Corporate Memphis

Flat, geometric art style associated with Big Tech

Illustration in Corporate Memphis style from humaaans design library

Corporate Memphis, commonly referred to as Alegria art, is an art style named after the Memphis Group that features flat areas of color and geometric elements. Widely associated with Big Tech illustrations in the late 2010s[1] and early 2020s,[2] it has been met with a polarized response, with criticism focusing on its use in sanitizing corporate communication,[1] as well as being seen as visually offensive, insincere, pandering and over-saturated. Other illustrators have defended the style, pointing at what they claim to be its art-historical legitimacy.[3]

## Origins

[edit]

Flat art developed out of the rise of vector graphic programs, and a nostalgia for mid-century modern illustration.[3] It began to trend in editorial illustration and especially the tech industry, which relied on simple, scalable illustrations to fill white space and add character to apps and web pages.[1] The style was widely popularized when Facebook introduced Alegria, an illustration system commissioned from design agency Buck Studios and illustrator Xoana Herrera[1] in 2017.[4]

The name "Corporate Memphis" originated from the title of an Are.na board that collected early examples,[1] and is a reference to the Memphis Group, a 1980s design group known for bright colors, childish patterns, and geometric shapes. The style itself was inspired by a synthesis of elements spanning the 20th-century, including the Art Deco style of the 1920s, futurism in interior design from the Atomic Age, and color and patterns from the Pop Art movement.

## Visual characteristics

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Corporate Memphis style artwork featuring characters with blue, orange, and purple skintones

Common motifs are flat human characters in action, with disproportionate features such as long and bendy limbs,[2] small torsos,[5] minimal or no facial features, and bright colors without any blending. Facebook's Alegria uses non-representational skin colors such as blues and purples in order to feel universal,[4] though some artists working in the style opt for more realistic skin colors and features to show diversity.[1]

Corporate Memphis is materially quick, cheap and easy to produce, and thus appealing to companies; programs such as Adobe Illustrator can be used to produce such designs rapidly.[citation needed]

## Reception and use

[edit]

Once Facebook had adopted the style, the sudden ubiquity of vector graphics led to a critical backlash.[3] The style has been criticized professionally and popularly (including in myriad internet memes) for being overly minimalistic, generic,[6] lazy,[2] overused, and attempting to sanitize public perception of big tech companies by presenting human interaction in utopian optimism.[1] Criticism of the art style is often rooted in larger anxieties about the creative industry under capitalism and neoliberalism.[5] Others have argued that Corporate Memphis deserves to be understood on its own merits separate from the corporations which regularly employ it.[3]

Writing in The Globe and Mail, Jen Gerson criticized the new 2023 Canadian passport design by likening it to the Corporate Memphis art style.[7]

## See also

[edit]

* Material design, a Google-derived design language linked to Corporate Memphis
* Frutiger Aero, a prominent design style preceding Corporate Memphis that embraced contrasting skeuomorphism
* Going Under, a 2020 roguelike video game that is depicted entirely within the Corporate Memphis art style
* Hyperreality
* Postmodern art
* Metamodernism
* Capitalist realism
* Global Village Coffeehouse

## References

[edit]

1. ^ a b c d e f g Hawley, Rachel (August 21, 2019). "Don't Worry, These Gangly-armed Cartoons Are Here to Protect You From Big Tech". Eye on Design. Archived from the original on August 22, 2021. Retrieved February 10, 2021.
2. ^ a b c Gabert-Doyon, Josh (January 24, 2021). "Why does every advert look the same? Blame Corporate Memphis". Wired UK. ISSN 1357-0978. Archived from the original on August 22, 2021. Retrieved February 10, 2021.
3. ^ a b c d Frey, Angelica (January 10, 2022). "Facebook made a certain type of illustration ubiquitous—but it's time to stop knocking it". Fast Company. Archived from the original on December 19, 2022. Retrieved December 18, 2022.
4. ^ a b "Facebook Alegria". Archived from the original on November 19, 2021. Retrieved November 19, 2021.
5. ^ a b Posture, Julien (January 13, 2022). "What the Think Pieces About "Corporate Memphis" Tell Us About the State of Illustration". AIGA Eye on Design. Archived from the original on May 28, 2022. Retrieved May 10, 2022.
6. ^ Quito, Anne (October 26, 2019). "Why editorial illustrations look so similar these days". Quartz. Archived from the original on February 8, 2021. Retrieved February 10, 2021.
7. ^ Gerson, Jen (May 12, 2023). "Opinion: Yes, Canada's new passport really is that bad". The Globe and Mail. Archived from the original on May 15, 2023. Retrieved April 1, 2025.

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Premodern, Modern and Contemporary art movements

List of art movements/periods

Premodern
(Western)|

| Ancient|

* Thracian
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|

Medieval|

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Renaissance|

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17th century|

* Baroque
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18th century|

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Colonial art|

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* Latin American Baroque

Art borrowing
Western elements|

* Islamic
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* Akita ranga
* Uki-e

Transition
to modern
(c. 1770 – 1862)|

* Romanticism
* Fairy painting
* Danish Golden Age
* Troubadour style
* Nazarene movement
* Purismo
* Shoreham Ancients
* Düsseldorf school
* Pre-Raphaelites
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* Verismo
* Macchiaioli
* Academic art
* Munich school
* in Greece
* Neo-Grec
* Etching revival

Modern
(1863–1944)|

| 1863–1899|

* Neo-romanticism
* National romanticism
* Yōga
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* Japonisme
* Anglo-Japanese style
* Beuron school
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* American Barbizon school
* California tonalism
* Costumbrismo

|

1900–1914|

* Art Nouveau
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* Futurism
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* Productivism
* Synchromism
* Vorticism

1915–1944|

* Sosaku-hanga
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* School of Paris
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* Dada
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* De Stijl
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* Australian tonalism
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* Cercle et Carré
* The Group
* Harlem Renaissance
* Kapists
* Regionalism
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* Heroic realism
* Socialist realism
* Nazi art
* Streamline Moderne
* Concrete art
* Abstraction-Création
* Tiki
* The Ten
* Dimensionism
* Boston Expressionism
* Leningrad school

Contemporary
and Postmodern
(1945–present)|

| 1945–1959|

* International Typographic Style
* Abstract expressionism
* Washington Color School
* Visionary art
* Vienna School of Fantastic Realism
* Spatialism
* Color field
* Lyrical abstraction
* Tachisme
* Arte Informale
* COBRA
* Nuagisme
* Generación de la Ruptura
* Jikken Kōbō
* Metcalf Chateau
* Mono-ha
* Nanyang Style
* Action painting
* American Figurative Expressionism
* in New York
* New media art
* New York school
* Hard-edge painting
* Bay Area Figurative Movement
* Les Plasticiens
* Gutai Art Association
* Gendai Bijutsu Kondankai
* Pop art
* Situationist International
* Soviet Nonconformist
* Ukrainian underground
* Lettrism
* Letterist International
* Ultra-Lettrist
* Florida Highwaymen
* Cybernetic art
* Antipodeans

|

1960–1969|

* Otra Figuración
* Afrofuturism
* Nueva Presencia
* ZERO
* Happening
* Neo-Dada
* Neo-Dada Organizers
* Op art
* Nouveau réalisme
* Nouvelle tendance
* Capitalist realism
* Art & Language
* Arte Povera
* Black Arts Movement
* The Caribbean Artists Movement
* Chicano art movement
* Conceptual art
* Land art
* Systems art
* Video art
* Minimalism
* Fluxus
* Generative art
* Post-painterly abstraction
* Intermedia
* Psychedelic art
* Nut Art
* Photorealism
* Environmental art
* Performance art
* Process art
* Institutional critique
* Light and Space
* Street art
* Feminist art movement
* in the US
* Saqqakhaneh movement
* The Stars Art Group
* Tropicália
* Yoru no Kai
* Artificial intelligence visual art

1970–1999|

* Post-conceptual art
* Installation art
* Artscene
* Postminimalism
* Endurance art
* Sots Art
* Moscow Conceptualists
* Pattern and Decoration
* Pliontanism
* Punk art
* Neo-expressionism
* Transavantgarde
* Saint Soleil school
* Guerrilla art
* Lowbrow art
* Telematic art
* Appropriation art
* Neo-conceptual art
* New European Painting
* Tunisian collaborative painting
* Memphis Group
* Cyberdelic
* Neue Slowenische Kunst
* Scratch video
* Transgressive
* Retrofuturism
* Young British Artists
* Superfiction
* Taring Padi
* Superflat
* New Leipzig school
* Artist-run initiative
* Artivism
* The Designers Republic
* Grunge design
* Verdadism
* Chinese Apartment Art

2000–
present|

* Amazonian pop art
* Altermodern
* Art for art
* Art game
* Art intervention
* Brandalism
* Classical Realism
* Contemporary African art
* Africanfuturism
* Contemporary Indigenous Australian art
* Crypto art
* Cyborg art
* Excessivism
* Fictive art
* Flat design
* Corporate Memphis
* Hypermodernism
* Hyperrealism
* Idea art
* Internet art
* Post-Internet
* iPhone art
* Kitsch movement
* Lightpainting
* Massurrealism
* Modern European ink painting
* Neo-futurism
* Neomodern
* Neosymbolism
* Passionism
* Post-YBAs
* Relational art
* Skeuomorphism
* Software art
* Sound art
* Stuckism
* Superflat
* SoFlo Superflat
* Superstroke
* Toyism
* Unilalianism
* Vaporwave
* Walking Artists Network

Related topics|

* History of art
* Abstract art
* Asemic writing
* Anti-art
* Avant-garde
* Ballets Russes
* Christian art
* Art in the Protestant Reformation and Counter-Reformation
* Catholic art
* Icon
* Lutheran art
* Digital art
* Fantastic art
* Folk art
* Hierarchy of genres
* Genre painting
* History painting
* Illuminated manuscript
* Illustration
* Interactive art
* Jewish art
* Kitsch
* Landscape painting
* Modernism
* Modern sculpture
* Late modernism
* Naïve art
* Outsider art
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* Prehistoric European art
* Queer art
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