RISE of Vaporwave, Memphis and Brutalism in Design

5 min readNov 4, 2017

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So basically i did a rant at Behance Portfolio Reviews Dhaka #6 about how graphic design styles which got popular mid 2016 and early 2017 but people don’t really know what it was about or the name, they just went with the flow of checking out other designers and trying to adapt their style without acknowledging the real meaning behind the design or its audience.

My presentation basically consisted of 3 distinct styles which got really popular, even among the public in my home country Bangladesh, and people mostly got confused by the movement while others didn’t really bother to explain it cause they just find it aesthetically pleasing and don’t know the history behind it, So my take was to explain where and how it came to be and what are its characteristics.

I talked about 3 distinct styles:
- Vaporwave
- Memphis
- Brutalism

Vaporwave is basically a music genre that started making rounds in tumblr and reddit early 2010. The music videos had aesthetic and pleasing visuals, often trippy, derived from the 80’s and 90’s sub culture. It started of as an experimental electronic music style which took parts from 80’s jazz, funk and new age genre and mixed and mashed together. Most notable song to define vaporwave would probably be MACINTOSH PLUS — リサフランク420 / 現代のコンピュー (which means “Computing of Lisa Frank 420//contemporary).

Now to talk about the visuals. Vaporwave artworks mainly consisted of Glitched out photographs, Old graphic design styles (like Word Art), Roman statues and figures, tropical elements (Palm trees, ocean, mountains, dolphins), Japanese culture (letterings, cityscapes), 8bit pixel art, and for some reason arizona iced tea.

Most notable use of vaporwave style in local (Bangladesh) region would be Bangla Ａｅｓｔｈｅｔｉｃｓ, Bangla ｓａｄｉｓｔｉｃ, বা ষ্পে র ঢে উ

In international regions, many artists such as Flume, Getter, Drake use such styles in their videos, it has also become an underground-ish sub genre for meme pages alike (see RARE 美学 and local examples). Even though mostly used in music and memes, this style provides a refreshing new take on retro artworks.

Memphis is a style right from the 80’s. It basically redefined the design industry and the decade, if you ask someone how was the 80’s like, they’d probably say colorful, and that’s what memphis is about, Bright bold solid colors with random geometric patterns and shapes layered on top of each other.

This style was basically introduced by the Memphis group, started in 1981 and led by the Italian architect Ettor Sottsass. Although based in Milan, Italy, they had architects and designers from all over the world. The name actually came from the lyrics of a Bob Dylan song which was being played during their meeting. Their art style derived from radical design in Italy which was fairly popular during 1960’s which basically tried to not follow the rules of modernism in architecture.

When you think about memphis, you’ll always see that its bright, its bold, its colorful, and beautiful af.

Some examples would include the branding of Cartoon Network and MTV.

Brutalism generated originally from western Europe. Its a style of architecture that has smooth bold geometric concrete buildings. Well not all concrete buildings were brutalist, and not all brutalist styled buildings used concrete, but at that time, concrete was a cheap way to develop structures that in a way, made sense. The term brutalism started getting popular in the 1950’s when british architectural critics started using it.

You might think brutalism comes from the english word brutal but it’s actually derived from the french word Béton brut, which means “raw concrete”. Massive use of this style was very popular back then and if you look closely, many old public buildings such as libraries and govt. buildings were made in this style. Filmmakers like to relate brutalist buildings to a dystopian future, like how horror films relate to gothic buildings.

Now how does this relate to graphic design? Brutalism basically got reintroduced in web design again early 2016 as an aesthetic approach to web design. It’s designs include Bright Colors and Chaotic Clashing. Mainly this style of web design looks raw, like an html file with no css or javascript, just raw markup. You’d see the typography being in monospace or minimalistic fonts alike, and everything is scattered, with no specific rules for composition. It makes you think that these look like mistakes which are unintentional, but if everything is executed properly, this type of style does not hinder much usability apart from normal sites and provides a twist to the present format of web, which in my opinion gets kinda boring. Few examples would include websites such as Google fonts, Bloomberg, The Verge, MTV, and the new and shiny Dropbox.

That’s mostly what i’ve said in my 15 minute rant at BeReviewsDhaka#6, had a great time connecting with the people there, and i hope you all would use some of your time to keep track of recent trend changes in graphic design so you’d have a clear idea about what’s happening in the graphic design world. Thank you for reading this, if you have any feedback do comment. References and extra helpful materials included below.

REFERENCES and Extra Materials to read about:

Vaporwave:

Memphis:

Brutalism:

RISE of Vaporwave, Memphis and Brutalism in Design

REFERENCES and Extra Materials to read about:

Written by Shahriyer Shuvo