The Blobby, Drippy Maximalist Design You’re Seeing Everywhere - The New York Times

After years of corporate millennial blanding, consumer culture oozes into shape for a new generation. Credit... Supported by By Callie Holtermann Remember how things looked in 2016? Direct-to-consumer brands like Warby Parker and Everlane introduced themselves in tidy, sans-serif typefaces. Pastels, especially millennial pink, surged onto Instagram feeds and Glossier mascara tubes. A “self-aware, stylized blandness” called normcore inspired art kids to reach for the drabbest of khakis. The overall effect was sterile but soothing, as if to suggest our lives might somehow absorb the cheerful legibility of a Casper mattress ad. Fast-forward a decade, and this muted visual language — which came to be known as millennial blanding — has receded. Something misshapen and unruly is rising in its place. Let’s call it hyper goo: a style of glitchy, gloppy maximalism that has landed on consumer culture like a wet sneeze. Text on shampoo bottles and pickle jars increasingly resembles the inner work

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