Fun thing I learned today. On Wikipedia's List of Cetaceans, where a photo is missing it says [cetacean needed]
this is so funny.
the nonbinary icon i did not know i needed
Everyone gets “The 90s” look wrong so let’s fix it
If you weren’t here for part one, lemme sum it up real fast:
Okay, all up to speed? We’re being served 80s throwback stuff with the serial numbers scratched off, re-labeled as yo totally 90s. What we’ve got now isn’t completely wrong, but I’m telling you, there’s so much gold left unmined.
As we saw in part one with Memphis Milano, these things get messy. Trends don’t start and end neatly every ten years. The first wave of 90s throwback attempts focused on the early part of the decade, and nobody since really pushed to represent the other seven years. Well, if you really wanna do something, I guess you gotta do it yourself.
I have suggestions. Get your flannel ready, we’ve got a lot of ground to cover.
Analog Grunge
SURRRRRRRGE or uh, Grunge, is probably the look that defines the decade best. The big kickoff point here is Nirvana - after a shiny pop-dominated music scene in the 80s, Nevermind was like a breath of fresh smog.
Your design has to look like it survived a nuclear blast, then was run over by your parents’ Buick a couple of times.
- Rust. Dirt. Scuffs and scrapes. Signs of distress.
- Handwritten or scribbled illustrations.
- Low-rent aesthetics. Torn paper shapes, label maker or typewriter fonts.
If there’s a Comic Sans for the 90s, it’s “distressed typewriter font.” Seriously, it’s mandatory. When I pulled images for this post I could not escape typewriter fonts. I don’t think you couldn’t call yourself a respectable designer without it. Just look at how much mileage old-timey typewriters and label makers got:
Hell, it’s the giant X in The X Files!
I think another component to Grunge is sort of an anti-digital, pro-analog message. My pet theory is home computers went from being a semi-common novelty in 1990 to an essential gotta-have-it purchase in every American home by ‘99. Desktop publishing apps made it almost too easy to make pixel-perfect, clean, uniform designs. Digital photography and scanners meant you could now publish full color photographs with ease.
But digital perfection is the enemy of Grunge. Analog means authenticity.
So you had a whole gaggle of designers running in the other direction. Sure you could use a computer, but your work absolutely had to look like it didn’t come from one. As much as possible, incorporate hand-drawn artwork, scribbles, dust and splotches. Write text with chicken scratch if you have to. As much as you could make your multimillion dollar ad campaign look like it came from the margins of some high schoolers’ math homework, the better.
Factory Pomo
Not everyone was running away from digital, though. Many designers were embracing computer apps - and I think that’s where Factory Pomo first came into being. Coined by designer Froyo Tam (that’s their logo up above!) Factory Pomo is one of those things that once you see an example, you can’t stop seeing it.
- Strong, basic geometric primitives with inverted, contrasting colors
- Tall typography
- Art Deco style rivets and spikes
Want your logo to look futuristic and modern? Stick it in a circle and put some triangles around. Invert half the colors, then another half.
Max Krieger has a great writeup on the probable inflection point: Tomorrowland. As the story goes, Tomorrowland at Disney - the part of the park meant to look like it’s from the future - would very quickly look very outdated each time they tried to update it. Instead, in 1994 they decided to own being outdated. They came up with a ridiculously fun “timeless” futuristic look, mixing industrial design with Jules Verne. Factory Pomo’s signature was all over the blueprints.
The look quickly escaped the theme park and was especially prevalent in the booming mid 90s home computer market. It’s the Packard Bell cyborg, it’s the logo in Video Toaster. If you caught that The X Files logo earlier is both Factory Pomo with the tall type and X in a ring AND Grunge with the typewriter X in the background, you win 5 bonus Pogs.
And it’s a stretch, but one could draw a line between Factory Pomo’s inverted black and whites and the Ska movement’s two-tone checkerboards. Maybe. Possibly. I’d have to call Tony Hawk to double check.
Back to Froyo Tam for a second, but that bit about them coining the term? That was in 2017. “Factory Pomo” didn’t have a name for like… 25 years. How’s that possible, you may wonder? Weren’t designers following a defined style? Well, yes and no. I think people were designing stuff to look a certain way, but it’s less a game of “this is what the aesthetic looks like” and more like a game of telephone.
If you do an architecture tour in a major city, you’ll learn that every building and skyscraper is classified to a specific architectural movement. Every building that is but ones built in the last 20-30 years. Newer buildings have to wait a few decades for official classification. Historians need time and perspective to figure out what emerging trends in architecture are going on, whose work influenced who, that sort of thing.
Designing a logo for Slim Jims or Cherry Coke takes considerably less time than constructing a skyscraper, but I think the same principle holds true. It’s really difficult to tell what’s a trend and what’s a fad when you’re living in the moment. I couldn’t tell you what’s the defining aesthetic for the 2020s right now. It’ll be obvious in 2053, but right now, no clue.
Enough time has passed between the nineties and today that we can pick this stuff apart easily. Maybe if you’re lucky, you can be the first to classify these design movements, too.
Working on a part three! I’ll look into a few other trends and address the big question– Is the Y2K aesthetic actually a 90s thing? More to come.
*A ton of these examples above are from the CARI Institute, which you should totally check out, they’ve been cataloging this stuff for years.
The other thing that people should remember, related to the grunge thing, is that the 1990s were the golden age of making things XTREEM! Or, if you prefer, even xXxTREEM!! What this basically amounts to is a sort unholy combination of grunge aesthetics, conspicuous consumption, and mainstream commercial cynicism (this was the era where South Park and Dilbert originated, remember). Think Girls Gone Wild (because feminism is for losers); think SUVs (because caring about the environment is for losers); think every interchangeable comic book full of murderous antiheroes with spikes and pouches and giant guns, and a cover breathlessly claiming to be a COLLECTOR’S ITEM ISSUE! (because heroism is for losers). Everything was busy and noisy and painful to look at.
This was the absolute peak of neoliberal capitalism; communism had been defeated; the labour movement was at its lowest ebb; and there were a lot of young people with money to spend because the obvious unsustainability of this arrangement would only start to bite people (in the west) on the ass after the dot-com bubble burst.
when i was a freshman in college i wanted to dress up for halloween because i thought surely college students would have the spirit. so i elected to put together a whole entire Skull Kid from legend of zelda majora’s mask cosplay together and wear that fucking ensemble to college on halloween.
i step on campus and realize immediately that not one other person is dressed up. not so much as a cat ear headband. so imagine this fucking dude sitting in a class of otherwise normally dressed people looking like this. that was me. this was my 9/11
done his best
[Id: a picture of a very small pink pig with a slot in it. In the second image a single penny is sticking out if the slot, it is obvious that it cannot even fit all the way in. It is so small. I am crying.]
Given the way things are going I wonder how long it will be before The Algorithm starts reporting people for "crimes."
Researching ways to kill someone? Could be for a story, could be an actual crime. Better let authorities know, just in case.
Googling trans heath services when you live in a red state? Definitely a crime, better report it.
Posting negative things about a fascist senator/governor? Could incite civil unrest. Call the cops.
On the one hand it sounds paranoid and ridiculous and maybe a bit like that PKD story. But on the other hand, you KNOW Certain Authorities would absolutely love a tool like that. Especially if they can exempt themselves from scrutiny.
A reminder for Cat…
When dealing with loss or any emotional event, it’s important to remember to let yourself feel. I have been distracting myself from my own feelings and it was good to have Rabbit reminder it’s okay to let myself feel.
May 16, 2023 - A swarm of bees in the Encino neighbourhood of Los Angeles attacked an “LAPD volunteer”, which is a thing apparently. The bees are quoted as saying “ACAB includes volunteer cops!“ [video]
This isn’t really funny. Anyone could die from this. Look how fast he went down.
Yeah that’s why it’s funny I hate cops
Okay so now that the semester is over, here is a list of actual things my paleontology professor said/did during lecture and discussion:
- “I've watched this like 20 times now” (Prehistoric Planet 2 trailer)
- “Hi yes I am me, an exemplar of our species. A prime specimen.”
- *visible confusion while reading the Colossal website*
- “Turkeys can be terrifying. Birds are terrifying in general”
- “That’s David Attenbourough not a bird.”
“Thank you for clarifying.”
“You’re welcome! It’s what I’m here for! This is why I have a Ph.d!”
- “You need to have a healthy bullshit meter to read any paleontology paper.”
- “As I keep telling you, life hates us.”
- “Look at the size of the head compared to the body. This is just stupid.”
- “Look at the butt of that thing!”
*measures with hands on screen*
- “This is a stupid looking animal.” (Cotylorhynchus romeri)
- "for example comparing femur robustness is ... what does that even mean?"
- “You can laugh…this is a stupid looking creature!”
- “Then of course you have your penis worms.”
- “Holding fossils from the Burgess Shale is a religious experience.”
- “It would be a very mossy world, which I am not opposed to. I like moss :)”
- “Taxonomy is a clusterfuck.”
- “This is probably one of the most ridiculous animals to have ever evolved.” (Whales)
- “It looks like a strange monster from the black lagoon.” (Maiacetus)
- “It’s a magical Liopleurodon!”
- *does push ups on a table to show us how a fish would have walked*
- *showing us a video of a crocodile taken by someone in the water*
“Do NOT do this. Don’t jump into the water with a crocodile. It will end very badly :(“
- “This was like one of the weirdest papers I’ve seen. Alright so Ken Carpenter is a very legitimate paleontologist in Colorado. He normally worked with dinosaurs but he also decided to try and figure out how mosasaurs swim. So you look at the skeleton but then you also put two undergrads in a pool, one grabbing the other one's legs to see how that double-limb locomotion would work. It's like the kookiest thing I’ve ever seen published… but yeah I'm not even sure how he got the approval for this… I don’t think this was grant funded… “I would like some undergrad volunteers to jump in a pool, one holding the other ones legs to see if they will drown.””
- *rants about the size of the mosasaur in Jurassic World and debates with a student whether or not an actual size mosasaur could pull a T. Rex into the water*
- “I like owls. They look like they are wearing trousers :)”
- "The Ice Age movie was a missed opportunity. There were so many cool animals they could have used and they didn't use ANY of them! There were giant ground sloths that were so big you can stand in their fossilized burrows! Yeah sure we have that one guy...what's his name...Sid? Yeah sure we have Sid but Sid is NOT a giant ground sloth. That's not even mentioning all of the horses and bison and bears and lions! Its disappointing!"
...
"I was on a podcast about this :D"
I don’t know what it is about Star Wars but even if it’s not your biggest fandom, it still has the funniest memes by a long shot I mean “look at all the fucks i give anakin” and “your poncho is a piece of junk” and anakin hates sand it’s all just 1000% pure class
YOU CAN’T BEAT THIS SHIT
And my new favorite:
Uruk, Iraq
The sorta literal translation from the arabic is so much more beautiful
“From here rose the first written letter, (finding its way) to every point on earth”
I like this version more
I'M NOT PRETTY AND I'M NOT YOUR BOY SEND ME YOUR ADDRESS SO I CAN VISIT YOU AND EXPLAIN MY PASSIONS
i think one of the funniest things ever is how many rock and metal bands are just four or five identical white dudes with long brown hair parted in the middle. like they’ve gotta be cranking these dudes out in a factory at this point. they don’t even have to be in the same genre, you can find them anywhere. they’re like some kind of metal fungus.
these are all different bands
i would love to argue with this but you will never fucking believe what i look like
I appreciate Karl Jenkins bemused reaction to the theory that he, a 79 year old white Welsh man composer, is, in fact, a 41 year old black American woman from California.
I mean, how else do you respond to an accusation like that?
“Look, my moustache isn’t that cartoonish and silly, surely?”
Like, what is this scenario? It’s Scooby Doo and Fred rips off the mask to reveal: “Oh my God, it’s the Duchess of Sussex!”
And she would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for you meddling hardcore royalists.
