Mae Wang
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The style is, after all, simply a reflection of big tech, and how it has constructed a world with users on one side and executives on the other.
Why does every advert look the same? Blame Corporate Memphis | WIRED UKAs Rudnick points out, even if the style suggests a playful world that values creativity, the illustrations done in Corporate Memphis style are rarely, if ever, credited to the artist who produced them.
Why does every advert look the same? Blame Corporate Memphis | WIRED UK“Isometric perspective is interesting, because nothing recedes to a vanishing point,” Rudnick says, “and therefore it also eliminates the variable of time.” He points out that this type of design is particularly popular with fintech and mortgage companies – playing down the passage of time is particularly advantageous to firms selling financial products that you may end up paying off for years.
Why does every advert look the same? Blame Corporate Memphis | WIRED UKOne variant of Corporate Memphis uses a visual technique known as isometric projection
Why does every advert look the same? Blame Corporate Memphis | WIRED UKThe limited colour palette and lack of depth offers a uniquely uncomplicated view of the world.
Why does every advert look the same? Blame Corporate Memphis | WIRED UK“It depicts a world whose problems are already solved, built out of complementary components,” he says. “It's a deliberate oversimplification.”
Why does every advert look the same? Blame Corporate Memphis | WIRED UKSmaller companies engage in “pattern-matching” to look like established tech companies and court investment, says Merrill, while those at IPO-level use it because it’s “lazy and safe.”
Why does every advert look the same? Blame Corporate Memphis | WIRED UKThe style coincided with an increasingly data-driven and hyper-personalised tech world, while also having a nostalgic, cartoony feel. “I think it's desperate. It's a desperate attempt at trying to be human,” he says.
Why does every advert look the same? Blame Corporate Memphis | WIRED UKThe name is a play on the 80’s Italian design and architecture group Memphis, which positioned itself as a garish and child-like rejection of functionalist styles.
Why does every advert look the same? Blame Corporate Memphis | WIRED UKskeuomorphism, an aesthetic that employed shadows and bevelling, along with other visual techniques, to make buttons and icons resemble real world objects.
Why does every advert look the same? Blame Corporate Memphis | WIRED UKImage banks such as FreePik, UnDraw, and Adobe’s own vector art library, have played a massive part in letting non-illustrators co-opt the Corporate Memphis style for themselves.
Why does every advert look the same? Blame Corporate Memphis | WIRED UKAnother factor in the proliferation of Corporate Memphis is vast image banks for vector graphics. Pablo Stanley is a Mexico City-based illustrator who’s operated several large image databases, where his own flat, wacky SVGs are available open source.
Why does every advert look the same? Blame Corporate Memphis | WIRED UK“From a design point of view, it’s pretty lazy,” says Hurley. “Adobe Illustrator, in particular, that's sort of the culprit.” Illustrator’s tools allow for easy manipulation of clean lines and colours, allowing them to be edited as scalable vector graphics (SVGs). From there, it’s easy to animate and to replicate the illustrations across platforms.
Why does every advert look the same? Blame Corporate Memphis | WIRED UKCorporate Memphis “makes big tech companies look friendly, approachable, and concerned with human-level interaction and community – which is largely the opposite of what they really are,” says tech writer Claire L. Evans
Why does every advert look the same? Blame Corporate Memphis | WIRED UKFor small companies looking to stand out, the quirky, digital-first style of Corporate Memphis is an easier solution than stock imagery. But it has contributed to a massive homogenisation and dulling down of the internet’s visual culture.
Why does every advert look the same? Blame Corporate Memphis | WIRED UKCorporate Memphis is inoffensive and easy to pull off, and while its roots remain in tech marketing and user interface design, the trend has started to consume the visual world at large. It’s also drawing intense criticisms from those within the design world.
Why does every advert look the same? Blame Corporate Memphis | WIRED UK