Corporate Art Style

Confirmed 301,219

About

Corporate Art Style, also referred to as Big Tech Art Style, Globohomo Art Style and Corporate Memphis, refers to a set of similar minimalist "flat" art styles that became popular among Big Tech companies in late 2010s, best known representative of which is Alegria art style adopted by Facebook in 2017. This art style is distinguished by flat primary shapes, oversized limbs and non-representational skin colors. In November 2020, growing public awareness of this art style prompted appearance of memes and parodies.

Origin

In early 2017, American design firm Buck developed an art style for the new illustration system to be used by Facebook. The art style, titled Alegria,^[1] was based on organic shapes, vibrant colors and exaggerated forms, with human characters composed of primary shapes and lacking individual identity (images shown below).

In the following years companies such Airbnb, Hinge, Lyft, Airtable, Google and YouTube all adopted similar art styles,^[2] with the flat design becoming a prevailing trend among tech companies.

Reception

The earliest public reactions to the popularization of flat art styles among tech companies are two collections of their examples on social networking community Are.na. On October 31st, 2017, Are.na^[3]^[4] user S k y e started a collection titled "Small cartoon people building big interfaces" that received 61 followers in four years.

On April 28th, 2018, Are.na^[5]^[6] user writer Claire L. Evans started a collection of corporate art style images, coining the term "Corporate Memphis." The collection (shown below) received over 336 followers in three years.

In June 2018, Twitter^[7] account @HumansOfFlat was created, collecting examples of flat art style and criticizing it (tweet examples shown below). The account accumulated nearly 6,000 followers prior to being suspended in February 2021.

On May 23rd, 2019, New Republic magazine design director Lindsay Ballant posted^[8] a tweet about similarly styled illustration submissions she had been receiving, posting several examples of the art style.

On August 21st, 2019, Aiga Eye on Design blog^[9] posted an article "Don’t Worry, These Gangly-armed Cartoons Are Here to Protect You From Big Tech," reviewing Alegria and Alegria-inspired art styles.

The term "globohomo art style," with "globohomo" meaning "globalized homogenization," has been used in reference to the art style since May 2020, particularly on imageboards.^[10]^[11]

On August 26th, Kiwi Farms user Pissmaster created a thread^[12] about the art style.

On February 6th, 2021, YouTube^[13] channel Solar Sands posted a video about the art style that received over 2.1 million views in three weeks (shown below).

Use In Memes

On May 27th, 2020, Redditor^[9] ramzes8811 posted the first known meme about the art style, a Starter Pack meme that gained over 44,500 upvotes in six months (shown below).

The art style did not see significant presence in memes until November 17th, 2020, when an image executed with that art style captioned "Share if you hate this fucking art style" received viral spread (author unknown, shown below). On that day, Instagram^[14] user sonny_librarian and Twitter^[15] user @switch1e_swoof posted the image, gaining over 4,700 likes and 16,500 retweets and 99,100 likes, respectively. On November 18th, an unknown Redditor^[16] posted the image in /r/196 subreddit, where it received over 19,400 upvotes in four months.

On November 20th, Twitter^[17] user @clayohr posted a Saturn Devouring His Son redraw that used the art style (shown below, left). On the same day, Twitter^[18] user @johnnny2x4 posted a Wojak comic meme that received over 11,500 retweets and 136,300 likes (shown below, right).

On November 21st, an anonymous 4chan^[19] user created a thread in /pol/ board in which users posted offensive images and memes created using the art style. The thread received 267 replies. Many of images from the thread received further spread online in the following months.

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