibo69]

It's more like 'member the 80's and 90's. Life was better back then.

 

[ditto]

The more powerful the CPU the shittier the artwork. Compare Apple's art with the amazing art for the potato Atari 2600

Spoiler: Actual Gameplay

 

[Toolbox]

The more powerful the CPU the shittier the artwork. Compare Apple's art with the amazing art for the potato Atari 2600

View attachment 1555961View attachment 1555962View attachment 1555963

Spoiler: Actual Gameplay

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I can't decide if the drop is because people feel like they have more excuses to be lazy with their art because it's easier than ever to slap it together on a pc, or that companies had to try their damnest to sell their vision when you could barely tell what the five pixels on the screen were. Probably a bit of both.

 

[Coolio55]

Everyone here is talking about the deformed crackbaby humans (Not exactly blaming as they're the most visible part) but my biggest pet peeve is the fucking refusal to use a font that ISN'T FLAT SANS FUCKING SERIF!!!





Imo: House Industries is the sole big design team left that doesn't make complete shit
You don't watch Jimmy Kimmel (because he's an unfunny hack) but you instinctively know his logo because somebody actually put effort into it.

These are REAL fonts. Not that lousy soy shit.

 

[Pissmaster]

View attachment 1556325

The bottom two are literally just Helvetica. Not logos, just all caps text in Helvetica. When you learn to recognize the R, you'll see it everywhere.



But even the R has a dusting of life to it compared to some of the sans serif fonts I've seen today. Apple's San Francisco font is downright impressive in how they managed to make it the most soulless typeface I've ever seen.


(this came from an insanely autistic article that goes on to talk about how San Francisco is a "friendlier" typeface than Helvetica. what the fuck)

 

[Slowpoke Sonic]

I haven't used an Apple product in years and I'm not really surprised about the drastic changes. I've seen Google banners use this kind of artwork.

 

[From The Uncanny Valley]

It's more like 'member the 80's and 90's. Life was better back then.

Which is funny cuz they're the types to harp on about how nostalgia=bigotry and whatnot.

 

[InfantCrippler]

Ah, the “Big Gay” art style. Yuck.

 

[⠠⠠⠅⠑⠋⠋⠁⠇⠎ ⠠⠠⠊⠎ ⠠⠠⠁ ⠠⠠⠋⠁⠛]

noticed some more TRENDY flat saturated humans on the tor project's website of all things in the midst of an insomnia induced haze. they're inescapable

View attachment 1554947

View attachment 1554930

not exactly surprising since tor's always been compromised to begin with (at least roger dingledine's name is fun to read out loud), and they've been more publicly woke ever since jacob appelbaum got ousted a few years ago - they're more lowkey than say, mozilla, by virtue of being a much smaller and slightly more secretive organization, but their coc is pretty sjw-y and they put out at least one obligatory tweet sympathizing with blm, kindly reminding innocent peaceful protesters to use a protocol monitored by the nsa to avoid being monitored by the nsa

now i'm being reminded of just how pozzed and connected silicon valley really is but uh... wow these flat blue gremlin people sure do look fucking gross as shit don't they...

Tor literally putting bug people in their advertising. Interesting

 

[Coolio55]

Found this shit while researching programming languages. Ew.

 

[Celebrate Nite]

the facebook clipart is awful too. i think its made by the same person
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Doubt it... some of them are skinny and there's no sign of BIG FEET anywhere.

 

[Ex Cummunicated Sasser HD]

While I agree, I also have realized working in the art world that the average person doesn't care or can tell what sucks.

The past year I started intentionally doing a terrible job with some low level quick commissions that I figured I could fuck with without my rep being hurt and my clients still ate that shit up.

Best thing I ever learned is that when it comes to design, okay is more than acceptable for 99.9% of clients and anything else is a waste of time. Edit: numbers may not be 99.9% accurate.