I’m using this post to argue (through a canon of recent music videos) that the mid-2020s has developed a definite aesthetic sensibility. There are several elements that force it into 2020s specificity, and several tangential influences - Y2K-era J-horror, Norbert Schoerner, David LaChapelle. But everything in it is underpinned by an existing visual schema, the same one that dominated the Italian film industry from the late 1960s to late 1970s. The results of that sensibility are most readable in Italian gialli - a subgenre of surreal, stylish and bloody crime films.

Extremely well-researched and well-argued. As a consummate #hater of current trends I found this a great read on the contemporary slop aesthetics.

[...] I went digging for the credits of the Microsoft employees who worked on the user interface back then and found my way to Virginia Howlett, who joined Microsoft in 1985 as the company's first interface designer, and worked there up through the launch of Windows 95.

Bluntly speaking, Bachelard said back in 1958 that games are not just graphics. They are architecture that create an experience. He would have made an excellent level designer.

With the backdrop of South Korea’s ascent into an information society, we present a rare firsthand account of Asadal’s design mall—and thus a huge part of “Frutiger Aero”—straight from one of its sources.

Fascinating interview with a figure prominent in graphic design in the early 2000s, in what we'd call the "Frutiger Aero" design space. Unfortunately he's entirely AI-brained now, but there's some really fascinating tidbits about the tech world in East Asia around the turn of the century.

The inter-generational struggle to find clothes that fit more than a tiny portion of women

In 1986, a corporation that made women's lingerie bought every backpack brand you've ever trusted.

Three years ago I came across an interesting paper written up by a Microsoft employee, Kent Sullivan, on the process and findings of designing the new user interface for Windows 95. The web page has since been taken down - one reason why I'm a bit of a digital hoarder. It specified some of the…