Deprimente – A look at corporate art
Deprimente is a deep dive into the corporate art style of the umbrella term Corporate memphis and the specific style of Alegria and how people feel about this expanding art phenomena, and also exploring the companies that utilize this type of colorful art, juxtaposing the visual with the bad practices.
This was done by doing personal research, and surveying people inside the design community.
Corporate memphis is an umbrella term to describe this colorful flat angular art that is common among big tech and large corporations to give of a soft and playful image.
Alegria is the more common term for the style as it is the name of facebooks own art style that was commissioned to and designed (as shown above) by the design studio BUCK in 2017.
When posting my survey in various spaces where people are interested in design, the result was shown to be overwhelmingly negative, most people feeling that the style is phony and disingenious.
When asked about their general impression of the art style the answers were in the vein of:
“I don’t like it because it’s so not creative. It’s the same thing done over and over again. There’s so many illustrators with unique styles that could help companies stand out so I don’t get why everyone wants to use this specific flat, predictable and boring style.”
“the style in itself is fine, but its oversaturated in ad-spaces and in big companies, making them all blend together.”
“its boring and everywhere.”
mockups-design.com
These are images using the corporate memphis style to do anti-ads, highlighting bad practices of companies instead of trying to soften their imaging. It’s mostly tongue in cheek parody while exploring the art style as well as conveying a message.
When making the art for this project i felt a wave of dread and started to re-think my choice of possible careers.
As someone who enjoys art AND marketing, the merger of these two practices culminating into corporate memphis was very disheartening.
