my skill in variety…is…almost frightening

columbo teaming up with any detective is fun but the issue is that the one constant of columbo is that he basically knows the killer before he even arrives, so the mystery is less whodunnit and more about how columbo is going to catch this dude in his lie. therefore I propose the best columbo x detective crossover is not in fact columbo and benoit blanc or sherlock but in fact Columbo and the Scooby Doo Gang. In this essay i w-

"an environment where they are at peace"

these should be considered animal abuse

If you weren’t here for part one, lemme sum it up real fast:

Okay, all up to speed? We’re being served 80s throwback stuff with the serial numbers scratched off, re-labeled as yo totally 90s. What we’ve got now isn’t completely wrong, but I’m telling you, there’s so much gold left unmined.

As we saw in part one with Memphis Milano, these things get messy. Trends don’t start and end neatly every ten years. The first wave of 90s throwback attempts focused on the early part of the decade, and nobody since really pushed to represent the other seven years. Well, if you really wanna do something, I guess you gotta do it yourself.

I have suggestions. Get your flannel ready, we’ve got a lot of ground to cover.

Analog Grunge

SURRRRRRRGE or uh, Grunge, is probably the look that defines the decade best. The big kickoff point here is Nirvana - after a shiny pop-dominated music scene in the 80s, Nevermind was like a breath of fresh smog.

Your design has to look like it survived a nuclear blast, then was run over by your parents’ Buick a couple of times.

• Rust. Dirt. Scuffs and scrapes. Signs of distress.
• Handwritten or scribbled illustrations.
• Low-rent aesthetics. Torn paper shapes, label maker or typewriter fonts.

If there’s a Comic Sans for the 90s, it’s “distressed typewriter font.” Seriously, it’s mandatory. When I pulled images for this post I could not escape typewriter fonts. I don’t think you couldn’t call yourself a respectable designer without it. Just look at how much mileage old-timey typewriters and label makers got:

Hell, it’s the giant X in The X Files!

I think another component to Grunge is sort of an anti-digital, pro-analog message. My pet theory is home computers went from being a semi-common novelty in 1990 to an essential gotta-have-it purchase in every American home by ‘99. Desktop publishing apps made it almost too easy to make pixel-perfect, clean, uniform designs. Digital photography and scanners meant you could now publish full color photographs with ease.

But digital perfection is the enemy of Grunge. Analog means authenticity.

So you had a whole gaggle of designers running in the other direction. Sure you could use a computer, but your work absolutely had to look like it didn’t come from one. As much as possible, incorporate hand-drawn artwork, scribbles, dust and splotches. Write text with chicken scratch if you have to. As much as you could make your multimillion dollar ad campaign look like it came from the margins of some high schoolers’ math homework, the better.

Factory Pomo

Not everyone was running away from digital, though. Many designers were embracing computer apps - and I think that’s where Factory Pomo first came into being. Coined by designer Froyo Tam (that’s their logo up above!) Factory Pomo is one of those things that once you see an example, you can’t stop seeing it.

• Strong, basic geometric primitives with inverted, contrasting colors
• Tall typography
• Art Deco style rivets and spikes

Want your logo to look futuristic and modern? Stick it in a circle and put some triangles around. Invert half the colors, then another half.

Max Krieger has a great writeup on the probable inflection point: Tomorrowland. As the story goes, Tomorrowland at Disney - the part of the park meant to look like it’s from the future - would very quickly look very outdated each time they tried to update it. Instead, in 1994 they decided to own being outdated. They came up with a ridiculously fun “timeless” futuristic look, mixing industrial design with Jules Verne. Factory Pomo’s signature was all over the blueprints.

The look quickly escaped the theme park and was especially prevalent in the booming mid 90s home computer market. It’s the Packard Bell cyborg, it’s the logo in Video Toaster. If you caught that The X Files logo earlier is both Factory Pomo with the tall type and X in a ring AND Grunge with the typewriter X in the background, you win 5 bonus Pogs. 

And it’s a stretch, but one could draw a line between Factory Pomo’s inverted black and whites and the Ska movement’s two-tone checkerboards. Maybe. Possibly. I’d have to call Tony Hawk to double check. 

Back to Froyo Tam for a second, but that bit about them coining the term? That was in 2017. “Factory Pomo” didn’t have a name for like… 25 years. How’s that possible, you may wonder? Weren’t designers following a defined style? Well, yes and no. I think people were designing stuff to look a certain way, but it’s less a game of “this is what the aesthetic looks like” and more like a game of telephone.

If you do an architecture tour in a major city, you’ll learn that every building and skyscraper is classified to a specific architectural movement. Every building that is but ones built in the last 20-30 years. Newer buildings have to wait a few decades for official classification. Historians need time and perspective to figure out what emerging trends in architecture are going on, whose work influenced who, that sort of thing.

Designing a logo for Slim Jims or Cherry Coke takes considerably less time than constructing a skyscraper, but I think the same principle holds true. It’s really difficult to tell what’s a trend and what’s a fad when you’re living in the moment. I couldn’t tell you what’s the defining aesthetic for the 2020s right now. It’ll be obvious in 2053, but right now, no clue.

Enough time has passed between the nineties and today that we can pick this stuff apart easily. Maybe if you’re lucky, you can be the first to classify these design movements, too.

Working on a part three! I’ll look into a few other trends and address the big question– Is the Y2K aesthetic actually a 90s thing? More to come.

*A ton of these examples above are from the CARI Institute, which you should totally check out, they’ve been cataloging this stuff for years.

i made this commission a bit back and havent published it. Based on a modded version of Project Zomboid, with familiar looking mushroom zombie bois.

These targeted ads are starting to get to me

We need to have a nomination for “Stupidest thing Tumblr.com has ever believed” and just move into an official Top 10 List.

For my nominations, I’m putting up:

• If you eat a chocolate bar a very specific way, you will break physics and get infinite chocolate.
  

or

• It is impossible that you spelled “Berenstain Bears” wrong and is, instead, more likely that the universe fractured into separate, overlapping realities in the last 20 years.
  

I can’t decide which is more beautiful. It’s why we need a vote.

this is a picture of the human brain at the moment of death. tragic and beautiful

Fuck. That is a damn good nomination.

if you close your eyes when the train hits your brain will assume you are dead. Some find this comforting.

We’re getting into the good ones now. This is some classic Tumblr.

Two old favourites:

“Bitch, That’s the Tubby Custard Machine” (http://imgur.com/gallery/IObQF)

and the horse dildo that was passed off as someone’s arm. (http://abakkus.tumblr.com/post/48958415162)

This is rapidly becoming a master post of ignorances and I could not possibly be happier.

Rare blue watermelon

That disease where you get purple eyes, no period, and no body hair

How have we gone this far without anyone mentioning the bird in the chocolate fountain

soap makes water molecules smaller

I nominate the “we are killing the earth” picture of the earth in comparison from 1978 to 2012

the dog with the slice of ham on its face that everyone thought was a gigantic burn scar

“Tequila is the only alcohol thats not a depressant so you can drink as much of it as you like”

that post with the picture of the joker without makeup and people thinking it was a real person and defending him

that photo of voldemort being passed off as an aborted fetus

The two way mirror

“listen here, cumslut.”

I can’t believe you guys forgot someone trying to pass off a picture of the inside of a fig as a microscopic view of the inside of a vagina.

I can’t believe I was on Tumblr for every single one of these posts.

all the links on this post are broken and some arent given so heres a compilation of links for the stupidest things tumblr has believed (i tried to find the og post for most of these but some of them are posts/articles about said posts)

infinite chocolate hack

berensta/ein bears (mandela effect)

mri scan walking dead gif

train gif brain thinks you died

tubby custard machine

horse dildo

moonmelon (and variations)

alexandria’s genisis

bird chocolate fountain og post

soap shrinks water molecules

we are killing the earth

ham on dog

tequila isnt a depressant

earth is lumpy

joker without makeup

voldemort fetus

two way mirror og post

fig vagina

Tumblr really just approached everything like this back in the day:

I dont think ill ever watch bocchi the rock which is not about the shows quality but rather the fact that like. I think ive seen every frame of it posted on here. What amount of that show is even left to be watched.

And just in case anyone here hasn't already seen it, here's the whole thing: