The A.I.-Design Aesthetic That's Taking over the Internet
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
Im curious what the Ai look exactly is
The original cliparts were paper books. Designers would clip out the pictures they want, glue them to their master document, and then run it through a photocopier. Then later we had the big hero web templates and stock images. Even though every person involved has an excellent camera in their pocket, the thought of using it was unbearable compared to just downloading a stock image. Then we got canva which was basically the perfection of cliparts and stock images.
Now we have AI web design. It's just the newest step of the least exciting 'something needs to exist but its form is mostly without value' category of "content", which is itself a category so devoid of meaning that nobody doing it even bothers to give themselves the title of 'designer' or 'writer' or 'illustrator', instead self labeling as 'content creator'.
For what it's worth though, I find AI designs to be mostly okay? They aren't exciting but at least the ultra low contrast design era is finally over and I can finally have usable scrollbars and easily find the login button on most websites now.
It is far more logical to believe that, than to believe that Memphis Corporate was a thing driven by humans.
these people are not very bright
It is better to profess allegiance to their new replacements and eek out a little more time of employment, than to be branded by the powers that be as a contrarian, a luddite, an enemy of progress and get the boot now, not tomorrow.
Let's say you're a trumpet player. Really, you want to play baroque chamber music--which you do on weekends with your mad young crew of underground baroque chamber music hotheads--but to make rent you'll have to take a job as a studio musician recording commercial jingles and backing tracks for pop acts. It's not baroque chamber music, but you can get paid while you hone your chops (literally, or at least more literally than is usually meant). Life is good.
One day, all the studios decide they don't need a trumpet player because they bought a synthesizer and they can just have a pianist (whom they already employ anyway) do the trumpet tracks, so you're laid off. You even get a new job making more money writing trumpet tracks to be recorded on the synth (with trumpet tracks being so much cheaper now, producers are using them much more). You keep playing trumpet for baroque chamber music on the weekends -- even fall in love with and marry your cellist -- but you can't do it for work anymore.
Is this a happy ending? Well, the love story is nice, but a bit beside the point. The rest of it is, at best, bittersweet. Something real has been lost that can't be made whole with money.