Everything used to be less slick. Even huge store chains and brands look amateurish by modern standards, from as recently as the 90s. Some of it's explainable by changing fashion making those things look worse, but most of it's just that less was designed, and expectations for how (say) a Wal-Mart's exterior (and interior, for that matter) would look didn't include the whole building being "on brand", to pick one example.

I think graphic design becoming much faster and cheaper, and elaborate custom-designed and custom-printed/manufactured signage, wraps, et c., becoming far cheaper to make, is part of the cause.

I also suspect much of this is a very visible case of Graeber's "Bullshit Jobs", specifically of the "zero-sum competition" variety—which makes sense, given the relation of this to marketing and ad-spending. I don't think Target having the entire facade of its buildings designed & built to be "on brand" does very much good of any kind, per se, nor do brand-driven price tag or end-cap sign designs and such, and the (apparently) increasing tendency to tear down rather than repurpose—I assume because making the old building fit your design system would cost about as much as building new, anyway, and if you build new you also get... a new building—sure seems socially harmful. However, they feel they have to, so they don't look shabby next to all their competitors.

On the subject of changing tastes, I suspect that in 10 years anything in a corporate Memphis style [1] is going to look horribly amateurist and outdated. This shows up a lot more in landing pages and tutorials than ads, but I'm sure there are similar artifacts in ads these days.

[1] https://en.communia.blog/corporate-memphis/

It already looks amateurish and outdated.

Note how design-focused companies like Apple almost never use it. It’s mostly used by Facebook and Google, who aren’t know for sophisticated design.

I seem to remember Apple already having used a similar style of art in manuals in the 90s. [1]

[1] http://mattjfuller.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/DSC_0702.j...

I see any brand that uses corporate memphis design as being slack and amateur. It's literally 2020's MS Clip Art.

> I suspect that in 10 years anything in a corporate Memphis style [1] is going to look horribly amateurist and outdated.

I suspect that in 30 years the corporate Memphis style will be a selling point where yet-to-be-born designers try to revive some "Retro Cool".

That link is a wild ride. I expected a design blog. Instead I got a communist indictment of startup culture through the lens of the commodification of illustration.

Same! A refreshing take on the startup world from the outside.

Agree! I really appreciated their main page too with no ads (I think) and the way articles populated the endless scroll.

I miss hand-lettered signs with misspellings and punctuation errors in carry out places. Now even the smallest mom and pop has professionally lettered signs and menus.

The UK is having gas shortages and I saw a article where one of the gas stations was pictured and they had a glossy, perfectly on brand sign explaining the situation. I was thinking that a couple of decades ago it would've been crazy to get those printed and distributed to stores in less than a week.

Thankfully, I’ve seen greengrocer’s apostrophes survive that evolution of signage polish.

Maybe I've just become jaded by it all, but those older ads also felt steeped in a different kind of consumerism, angled at a different kind of consumer. Still interesting to read, but I don't find them any less passe just because they're a few decades removed from your Sears catalogue.

Yeah, you've got a point. They're still ads at the end of the day. A lot of the design language is also very much a product of the time. Very type-heavy (I'm reminded of the magazine Ray Gun) and a lot of "attitude".

I love it. The charm is in the enthusiasm.

I think teams to create a video game have increased in size. I'll bet the people who made the old-time ads probably had lots of hats.

Growing up playing video games in the '80s and '90s, I always thought the companies making games were massive. As an adult, I've gone to several retro gaming conventions and seen game creators from back then talk about their experiences. It really surprised me the first time I learned that often those games were often coded by 1 or 2 people. So yeah, those companies behind the ads were tiny by today's standards.

The teams were much smaller than Young me realized as well. The mini interview about the launch of the Nintendo Entertainment System after the video game crash was pretty interesting.

https://youtu.be/Sn5v09L_uDg