Why editorial illustrations look so similar these days (2019)

This is something that's been bugging me for a while that I could never put a label on. It appears "Corporate Memphis" [1] is a popular catchall term for this style. I think the comparison is apt because not only do they both share an affinity for the hypercolorful and simple geometric forms - they also both strike me as something that you can immediately place as the product of a certain time, which is really just a nice way for saying this stuff is going to look super dated just like the works of the original Memphis Design Movement [2].

[1] https://www.are.na/claire-l-evans/corporate-memphis

[2] https://www.curbed.com/2017/6/23/15864234/furniture-memphis-...

This style isn't just vector art trash using canned tools. A lot of artists are painting this way in gouache and murals. It looks simple, but that's the effect of good composition and design. I can guarantee that this art is not simple to create. Take procreate for a spin and let me know how it goes. If you see this and say, gosh there's a lot of this out there, it must be mass market garbage, then you'd be right at home with people complaining about art nouveau 150 years ago. I don't paint in this style, but I appreciate it as part of the zeitgeist. If you don't like it, paint something else and put it out there for people to write articles about.

Most comments are quite negative, but I think an important reason is that the "flat" style looks pretty good on a screen and feels "native" to the digital media in a way watercolors or pencil or oil paint just doesn't. It is basically the natural evolution from simple icons. Sure most of it is generic and derivative, but this is true for any style.

It is typical that a new media try to emulate older, more prestigious media. Digital lack the physicality, so there was a long infatuation with trying to make it look more "physical" - shadows, texture and so on. Now it seems the tide have turned and print magazines try to look more digital.

> The answer boils down to three T’s: technology, taste, and terrible pay.

I don't think technology has much to do with it. Digital illustration has been around for decades now, and technological improvements have made it easier to make complex, sophisticated art and reproduce all traditional techniques. So, neither the timeline nor the trend match.

The pay, sure, everyone always wants to make more money. I believe it's a factor. But it's been half a century since the 1970s. The style transition seems to have been too abrupt to be driven by long-term salary trends. Besides, it's hard to believe that the people making Corporate Memphis for, say, Facebook are so severely underpaid that no other style is feasible. In fact, if you have the money to pay your designers more, wouldn't you want to have them do something different, to stand out?

So it's taste, then. But I don't think it's a pure accident of fashion. This style aligns very well with the cultural moment: the infantilization of academic/corporate/consumer culture, the triumph of safety and risk-aversion, an antipathy towards the (conventionally attractive) human form, and an ever more homogenized culture facing an ever more heterogeneous public. If you were a designer trying to capture the zeitgeist, could you do better?

I have a real yearning to see some early 1990s corporate illustration now. It seemed like back then the motif of large framed doll people made of simple pencil shaded 3D effect geometry was very common.

I can even picture in my mind’s eye a Netgear hub being packaged in a box showing two generic figures skipping over some hillscape, achieving corporate goals together. Maybe even Windows 3.11 used the style?

I have no idea how to find an example though. Any help would be appreciated.

If you look through the last few centuries of illustration, it has always been subject to fashionable trends that are informed by the processes used to create and publish illustrations in their respective eras. There have always been distinctive and original illustrators, but the other 90% are usually playing to style trends. Ultimately concept is king and the style is malleable.

These days illustrations are much more commonly produced with fast turnaround time and smaller budgets. The print industry ain't what it used to be. Illustrations are now viewed on multiple platforms and have to be readable and graphic when only a couple inches wide while (in some cases) still looking good on a magazine rack.

I would say illustration went through it's most diverse and creative phase in the late 90s up to the iphone. Before Steve Jobs killed the print industry there was just such a rich tapestry of career illustrators making a comfortable living producing polished and distinctive work.

Art always changes, and art critics always complain when it does, and complain when it doesn't. Illustration is simply art on a shoestring. No one is able to afford a Normal Rockwell or hire David Hockney given publishing makes so little revenue today, so finding a way to make a graphical point quickly is no less an artistic achievement. Technology allows today things that no artist from the past could do, and there is no reason to not take advantage of it. At one point painting with oils was new, painting in many colors was new, printing in color was new, even thinking of art in the abstract was new; so art changes to take advantage.

I don't think that Le Monde illustration looks quite like the other pictures. That is to say I can imagine someone making some crudely drawn approximation of the other pictures and then getting them to snap into place as required but the Le Monde has details I think would need more than snapping.

At any rate I'm not sure if the sameness of style is all down to lack of talent, there has been sameness of style in past generations as well.

> A US-based editorial illustrator earns an average of $47,000 a year… Dismal pay isn’t just an American phenomenon.

Median income for the United States is under $35,000. I understand (through personal experience!) how much cost of living differs in major cities, but illustrators are not limited to living in those expensive locations.

In some ways, the shift in pay seems to reflect the change in location as much as anything else – at one point, illustrators for NY media basically needed to live in NYC, but that is no longer the case and pay seems to be adjusting.

What do people think of services like www.undraw.co, or www.humaaans.com? I like them, even if they are overused.

I think we're beginning to see an evolution of this style to start using more gradients, as we did about 10 years ago:

- community - https://dribbble.com/shots/11051166-community

- Miracle - https://dribbble.com/shots/10836129-Miracle

- Together - https://dribbble.com/shots/10804716-Together

I’d also count the old (2013) Google Now headers into this: https://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=37322378&pos...

They’re the same kind of illustrations, and a relatively early example, being from 2013.

It's good to finally know what name to call this style -- Corporate Memphis!

But besides the flat aesthetic having started on phones over the past decade-plus, I think there are two key factors the article hints at but doesn't really address directly.

1) If you're illustrating on your computer, there's something more inherently (although subjectively) "honest" about flat design -- it looks like computer vector shapes. Using brushes in Photoshop/Procreate is a throwback, "fake", simulated. If digital is the medium, then basically either pixel art or vector art are the two "most authentic" expressions of that medium.

2) Economically, shapes in Illustrator/etc. are infinitely easier to tweak. If the editor wants you to adjust your image, you might be able to spend just 10 minutes making the changes, rather than 6 hours drawing/painting up a totally new version. (Yes I know painting programs can support layers and other fancy things to help, but it's still going to be harder.)

Also, because flat art requires a good eye but very little learned "technical" technique (as opposed to, say, watercolor or oil painting), a lot more people can do it (just keep tweaking the shapes until it looks right), and it's very easy to achieve consistency across images, even if made by totally different people.

The pay thing is pretty interesting. Whilst it's really obvious here (and often taken advantage of), I think you find it everywhere people love something.

I think most people start drawing because something in them won't let them stop. They genuinely love it. Same with making music, etc etc. That moment you realise someone will pay you to do something you love (and will do for free) is completely mind blowing. Unfortunately you also end up wrestling with the "I'd do this for free, so how little will I accept," knowing full well that there's a kid down the street who draws really well and lives with their parents and to whom £75 is the equivalent to 2 days stacking shelves in a supermarket...

I found this with web stuff, especially early in my career (and before templates were everywhere). I really needed the money, but "the son of my friend's dentist will do it for £XYZ" and you end up working for less than minimum wage because you're not old enough to know better - plus you tell yourself you "love doing it enough" to do it free anyway, and it's "all experience".

When photography made realism trivial to achieve over a century ago, painters responded with alternatives, like impressionism.

Illustration overlaps with art, though isn't the same, but people who want to express themselves will create new ways that separate them from people who just use new technology that makes making eye-catching things easier.

This has been bugging me for months. You see this style everywhere and I wondered if the illustration world was down to just one artist or if it just lost originality. At least for use in marketing and branding I think it’s embarrassing to just do what everyone else is doing. How do you ever stand out?

You have to admire the chutzpah of the author, who bemoans the dwindling pay for illustrators, yet illustrates their own article with a picture from a $10 subscription service. Well played!

Interesting, that’s a thing I’ve never consciously noticed but now I am wondering how I didn’t...

This is similar to the thin-line animation / thick-line animation art style in cartoons. The push for efficiency and a quick turn-around has turned towards more simplistic art styles, for better or worse.

I think this is related to:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22490089

The very matter-of-fact education channel, Kurzgezagt, uses this style. I imagine partly because of the speed and ease of creation of the videos, but also for the unambiguous and direct capability in conveying information. https://www.youtube.com/user/Kurzgesagt

Perhaps an alternative style, roughly painted watercolours as seen here in Columbia Journalism Review https://www.cjr.org/special_report/what_were_reading.php

Perhaps it's a fast turn-around time thing? You want to hijack capitalize on news cycle with an article that gets clicks ... you need an eye grabbing graphic within hours. This style is the path of lease resistance.

Design trends don’t seem to coexist for long. One becomes dominant, quickly everyone grows tired of it, a new, quirky one comes along that gets traction, cycle repeats.

It’s just that, a trend. It comes and will go eventually, and new trend arise, like it always did in the past.

I really enjoy the vector-based style. Shape-based illustrations are really pleasing to me for some reason.

I tire of this style but what I mean to say is I'm tired of almost all new art. Of photography, of music, of visual, architectural, of design in general. The over-abundance of art and design has dulled my tastes and I can't help but see the same things everywhere, over and over. Where I see quality, I can't help but see pretension, commercial intent, and fakery.

My friends and I refer to this as FDP, Flat Disproportionate People, and it is _everywhere_!

As someone who has done commercial illustration for some of the big outlets, it’s strictly a numbers game. You can’t get enough work if your style is too distinct, or at least, not enough work consistently to make ends meet.

Outlets like the NYTimes still do employ talented illustrators with distinct, innovative styles. Just look at this drawing of Bill Gates by Connor Willumsen:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/17/technology/bill-gates-vir...

But it’s not the kind of work that’s centered by these publications.

Anecdotally, and from what I’ve read about the history of the profession, this stems from art direction not having as much independence from editors as they once had. Editors used to hire art directors with the intent of respecting and deferring to their taste and expertise. Now, they override and meddle, thinking themselves capable of directing an overall “vision” without domain knowledge or really even taste.

>it’s highly possible to make a living as an illustrator without learning how to draw in the classical sense.

I've been feeling for a while that this is the case for most democratized media - the bar has been lowered across the board, and now average Joe potentially has access to an audience with little to no vetting.

And I think this has drastic consequences for society. When our most popular media are chosen by majority they are effectively a "lowest common denominator", and when such media begins to dominate our attention (say, everyone's watching vloggers on YouTube), we as a society are less able to recognize merit, not just in arts, but in corporate and political contexts, too. Instead all judgements become determined by charisma and we spiral into idiocracy.

This isn't about snobbery. It's about refinement of technique, of work as art, which is the clear and apparent difference between these bland magazine covers and classical art. Talent is not a replacement for knowledge and practice.

If you want an easier time tracking whatever latest fad is out there, you can look at the home page of Dribbble.

Everyone doing the same art style is some peak creative work right there.

Huh. Cartoons went that way, decades ago :(

Humans of flat[1] have been documenting this for some time

https://twitter.com/humansofflat

Vector art can be nice. Late Picasso is universally admired, and posterism, Bauhaus, and other minimalist art movements are often praised for utilitarianism, efficiency and succinctness. However, viewing the New Yorker cover mentioned in the comments, a commenter noted the founder of the magazine might roll over in his grave to see such visual simplicity afront what was conceived as a sophisticated metropolitan publication. I was then amused to learn that neither the founder (born in a prospector's cabin in Aspen, Colorado) nor his first wife (who funded the thing, and was born in Missouri) were either born or bred New Yorkers. Apparently, New Yorkers are so convinced of their cultural affinities and the superiority thereof, that they neglect to notice they've been had.