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Analog Nostalgia and a Liminal Longing for 90s Design · Design Darlings

• Allie Miller: Hello, darling. Design Darlings: Hello, darling, I'm Robin. Allie Miller: And I'm Allie and welcome to Design Darlings, the podcast where we obsess over what makes, breaks, or bakes in the real world. This week we are talking about nostalgia and the design of nostalgia, specifically the 90s. We are longing for a time where imperfection and experimentation design was both celebrated and adored, where color was everywhere, and where we existed in a sort of liminal space between analog bliss our current AI-saturated future. And I think for today's episode, we really want to investigate. Is our longing for the 90s specifically and nostalgia in general? Is this just a blip on our social media algorithms, or is it a legitimate trend that we should explore from both a design and a cultural perspective? So today we're gonna investigate. And I think a perfect jumping-off point is a current TikTok social media conspiracy theory centered around the Lisa Frank. if you loved an animal with a lot of glitter and a lot of color and you were a grade schooler in the 90s, you had a Lisa Frank notebook, pencil, pen, eraser, trapper keeper, you know, you name it. ⁓ So recently Frank has been in ⁓ the media social media, they started to put these sort of cryptic posts saying we're so back. However, there's this this manufacturing facility, in Arizona where they produced all of their their product back in the days. And it's basically just been abandoned for the past fifteen or so years. And had these big, giant, colorful walls. One, they started posting on social media and everyone's like, Why is Lisa Frank posting? You guys haven't produced a product or really sold anything in seemingly ages. And then they started paint the walls and so people online were just flipping out, like, ⁓ my god, Lisa Frank is their walls? Like, what does this mean? And everyone got really excited, and then I just think that's a nice little sort of a flashpoint ⁓ of why this specific thing. Whoever's running the social media and the marketing for Lisa Frank, why they're even doing it at this point in time, but then also just seeing the the visceral and sort of the euphoric reaction of people, longing for ⁓ a Frank trapperkeeper. So Yeah. Design Darlings: Or whatever Lisa Frank things they have. So okay, so they posted We're So Back and they posted pictures of the walls. Did they actually paint? Because I saw that some reporters showed up to see what was going on and the windows were still broken and it didn't look like there was progress. So is this an AI paint job or is the warehouse actually it's been made over and people are the TikTok investigators have found it and it's redone. Allie Miller: Well, that's what's interesting because the the whole the facility itself is still pretty derelict. It's just there was one wall, like towards the back. It's one wall that before had these sort of big rainbow panels. And then they've only painted one wall. But yeah, the parking lot is still full of weeds. There's still fences. That's a that's a thing that's really creepy. There's this one place that they've refreshed, but the rest of it still looks incredibly run down. Design Darlings: Which is one wall. Okay. I see. Okay. So is this a bait and switch? This feels okay. So this is it's a liminal space. if you go and show you see the it's it's still abandoned and creepy, but there's that one wall that they're using to I I don't know what they're teasing or giving people hope over. Did they go bankrupt? What happened? Like, has anyone followed the money on this to see what's going on? Because there's that 2024 documentary about them the the ugly grit behind the glitter and people getting paid like eight dollars an hour to work twelve hour days and they tried to do a launch of I think cosmetics or something and it didn't happen. They still owed people money. So I wonder who owned the owns the rights to Lisa Frank and what is going on there. Allie Miller: Mm. Mm. The grit behind the glitter and glamour, Yeah. ⁓ I it's a nice sort of Design Darlings: I w I I need a money update. Yeah. But okay. Allie Miller: proof point right now because we're also seeing a lot of thought pieces and articles about the resurgence of malls coming back and Z ⁓ is using cameras and analog media and we have a rise in zines and collage art. Like why are we seeing right now this resurgence in both the aesthetic of the nineties, ⁓ but then the ⁓ the tools to speak. products we were using in the nineties. Design Darlings: Mm-hmm. Yes. I th I feel like we're let's let's follow our true intro and we're gonna talk about what makes nineties design, broke it, and then how we're trying to bake it back in to maybe moment, maybe it's a it's like you can't there's these filters happening right now where people are trying to get this nineties look. ⁓ and ⁓ the ratio of a VHS cassette was I think Allie Miller: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Design Darlings: point three digital cameras were way beyond that. So even even trying to get a filter that looks like a VHS grit or grain that we used that we grew up with, trying to imitate that is funny because that was a product of the tool itself. And so what you're saying, I mean, yes, there's so many conversations around nostalgia for nineties ⁓ the textures and the colors also are coming back because everything got gray and minimal and I don't know, took itself really seriously for a while. and when your camera was just a camera and you had to wait and go get the film developed or develop it yourself if you've ever Allie Miller: Mm-hmm. Design Darlings: Darkroom, raise your hand. I'm we're raising our hands. Because we have done darkroom film development Allie Miller: Raising hands. Design Darlings: if took a picture on ⁓ your camera you had to wait you had to go drop it off you had to it to Walgreens or something to get those pictures developed or you had to develop them yourself. so you couldn't see that picture instantaneously. You couldn't scrutinize it. You couldn't edit it with Photoshop. Girl, somebody's finger could have been in the front of the camera. I mean it was just the the analogness ⁓ of that and and of not being able to stream a movie on Netflix because you had to go rent it at Blockbuster and you hoped that nobody had it out and if it was out, you had to pick something else. The literal physical availability of movies and media was not as insanely ubiquitous and seamless as it is nowadays. And that girl, that's so different. Allie Miller: Yeah. And I think three things that you kinda hit on that we're probably gonna revisit a few times in this episode, are ⁓ time, imperfection, and constraint. So thinking about having to develop film, was a a ⁓ period. And when we have to wait for things, when making things take time, what does that do to is produced? Our ⁓ sense ownership over something, our the way in which we or critique something, What does time to do with it? I think the imperfections, The Xerox quality, the graininess. Of the photo everything we make today can be so pixel perfect? Is the sign of human touch? are we looking for something that says, I as a human with a consciousness a heart and an emotional depth, I made this. I want the world to know a human made this, That's like a marker of success and then constraint, constraints breed creativity. right now when we have so many options and ⁓ you can create anything ⁓ with snap of a finger, we longing for something in which we're overstimulated by choice option? So do we want to be in a time where there's a there's a tighter array of options we can choose from. know. Ask me things. ⁓ Design Darlings: Yeah, fewer Yeah. Well, because y it has to slow you down. Because right now I can ask AI to make me anything with a prompt, but when I have to take the steps to draw it and then I mean Hello, that's the design process. You have an idea. You have to learn how to express it usually through drawing. You have to sketch out that concept or make a two D representation of that concept. Then you have to iterate it forward and make it better. Maybe it's a 3D object. Maybe it is supposed to be a two-dimensional design. ⁓ but you iterate on that the time that you have to take to build that and make that better to get there to the finished product. you know that there is intention and time and labor put into that. ⁓ where now we're s we're kind of taking all of the creative labor and outputs that people have generated into the world and AI models are being trained on it to synthesize it back and give you a representation of what humans have already created. But it's a it's ⁓ Allie Miller: Mm. Design Darlings: I mean it's an algorithmic version, which is really interesting to think about, that it's just, kind of vacuuming up, hoovering up all the things we've already done to spit that back out. So, ⁓ Allie Miller: And ⁓ at core is about process. I design is a lot of things, but I think intention and process. But you know, those who to make and build and create and explore most times, We love we the process of doing that. We love the making and the exploration. ⁓ And so Design Darlings: Yes. An intention. Mm-hmm. Allie Miller: when you have technology that can essentially out the process, just gives you the end results, does that feel hollow? ⁓ lose ⁓ joy of making. Design Darlings: Yeah. I think this instantaneous of it in the thinking about the time constraints of the nineties because you to wait for your output because of the process, you couldn't upload it Literally so that as soon as you upload it, someone in Japan can see it. you had to wait for the mail to deliver a zine or ⁓ even a magazine. So you had pockets and subcultures where you had to go in order for those places to exist. and you had to be part of that subculture. I think at one point in the nineties there was like over three thousand, maybe thirty thousand, I have to look back. independent zines being circulated in the United States. And now everything is so instant that those little ⁓ little pockets of design, they were like these little incubators where you had these subcultures ⁓ in the way that they existed in the world and the the objects they used and the products they used. they were part of that culture and you had to go specific places to find it. you couldn't just order a skateboard on the internet. You had to go to a skate shop and you had to figure out you to find the right trucks and the right bearings and all the things that you wanted. You could build your skateboard from scratch. Not to say you still can't do that, but there was an effort involved in that journey and taking the time to go and to do that. I was looking actually at some of the notes you have around the Memphis design group. when we think back ⁓ to nineties design in terms of pattern and color, their fingerprints were ⁓ all over it. because of the stuff that they did in from Miami Vice to Taco Bell Cups, they ⁓ they have lot of the patterns and colors that we think of and it was because of that design group. Do you wanna talk a bit more about that? Allie Miller: Yeah. Yeah, you know, even today, people still are like the Taco Bell Cup is iconic as just a designed object. ⁓ there was a but you know what's interesting is even at the time, there was still this tension between ⁓ the maximalism of the Memphis group and Design Darlings: Yeah. Allie Miller: this push-pull of like minimalism and cleanness and classicness There was a critic who described the era as a shotgun wedding between Bauhaus and Fisher Price, which I just loved that quote. I just thought it ⁓ so funny to me, because it's like ⁓ you're all of the core elements of design. mean, these Memphis group designers were incredibly talented, thoughtful, classically trained influential designers. They're like, you know. Design Darlings: Yeah, classically trained designers. Mm-hmm. Allie Miller: What? I'm bored at how serious everything is. I'm gonna create this wild fever dream set of living room furniture, right? There's the iconic photograph of all the Memphis group designers in the boxing ring, but the boxing ring looks like a giant inflatable mattress. ⁓ Design Darlings: Yes. No. Allie Miller: I just love I have nothing right I feel like nothing poignant to say about the Memphis group other than it's something felt very punk to me about them of we are campy and corny and cheesy and we are knowingly creating things that we know the design world is gonna hate. Design Darlings: There is Allie Miller: But or maybe not hate, but strongly dislike. But then the mass markets loved it. I think people were ⁓ sick of just this waspy eighties and ⁓ Design Darlings: 80s like corporate bros, block phones and gray. I mean, it's it's funny because it comes back to the Lisa Frank idea that ⁓ some point I need to find a timeline of this, everything in color exploded and and we had those trapper keepers and we had those things that were really fun. You had innovation with injection molding plastics so people were making really colorful phones and the iMac the the colorful iMac happened in 1999 and ⁓ these machines they were all these big grey boxes and here comes Apple and they say hey you can still have a serious machine and it can be colorful and it can be fun. And that expression in the nineties, also a pendulum swing away from the 80s 80s had like a darker aesthetic to it. It had the ⁓ the really dark forest green and maroons ⁓ I saw someone talking about the color theory of that the opposite of those colors were the bright teals and the pink that sat at the ⁓ other side of that forest green and that maroon. I mean the Taco Bell purple and that that squiggle. You know what I'm talking about? That squiggle. It was on Dixie Cups and it was teal and purple. those those flourishes, one they weren't minimal, they were just decorative enough. Allie Miller: Yeah. Yeah. Design Darlings: But they also were able to give people a sense of fun ⁓ everything else had been just kind of drab in certain ways. Allie Miller: Yeah, I mean, you kinda maybe think about too even the colors, right? Even in film, like I thought of American Psycho, I know that's a wild comparison, but it's so and dark and everything is so hyper saturated. And even just in film, like know, the seventies, eighties very, very early nineties, you have a really, really dark period of cinema. You have a lot of existential Design Darlings: Mm. Yeah. Allie Miller: very brooding, very violent and, music and things that. ⁓ And then coming the nineties, there's a sort of counter push of we're looking joy, we're looking for light, we're looking for, excitement and so you see that reflected in everything from music to to interior design. This is where we have the early heydays of like decorating scents, which God, do I love decorating scents and like design on a dime and just these like interior design shows where it was not about necessarily like looking back. We people are roasting these old shows online because of just how gaudy and gross they are, but they there's this kookiness and this like playfulness about it. And ⁓ Design Darlings: Well when okay, ⁓ I'm thinking about you know what coincides with all of this? is the launch of cable TV. So ⁓ you have cable TV and you get stations like MTV, you get these different ⁓ you get these different channels that can launch your own content, ⁓ they can create things that are that are different. I mean I understand the the Allie Miller: Mm. Design Darlings: concept w you had antenna, but it was like, let's see, HBO launched in 72, CNN in nineteen eighty, MTV. So like by the mid eighties, was in about half of America's ⁓ rooms. so because MTV launched in nineteen eighty one. And so cable TV was kind of the first algorithm where you could watch what you wanted to and you had to pick it. You had to choose it. You you could look at something that was your taste. And so those nineties subcultures got amplified. So the stuff that was colorful, the stuff that was working, it wasn't just trying to fit into a couple of major networks. It was something that you could choose and subscribe to. And I think what you're mentioning about hope and optimism made me think of Baywatch and like the idea that you could create also Baywatch happened in the nineties. ⁓ there's a docuseries you should totally watch if you haven't on Netflix is about American gladiators. Do you remember American gladiators? Do you remember that? ⁓ my god. Go watch that. It was insane. ⁓ They were like, there was no safety. There was no that like we were just doing stuff and putting on TV. And so it feels like that ⁓ the emergence of Allie Miller: Yeah. Design Darlings: cable TV and the idea that we're gonna just make content to put on television because people can watch it when they want to and subscribe to it, it gave it a different look and feel and you had you had advancements in the camera technology itself, so you could have a handheld camera recorder ⁓ and was so much ⁓ less a VHS film cassette fitting inside of a camera and that you had this proliferation of aesthetics in the nineties, that media had its own boom and we were consuming it and seeing it, it brought these subcultures to life that existed in different pockets ⁓ of the world and of the United States. the 90s was a great time. It was a really wonderful heyday. I feel like the connection there with cable television and us creating more and diverse media, I think those are really closely connected. Allie Miller: I think you're getting this idea of like, how is technology pushing culture forward? How is tech new technology allowing us to make things and distribute things and produce media and content in a way we haven't been able to before? ⁓ it's like you said, new manufacturing techniques and our use of plastics. I'm thinking it like the iconic quote in the graduate: plastics. The future is plastics. ⁓ But have people like Kareem Rashid, industrial designer who's just pumping out giant bulbous stuff, ⁓ as fast he can. And we ate it up. We loved it. And then and then I what's interesting too is talking about like media, whether it's MTV or cable or film or whatever, even like graphic design. Photoshop ⁓ is the hot on scene. 1990 is when Photoshop 1.0 was launched, right? ⁓ Design Darlings: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And like two people knew how to use it. It was a very specialist tool. Allie Miller: Right. So Yeah, so we were starting to be able to the ability to create things using computing technology. was starting to become more accessible to people. when the Memphis group like think of the the them the Memphis designers didn't have Photoshop, But now we intuitively like, ⁓ if we want that aesthetic, we're just gonna pull up Illustrator or Photoshop or InDesign and just make a Memphis inspired poster. But had to do still had to do all that analog. it's just I can't even imagine just how rapidly ⁓ even in the span of four or five years, going from everything by hand, illustrating by hand, aligning type by hand, even as architects, designing blueprints, in a more analog way, to in like less than ten years, your entire profession you can suddenly do with digital tools. Design Darlings: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and and it's funny because also in the nineties is when the internet ⁓ like officially happened. Like I remember watching the Miss America pageant, I'm pretty sure it was nineteen ninety four, and them saying, You can find us online on the world wide web at www dot missamerica dot com and I will never get them saying worldwide web. Allie Miller: What's the internet? Design Darlings: I remember watching the Miss America pageant, I'm pretty sure it was nineteen ninety four, and them saying, You can find us online on the world wide web at ⁓ www dot missamerica dot com and they just And then by nineteen ninety five it went fully commercial and you had AOL discs and serial boxes. So we went from having cable T V in the late eighties because like using the television box to do different cable stations. Like I remember watching wrestling on the weekends. ⁓ And then by the time we moved, there was the internet and AOL was the That's also you had a second phone line in the house, because you needed a line to get on the internet. And ⁓ that was also changing the way that we communicated. And if you had a digital camera, could you could send a picture to your aunt in Milwaukee. and so the nineties was pro it was a proliferation of thinking about what the future felt like. Which we've always been doing that as humans. We get this new technology and we're like, what's it gonna do in the future? And we try to imagine this big, great future, and it kinda half delivers on what that future should be. by all accounts of The Jetsons, we should be in flying cars by n Where's my flying car? but the movies that were happening too The Fifth Element, The Matrix, Minority Report, were imagining they were imagining the future with AI, really, and robots and what those things would be. They also were very serious. I aside from the Fifth Element, which was super colorful and campy and brilliant. I mean, I love the goatea, like I love that he did all of the costuming for that. ⁓ and that was a future that was very different than the future that the Matrix presented us and everything was getting kind of serious and dystopian. And I think this w what ⁓ made the night what makes the design, we talked about it was colorful, you had technology, there was a lot of texture. But then when it comes to what broke it, It was the seriousness of it. So Johnny Ive made that beautiful colored Mac that people remember, but also became that was ⁓ a player. It became a very serious tech player. And all of a sudden the aluminum and the glass and the minimalist style of it felt more futuristic. And so I think when it became a an incredibly global product. And people were investing in it and buying this technology that was actually pretty expensive, that was an investment It couldn't be silly, it couldn't be fun. So now the interface and that screen was more important than the object itself. So we went from being all about the object and the object design to the screen and the interface design. And that that broke the nineties. Allie Miller: I I have to bring up the, enduring classic Legally Blonde. Design Darlings: No. Mm. Allie Miller: Which premiered in 2001. And there's the iconic scene where Elle Woods mistakenly goes to a party thinking it's a costume party. She shows up as a Playboy bunny, realizes all these little waspy, meanies have tricked her. So then she goes to the bookstore in the middle of the night and she's buying a hot pink Mac clamshell in line in her Playboy costume. And I think that just perfectly exemplifies what you just said, Robin, of all All she was trying to do was just have people take her seriously. It's really interesting that she's buying the pink clamshell, which point you're arguing is In early two thousands we would have been moving out of that, right? That no longer is not a sign of if you want to be taken seriously, house can't be filled with Kareem Rashid, garbage cans and bulbous, bright orange and bright ⁓ electronics, ⁓ ⁓ To be taken seriously, you need to like ⁓ out of the matrix or, you know, ⁓ Blade Runner something. Yeah. Design Darlings: Yeah. ⁓ Global business. Yeah, all of a sudden, it said your personality was serious. And it's funny because I think what Apple did then I mean it's always had a smooth design aesthetic, but it went even more minimal. It leaned into that minimal design. And I think that's where it took the serious angle. And of course it was then it was using aluminum and then everyone started to copy the aluminum shell that they made and and their their MacBooks for a while were just black or white with like the lower ⁓ the the entry model. And then the MacBook Air came along, I bought one of the first ones and it had it was this single piece of aluminum that had been machined out and that and everything like lived inside of it. So that was and it was very futuristic. I mean I'm not gonna say it wasn't cool. It was awesome. Allie Miller: Mm. Design Darlings: But Mac stood out because of their design aesthetics. They've always stood out for that. And then everyone copied. ⁓ Allie Miller: Yeah. There's the aesthetics and then I think just really the marketing and branding where they were Yes, there was the aesthetics, the form factor was very beautiful and neat, but they really worked very hard to say if you have one of these products, you're of the technology cool kids. Even in their commercials, They had ⁓ the Rolling and U2 They had these artists putting out, you know. Design Darlings: Mm-hmm. Yes. Allie Miller: either being the music in their commercials or even just the design of the commercials was super minimalist and they were playing with motion and movement and color and this sort of a s this graphic quality know, it was just cool, it was aspirational to say, my entire technology setup is ⁓ all Mac products. ⁓ Design Darlings: Mm. It was also good design to that point, which I don't think we had really seen intentional design. You know, computers were big and bulky and square. Mac all of a sudden had the iMac that all fit in the one, like it was all wrapped in the screen and you could just set it on your desk and you didn't have a tower. ⁓ Apple, really cared about good design. And if you weren't literate that, you were like, Why would I pay nine hundred ninety-nine dollars for a laptop? Allie Miller: Mm-hmm. Design Darlings: instead of three hundred ninety nine dollars for a laptop because I don't know the difference. Then you got the Apple store that came along and people could see it and understand it and and everyone understood they could speak geek and they were like, ⁓ this is this is better design. So that lifted the taste for everyone and Apple ⁓ created a now I I know I talked about this in the first episode of the four the true four orders of design. So they had the ⁓ 2D visual language, they had the aesthetics, the the visual and actual language of their product and it always stood out. And then they had the object design, so they had the physical design of their products also were really unique and stood out. You had the interaction with their products, which was also unique because of the way they did software design. And so your interaction design with the company and with their products was entirely different than going into like a gateway store. And then the way it was housed in the shop itself, Apple built this world f that was completely ⁓ within itself that good luxury brands do really well. They have a they have a visual aesthetic, they have a language, they have a design semantic language, they have a code, that you can recognize, they have products that you interact with, they have the feeling of going into their world and being in the shop. And they have the architectural aesthetic as well. But and it all fits in together like a Russian nesting doll. So Apple changed the game of design that people before that only had a reference point for, I think, in luxury in luxury And so Apple, democratized it and made everyone say, ⁓ what? What is this? We're serious too. Like we we can do all this and it was very futuristic and it was I mean it I ⁓ It was like a huge like their valuation, I mean they skyrocketed. I it it it like took over because everyone finally they got it. Everyone's like, ⁓ we want this. This is the best. Allie Miller: Yeah. you know, even thinking about the the all encompassing ecosystem nature of the Apple brand, I'm also thinking about the genius bar, This idea that if something did go wrong or if you had If you needed help with something, you could physically walk back into the store and you were automatically like, This is our product, this is our brand. We'll take responsibility and ownership over helping make sure that if something goes wrong, you can talk to somebody who's kind and friendly and non-judgmental and they'll walk you through your problems. And it's all still under the Apple brand. Whereas if you had something that wasn't Apple, maybe you'd go to Best Buy and like talk to somebody on the Geek Squad or you'd go to some, random technology store in the middle of a city. Call tech support. ⁓ was it was Yeah, it wasn't human. There was a detachment from it. There was like a coldness and you were removed from the brand, but Apple understood that at all life cycles of the brand we're gonna have one consistent experience and make you feel like you're part of our our family of, you know, products and services. Design Darlings: Yeah. Well, and you wanted to hold on to the product longer. And they were the first to really I think sure they had a product that as they as they took away the color options from their computers they made, I they had skins and accessories and ways that you could take that gray block of a phone or that gray computer and you could you could snap a cover on it. You could snap a case on it. Now all of a sudden your personality is back because accessories and so now your accessories could be colorful and fun. Apple was great and is still great at optimizing the experience of taking the friction and people loved that and every other brand caught on. And so now having frictionless design, your phone can take a photo, can take a movie, can do your taxes, can Hold a spreadsheet. Like now your phone is a bajillion things in one, and we've removed the friction from it. And so we are taking this step back to say, what if I don't want my phone to do everything or to feed me things constantly? Because now you can shop on your phone. Remember when you could only make a call on a phone? you literally you can run a company from a phone, We are the last generation, you and I. The elder millennials or xennials. Yes, we had that analog experience. We grew we had to get up and click the channel box to change the channels. We had to wait for our photos to be developed. And that analog time is I think that's the nostalgia it's being longed for. ⁓ there was a simplicity to it, that it wasn't instantaneous. You weren't taking a photo ⁓ Allie Miller: Them ladies. Mm-hmm. Design Darlings: And then photoshopping it or filtering it because you wanted to see how many people were gonna spawn to it and like it, you were gonna take a picture, get it dropped off, you're gonna get an envelope back full of pictures. and then you would maybe hand date to like figure out what you wanted to duplicate, go back, be like, I want this picture, this this picture, and you would hand it out to your friends. Allie Miller: Mm-hmm. Design Darlings: Like that was the process of photo sharing back in the day. And that is such a different different place than we are now, it didn't have the instantaneous nature that we have today? Allie Miller: Yeah. The concept of uniformity is of bouncing around in my head. You know, when we talk about the Apple products, we went from truly full spectrum color products to was white. There was a solid 10-year period where every single apple product was the exact same stark white. And then they came out with silver and everyone was like, ⁓ we can get a silver. We can pick between silver or white. This is incredible. And then of course, you know, Samsung and Pixel and every other company started following suit. So everything looked the exact same. ⁓ we're now looking for things that don't create consistent results. if we all have the exact same camera and the exact same phone, The things we create are all gonna look exactly the same, We the actual uniqueness or individuality from what we're making. And so now I think we're searching for reintroducing or ⁓ rediscovering those things that allow us to make in a way that will create variation and change and differentiation. Design Darlings: Well, like, okay, we make it we made it, we broke it, we're gonna bake back in something that puts the fingerprints on it. And it's funny so Apple so I was thinking about this. Their phones were always they ended up being like covered up by your case because you also don't know how to break it. Allie Miller: Mm. Yeah. Your case. Yeah. Design Darlings: Like we had the color there, but we were also like trying to protect this really precious device that if you broke it, you were disconnected from the world. Like, ⁓ my gosh. You and I lived in a time where you went outside and you played until the street lights came on and no one could call you on a phone. Like you were you you had to shout. Allie Miller: Yeah. No. Your parents just hoped you were home by sunset, you know? Design Darlings: Well they would ch yell really loud. So thinking about Instagram and how that was really the first digital picture filter experience that we had. was the time that you could you could have a nostalgic like Polaroid experience where you had I don't know how many filters they first had in the Instagram release, but that was really fun because now you could have a digital picture and you could have a filter. And I think that in a way, everyone probably would have just been happy with that. Allie Miller: Mm-hmm. Design Darlings: But then it just kept escalating and escalating and escalating. And so now that simplicity of just saying, Hey, I just want to take a picture and put a filter on it and like call it a day. The algorithm has hijacked that feed because it used to be you would have I remember when I had maybe seven friends on Instagram, because we were all just getting Instagram and you would go on it and you would upload a photo of like something cool from your day and you would see your your friends would see it and you would see your friends' pictures and that was it. And then the Allie Miller: Mm-hmm. Design Darlings: Algorithm crept in where you're like, I don't even see my friend's stuff anymore. I see ads and I see all of these things. Like, I think the 90s also had a very connected feel to just getting the people and the feeds that you wanted. That your feed in the 90s was going, taking your bike to your friend's house. It was calling them on the phone, and it was sharing photos directly with that person. if there's a way for us to reclaim some of that. freedom from the algorithm I feel like that's what people are longing for. there's no ooh, I have your eyeballs for a minute, let me feed you this product or that product or these sets of products. I think people are tired of that and they're saturated with good design, hijacking the product. parts of our lives that we we used to have as like a sharing moment and that sharing has been co opted by mean, by marketing unfortunately. Allie Miller: Mm. Yeah, I've seen a really interesting rise in what I'll just call like mail delivery where ⁓ mainly creatives and artists, ⁓ but have sort of an art subscription service where you pay a dollar fifty a month or two dollars a month or something, and the will make Design Darlings: Hm. Allie Miller: a a simple little picture and then it it's like a mail service. And so you, Robin, every month you'll get a little envelope in the mail with like a picture of a fish or a little block print of a flower or something cute. And I think it gets to this thing you're talking about about connection, how It is an incredibly direct way to say completely taking technology out of the picture of out of the equation altogether. We're making ⁓ by from the mind of the creator, the artist. That artist putting it in an envelope and putting the stamp on the envelope and sending it to you ⁓ and you're the mailbox and you're getting it and the connection we have with the person who made that thing is so much more direct and then that network, we're tightening that network. So an ad, an algorithm isn't gonna get in the way of that. And I just I I love this sort of trend of, you know, artists and makers and designers taking back over the distribution of their to their their ⁓ Design Darlings: Mm. Hmm. Well that's what ⁓ the the trend right now in design is offline, everything's going offline. And so if you want to be part of it, you have to go in person to a thing, to a place to participate. And It is not there's no footprint, there is no presence to it. And the new exclusive is like the speakeasy of where where are we going? Is there a password? How do I get in? Allie Miller: Yeah. Design Darlings: there's a really great episode of Abfab where ⁓ Eddie and Safi they all go to Paris for this photo shoot and there's a there's a there's a part in the episode where Eddie and Safi go off and ⁓ they go to Buddha bar and Safi asks Eddie, she goes, So what makes this the place, Mom? And and she's looking around, she's like, ⁓ well darling What makes the place is you, you being there. And she's like, It's the music, it's the ambiance, but it's you. Like it's you being there and physically showing up. That's what makes it special. and this was in I'm trying to think of when this episode was. Probably like ninety eight, ninety nine, maybe early two thousands when Buddha bars were a thing, and DJs would go spin and they would do like really chill ⁓ house music. ⁓ and you could you could buy the C D ⁓ but I think that's part of the 90s comeback is going to a place and not having your face in your phone the whole time. Obviously there was there's no phones in this episode, no one no one had a digital phone yet. But that return and longing for being present, some people don't know that feels like. I mean, we grew up understanding what that feels like, but for this digital generation. ⁓ Allie Miller: Mm. Design Darlings: I can't imagine what it would have been like to grow up with a phone in my hand all the time. Allie Miller: Both a phone in your hand all the time and then also knowing that you are also the subject of a phone. So if you're not holding the phone, somebody else is holding the phone. So you're always on, Are you always on guard? when was reading about nostalgia, I was Design Darlings: Or screen. Mm-hmm. Allie Miller: it's interesting to look at nostalgia through ⁓ what that aesthetic meant the time versus what we think of it now. Design Darlings: Mm. Allie Miller: And so this article they used Las Vegas as an example. And at the time the 50s and 60s, the aesthetic of Las Vegas to people currently living in that time was about escapism and risk, ⁓ Now we think of Las Vegas, there's novelty, there's camp, our nostalgia over it is not necessarily the same feelings that we had if, say, we were living in the 60s. So when it comes to 90s design, my question to you, Robin, is what do we think, what was the feeling or the intention of the ascetic at the time? What are we trying to capture now? Design Darlings: Mm-hmm. Well, the experience ⁓ of being ⁓ in your twenties and the nineties was moving through the world you feeling you had to also present yourself through a digital algorithm world. you didn't have to have a dual presence. I mean, we used to go out and Nobody had a camera. Nobody had a phone in their hand. No one was gonna record it and like send it around to people. So I think the idea of constantly being captured and presented and represented we didn't have to grow up with or think about. and I feel like for people who did grow up with that, they want a version of the world that we existed in when we were younger that did not have that, where they weren't constantly being curated or watched I I think that there is a longing. That nostalgia for the nineties is the nostalgia for saying, Can I please step away from the algorithm and just exist where I don't even have to think about an algorithm or being on because it's been it's been fed to me and it's been prioritized my whole life. And so ⁓ maybe the backlash of that is that people will stop or step away or find more ways to say, you know what, this Alaran thing, I don't really like it. Maybe it's kind of toxic. Maybe it's creating echo chambers. Maybe it's keeping people from talking to each other and having conversations and it's just made more bubbles. the subcultures of people being offline in the nineties still existed, but ⁓ you couldn't exist in that world all the time. So if you were into skate culture, you would go skateboard, you'd go to the skate park, but you still came home and you still were around other people. Where now you can have your face in your phone constantly eating, dreaming, sleeping, streaming that subculture, and it is feeding you endlessly. And you never get a break from it. So like the the ivy drip of the phone being constantly feeding you stuff, I think people are tired of and they're realizing this might not be really good for me. That might be the best diet. Allie Miller: Yeah, I think thinking back to kind of what we were talking about the earlier top of the episode, I think the time it was happening, you ⁓ nineties and aesthetic was sort a counter reaction to stuffiness and seriousness, it was about experiencing something that was fun and new and joyful and Exploratory, So there's like was like exploration and excitement. And think now, yeah, it's it's an escapism, it's a reconnection to people. It's a longing for the imperfection, longing for not necessarily solitude, but being away constantly having ⁓ critique or judgment or feedback Design Darlings: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Allie Miller: I saw I found a quote in this ⁓ blog. It's called Design and Paper. So this is specifically in context to graph design and talking about creating design on like a physical tactile piece of paper as opposed to just a screen. this quote it said, The allure of nostalgia comes as a counteract for the ever-growing digitization, while paper offers a tangible experience amidst a life lived through a screen. Design Darlings: Yeah. Well, it's like guideaboard, guide a board, the society of the spectacle. And thinking what we're performing for? Like things like jackass. ⁓ I think about people doing things for the camera that were are there things that we would even do if it wasn't for the camera or for people watching? you know, the nineties also gave us the real world, the like the MTV show The Real World, where it was the first real where we saw people living together who were different. Allie Miller: Mm. Design Darlings: And what had to watch them like hash things out and it made for really good dramatic TV, but it also felt very real, and it was the first time that you brought some of these subcultures together and they had to exist within a world together and talk to each other and and and you because you had like the gay person, you had the person from the south, like you had people from different parts of the country, and you had to listen to and understand them and see them work through their beliefs. And you don't have to do that with a screen. You can just critique other people and clip their video and talk about why they're so stupid and blah blah blah. And you don't have to you don't have to work through anything to resolve differences or to understand that person. You just get to to have your own your own hot take on everything and I think the hot take reductionist approach that is happening in the algorithm is in some ways not really healthy and people are walking away from that because because of what it's done to our mental health and and and those things. Sorry. ⁓ Allie Miller: Right. Everyone's a critic now. When you can go into Claude or you know, name your AI tool and out a design, an interface, a poster, a whatever, an image, when you can make something to milliseconds and you don't need the classical or understanding of form and balance and and process and craft. The making Design Darlings: Mm-hmm. Yes. Allie Miller: I think it's if everyone's critic, what becomes important is being able to discern how you receive criticism and how you ⁓ evaluate, you know, what somebody's trying to say. Because I think it can be really overwhelming if ev if anything you post has an opinion about it. It's gonna be really important to say like, ⁓ here's whose opinions and feedback I actually listen to versus who's saying something because it's a hot take and it's gonna be something that goes viral online. You know. Design Darlings: Mm. Right, and it gives me a dopamine hit. Well So like if the eighties were slick, the nineties were very raw. And the eighties was about like wealth and glitz. And the nineties I mean like you got like grunge music and it was it was like anti polish. So eighties spoke to everybody, ⁓ it wanted mass appeal. The fragmented into those smaller cultures. ⁓ and and it became a more tribal. And so I feel like right now we are living or have lived through a time where everything was slick and it was optimized and it was all about like millennial brands, Where they all looked and felt a certain way and they were the way they were presented to you. It like they had like Allie Miller: Mm-hmm. Everything looked like sweet green, blue lemon. Design Darlings: Yeah. And it had, you know, and it had an ethos to it. And now, you know, Evelyn just got bought out by Sheen. And you're like, ⁓ my God, like the death of the millennial brand is upon us. So I think the reaction to idea of optimized ⁓ is people going, what if we didn't s like subscribe? What if we didn't ⁓ do the algorithm thing? What if just went offline? And that feels really new and that feels really different because we haven't done that yet. We haven't said, like, what if we just stepped away from online? And I I feel like that that feels rebellious. And now people are going, you know what, I want to choose my own adventure and I don't want to ⁓ live it through my phone. So that's people are hang literally hanging up their Hanging up their digital phones and picking up their analog phones. People are getting phone lines in their houses again. Maybe that's what we need. So then we can get to the matrix will come full circle. Allie Miller: Have you seen this product called Tin Can that's kind of popping up? it's a product called Tin Can and it's a analog phone marketed towards parents of tween girls. ⁓ Design Darlings: Mm mm Mm-hmm. Allie Miller: And it is literally that. It is I think it runs off of Wi-Fi or it somehow runs off of your whatever your cell phone services, but it's a physical phone. So it's a way to give young children phones so they call their friends. And what's really interesting is you can only call other tin can phones. ⁓ Design Darlings: Is it? That's cool. That's smart. Allie Miller: So the idea is that if you have a group of friends, you all all your f the parents band together and basically say, Okay, we're all gonna get our children, can phones and then that way they can call each other so they can still keep in touch, but it alleviates the the demand for the children to have phones. ⁓ Okay, well this has been a great discussion, Robin. I think we covered lot of bases. From the Memphis group to Johnny Ives to, Jean-Paul Gaultier to everything in between. ⁓ so with that. Design Darlings: Yeah. Allie Miller: Let's go to final segment our design darling the week. So this is where we, shout out an iconic object symbol or interaction in popular culture that exemplifies our theme of this week Robin, do like to go first? Design Darlings: ⁓ I actually would like to throw us back to the Memphis design group because we talked about ⁓ but we didn't we didn't tell you exactly about them. So I would like for them to be our design darling of the week. Because well, my design darling. this is a group of Italian designers. They got drunk on New Year's Eve in nineteen eighty and named themselves after a Bob Dylan song that was playing on the record player. And then they made some of the craziest furniture and objects of the twentieth century. Allie Miller: Mm. Go for it. Design Darlings: their founder, Ettor Sotas Sotas, he was a Milanese design legend. He'd spent years designing very serious functional things for Olivetti, and he was like, I'm done with serious and functional. And he gathered these young designers, they handed out an assignment, and in one night they sketched out their first objects that would become the Memphis collection. And they really like they worked to be wrong by every modernist rule. They were asymmetrical. They used cheap laminate plastic. They like nothing that a thing should have been shaped. so like a bookshelf ⁓ could like an abstract cityscape. ⁓ They covered things in zebra print and squiggles and confetti patterns. that they called banal just to be provocative about it. Allie Miller: Hmm. Design Darlings: and Time magazine called it the most controversial furniture of the century. But that was the point. So they were all about liberating design from the dictatorship of good taste. ⁓ thought that functionalism had made design totally joyless and obedient. And so that was their act of rebellion. and it only lasted seven years. And they disbanded it in nineteen eighty eight before it could become ⁓ what it was mocking, they didn't want it to become an institution. and ⁓ The Saved by the Bell set designer actually found their furniture and used it and rest history. So I'm gonna say that that's my design, darling, because I think we need that energy and that rebellious feeling of if if we're surrounded by good design and design that is so seamless, it can it can sell me something while I scroll on my couch trying to watch my Netflix, everything that's bundled and and and exact. Allie Miller: Wow. Design Darlings: I think we need the rebellion against the dictatorship design ⁓ efficiency. So there you go. Tis my darling. Allie Miller: Mmm. I love it. That's incredible. That's yeah. No notes. I had a professor in school who, when we did a whole unit on Memphis Design Group, I c I tried to look this up recently and I couldn't find anything online to like validate this. But she said that as a Memphis group was designing, we also had the rise ⁓ of AIDS crisis. And she said some their furniture, especially the really iconic one of the the big bookshelf, ⁓ it actually meant to because imagery was coming out of what the actual AIDS virus looked like. ⁓ And some of their furniture also sort of a counter reaction, a counter protest ⁓ to the AIDS crisis and sort a ⁓ Design Darlings: Mm-hmm. Yes. Allie Miller: subliminal sort of kind of political reaction to that. Design Darlings: so I I wonder if that wasn't documented, but if she knew it and Probably so. And it might just not be on the internet somewhere. I'm gonna say that that could be about it because ⁓ yeah. I think that yeah, that could totally be. Allie Miller: Okay, well in opposition to your beautiful and articulate political activism of the Memphis group, ⁓ my design, Darling Week, is the bead curtain. You know, I don't know if you had a bead curtain Design Darlings: I did not. Allie Miller: But bead curtains were the it interior design accessory of all twelve year olds. In the 90s, and I specifically had this one that my aunt got me, and it was bright purple, and it had these gorgeous beads, and you put it over your door frame, and so when you went in and out of your bedroom, you felt like you were some like bohemian hippie. And I love it because it's kind of like nostalgic design inception. Because obviously at the time, also like the 70s were really big in like fashion and clothing. so you kind of were like, ⁓ I'm like a hippie in the 70s. 60s, and I have this cool like Bohemian lounge and with my bead curtain, but your bead curtain is this like gaudy neon purple. And then we have to talk about the Britney Spears album cover. Because in her album cover, she was like coming out of a bead curtain, and bead curtains were cool, and all the Haku girls had bead curtains, but there was also this sort of cheapness ⁓ and about it. Cause you know, as a 12-year-old, I'm like, ⁓ yeah, I'm just as cool as Britney Spears with my like amazing. ⁓ bead curtain, but you know, we're nowhere near on the same level, so Design Darlings: I would like to ca tag that as Kish, Pastiche, and Camp all at the same time. Because also, you know what we've watched is kids the Brady Bunch and the Brady Bunch had that seventies vibe and like the bead curtains and I feel like there's like a we're gonna redo bead curtains, but purple instead of like, you know, the the Allie Miller: It was everything. And I've seen bead curtains come back in Gen Z aesthetic. I'm starting to see bead curtains and things. ⁓ they're a lot less tacky than bright purple and pink ones. But there's also ⁓ there's a humor in because they were incredibly unfunctional because you're going in and out of a your room many times throughout the day. So they'd get tangled up and they'd make noise ⁓ and you'd have to push to the side and then some you know, your animal would go through that and get caught on it, so it'd fall down. Design Darlings: Really? Allie Miller: and you'd have to tape it back. So they were incredibly impractical and really hard to maintain. But for those few moments where you felt like the most glamorous person in the world walking in and out of your room with their your bead curtain, it was like you were you were pinnacle of coolness in in that moment. Yeah. Design Darlings: That's hilarious. I feel like I think of India and tropical places with bead curtains. Hold on, I'm gonna look this up real fast. Okay. So long before they were a hippie aesthetic, bead curtains were an engineering solution to a specific problem. How do you cover a doorway? In a hot climate to keep insects out while still allowing air to move through. So there you go. Your bead curtain exists in a history of functional design, my friend. Because yeah, I was thinking of the ones in the seventies were like bamboo strips and bone like shells. that's what it made me think of. But Egypt, they had ⁓ in Egypt, Rome, Persia, China, India, and Japan, my friend. So ⁓ Allie Miller: Mm. And I to c clarify for correction it was the specifically the Brittany Spears Oops I Did It Again album cover. I just need that to, you know, be on the record. So there we go. Design Darlings: That's right. Amazing. Okay, well maybe maybe the bead curtain comeback is just, you know, we want some more mystique. Maybe we need bead curtains for our phones. Maybe we need more bead curtains in our lives to separate out the algorithm. Like, you know, don't pass through. Allie Miller: Yeah, we can be like that Billy Porter. I just wanna bring back I don't know if it was ever here, but Billy Porter's hat. Just want that. Pete curtain on our hats. All right. Design Darlings: ⁓ that hat that he wore with the fringe that moved. That was so funny. That was good. ⁓ my gosh. Well, thanks for Diving into this nineties topic with me and ⁓ I know it's everywhere. We've we've been seeing the design resurgence of certain ⁓ objects. We're seeing people talk about the nostalgia for nineties design and ⁓ and and we're seeing it come back and the graphics and and the Lisa Frank like enthusiasm for for what used to be. So I I'm glad that we did a deep dive on it and talked through some of the culture and ⁓ and why probably people are feeling this way about it. So thanks, girl. Allie Miller: Thanks, darling. ⁓ All right. ⁓ darling. Until time. Design Darlings: All right. Until next time. Go enjoy some good design. Bye.