That's very insightful Alex and I totally agree: we're probably not as academic or well-versed with our histories as we should be.

I'll add Jaron Lanier's 'Ten Arguments For Deleting Your Social Media' as a book suggestion too. When the guy who literally founded virtual reality says you should get the fuck offline, it's probably worth at least hearing him out...

It's still a mystery to me, but Daniel's quote from Paula Scher got me thinking about it.

Philip Guston said this about the process of making art...

"When you start working, everybody is in your studio - the past, your friends, enemies, the art world, and above all, your own ideas - all are there. But as you continue painting, they start leaving, one by one, and you are left completely alone. Then, if you’re lucky, even you leave."

... and I think what he and I am getting at is the possibility of anticipating future revelations before you are ready and consciously present for them.

Letting go of "good taste" and doing now what you might otherwise be doing in five years.

I don’t think design is necessarily the problem, but I do think there’s a problem with today’s school of design.

Take the Bauhaus for comparison: It wasn’t created as a design school, it was created as an art school with the aim to unify art, craft and technology under one discipline. Out of that mission came the "design" approach that has arguably most shaped the 20th century...

The problem as I see it, is that the 21st century needs a updated design philosophy - one that unites art, craft and technology relevant for the epoch.

Unfortunately, many of today’s designers focus only on using technology to solve problems, and invest little time and risk into art and craft, which are still equally important in my view. They steal from art, but because they bypass craft, they don't understand what they've stolen or how it could be exemplified.

Ultimately, process shapes design more than anything and the internet age is defined by the belief that every solution to every problem is available online, and can be copy/pasted with as little exploration and craft as necessary.

The Bauhaus school of design has given way to the Google school of design, whose only rule is: thou shalt not venture beyond the first page.

The idea that Instagram itself is the problem is wrong.

Instagram is an art gallery in your pocket. If you get tired of what you are looking at, look at new things.

What happens to people (it happened to me at first) is that you want to get followers so you follow everyone and they follow you back and so on....

Your feed winds up being those who post most often who you followed for no other reason than to have them follow you back.

EVERYTHING is on Instagram, you just need to select what to look at. I love Cy Twombly and so I subscribe to some accounts and hash tags for him and I get to see Twombly on a daily basis in my feed.

Here is my rule: Select who you follow as carefully as what you post.

If getting followers is important, make two accounts. One for seeing work you want and one for getting followers.

If you view Instagram as casual, then fine, you can post pics of vacation or dogs or whatever. I see it an an art gallery in my pocket. Facebook and Twitter are good for the other stuff.

Brian I read Cal's book too.....loved it!!

Agree with Dan here and as a graduate of the Experimental Animation major at Calarts I can say that the types of things we were interested in, learning about and researching in school were vast and we pulled from many different aspects of culture....not just the closed feedback loop within one part of one industry. The history of animation as an artform and medium is huge. Also keep in mind that alot of what steers these trends and what you see on these new platforms is also the fact that much of it is client driven work. Clients like what has worked and what they know will work within a confined and calculated market and timespan. SOME clients like to take risks and experiment, but MOST want quantifiable results and work that is accessible to their audience. So if you're looking to get paid as commercial artist it is also appealing to that kind of client mindset. That's the real divide I think most animator/ motion design/ and in general artists have to come to terms with. Be an artist who can take risks and experiment, and know why and who you're making work for as well. Balancing a mindset to set yourself apart and break the mold.....and then expecting that if that experimentation is received well commercially it will ultimately be turned into a commodified tired trend as everyone rides the wave.....then we all rinse and repeat ;) ....aka the history of most artforms.... ;)

Basically it comes down to an idea of: If you want to see certain kinds of work, then make it!

(Side point, DemoFest sounds awesome. In Buffalo we recently started projecting on the old grain silos along the water. It's mostly ambient light shows, but it would be awesome to see some offbeat motion and illustration work there.)

Thanks Brian — I always appreciate your nuanced view on things like this!

What you're describing sounds almost like the things we already know to be manipulating us: manufactured standards of beauty and body image, travel, food and lifestyle posts intended to generate FOMO, etc.

Except this is now working at the level of art and output and creating a need to feel "in-sync" both visually and mentally with what's going on in the world. I'm not referring to trends and styles as much as the question of, "how do I best present myself and my work? How do I make it consistent? What are my ingredients?" And so on.

I've read Cal Newport's "Deep Work" (which is great!) and did hear about his new book. Totally agree with that approach.

Perhaps it is social media that creates these false notions of consistency, a personal brand and the "gestalt" of your work.

Probably time to stop playing by someone else's rules!

Thanks Marta!

I really like your cooking metaphor. :)

In terms of my original post, I guess I'm referring to things like portion size, is it the right plate (or even plating), what kind of cutlery?

There's so many sundry elements that one has to think about these days rather than the thing itself!

I think what you’re noticing is mostly Instagram’s effect on our perception of what it means to be a designer, illustrator, or animator. Dan mentioned the algorithm and its reward for consistency, or more accurately, making things look the same. Whether it’s in our own feed through “curation” or all of us starting to produce work that sort of just looks the same as everyone else’s.

Trends have always been a thing, it’s just now more obvious than ever. It’s not going to change so my recommendation is to just step away from Instagram. I have personally grown tired of looking at what everyone is up to. It’s unfortunate because I love being a fan of my peers. But there’s just too much of it now. I took a month off from Twitter and Instagram and all other forms of social media and logged back on and find myself just scrolling by image after image and not really interested in any of it. Am I jaded, probably, but I think mostly it’s just visual fatigue. Our current industry standards tell us that we need to cultivate a following and in order to do that you need to post at least once a day and the work needs to be consistent. But why? Where is this leading us?

I don’t have the answers of course. I am just like everyone else, hoping to stay busy and keep doing work that makes me happy. I’d recommend you, and whoever may be feeling social media fatigue, to read Cal Newport’s “Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World.” It’s a quick read with some simple philosophies and rules to help change the way we use social media and our devices as a whole. It’s definitely helped me out and I haven’t felt happier about separating myself more from the perceived need to use Instagram and Twitter to “build my brand.” It’s ironic because the last few posts I did on Motionographer was all about getting on that gram and following people.

With Facebook acquiring Instagram, the algorithm, the increased advertisements, and the recent call outs for artists not getting hired because of their follower counts it’s made me pivot away from doing what these corporations want, rather NEED, from us. They need our art to make more money off of advertisements. They NEED our devotion to their apps because WE’RE their products. To me, that just feels gross.

Anyway, I’ll see y’all in another couple of months when I log back on to MP.

Thanks David. Always enjoy your thoughtful takes (and your blog!)

I think today as artists there's definitely a lot more pressure to think of a "body of work" vs. experimentation, individualism and just good old getting things wrong.

Maybe it's because we're always putting ourselves on display for others or because everyone is getting more visually literate.

That example of the Amsterdam event is spot on!

Style is definitely a part of it, but I suppose I was referring more to how everything needs to conform to a standard of being part of a larger whole (so branding a personal Instagram page consistently for instance or making sure you use the same palettes so not to alienate your followers).

It does make it difficult for an artist to reconcile both the obsessive and creative sides!

You're right Lori and that's a good point about how there's diverging groups now and it feels like they are different ends of a spectrum (edgy, groundbreaking, experimental festival stuff to corporate, clean-cut commercial work).

I guess it would be great to see more of an overlap!

Thanks, Jason. Yeah there are trends going both ways and it feels like we need to "feed the zeitgeist" somehow.

It's so much more granular now too, so "different" = a certain kind of "difference" vs. something totally new!

I don't think I've ever experienced this. Sounds fascinating! Tell me more.

You're right Dan, it's totally a generalization but I guess it also has a lot to do with how platforms (both physical and virtual) are dictating our approaches: e.g. different aspect ratios and presentational styles for different social networks, high-resolution screens which can either hide or reveal a lot of detail, etc.

It really boils down to how holistically we now have to look at everything instead of one piece at a time.

But you're absolutely on the money about how there's a lot of "ugly" work going on today and maybe I just need to seek it out! :)

It is the same as it ever was in the arts, all the way back to the Impressionists and before. A 'mainstream' is established and since everyone wants to, naturally, be popular, and make money, many artists tend to make work to fit that mode. Some don't, but it can be lonely to do that. And there is no money, at first at least.

Motionographer is great but because it the one place where people look to for examples of 'Motion Design' work it becomes the 'mainstream' and if that is all you look at you miss a lot of bigger trends.

For example, a huge event happened in Amsterdam a few weeks ago in which Dutch design firms took over and showed Motion work on the monitors at the Amsterdam train station (DemoFest). They showed generative work and offbeat illustration work and all kinds of things you would not think of as typical 'motion design'. But these are influential design firms changing the terms of motion design by doing this.

They are the people who will be hiring people to work on their fat budgets for branding work and they will hire people like Zach Lieberman, who I am guessing has never been shown in Motionographer (I stand corrected. He has one mention as part of a group video, in 2011)

As Lori Schkufza and Dan Savage said, it is there, you just need to look for it.

You can also read my blog : )

They are affecting everything around us indeed. Of course there are still places where you can find more "alternatives" designs/animations, but that is not what is it "popular", or what the "main public" expect to watch so you need to dig deeper to find it.
I understand that everything is framed by a "big market" and that sum up everything, if it is goes outside those algorythms it is out of the mainstream.

Moreover, (and that is a big point too), technology has brought animation, design, motion... to everyone and has made everything quicker and a lot easier. The time it takes to generate something is infinitely smaller than a few years ago ... this implies that the creation of a piece does not require so much affection. I'm not referring so much to aesthetics, but to the message or the desire to experiment and try new things... as a simplified metaphor, you don't spend the same time thinking about how to cook a salad when you you've bought the tomatoes, or if otherwise you've taken months to make them grow. I hope I am making myself clear XD

But there are still pieces out of that standarization of course, maybe at the same level at before, but as there are thousand constanly hitting us, it take more effort to find them.

Do you ever look at your past work and suddenly become aware of a strangeness about it that had until then been invisible to you?

I don't mean the inevitable shift in perspective that comes with improvement, but rather more of a lightbulb-type epiphany that calls into question every decision you made.

It happens to me sometimes and I'm yet to figure out if the strangeness is something only I can see, or if it was obvious to everyone but me from the very start.

I would argue that this applies more to motion graphics than it does the umbrella term of animation. Look at any selection of work coming out of animation festivals and you see raw work that isn't crisp and sleek (I don't want to say polished). Ottawa always has a huge range of styles showcased, as does GLAS. Is the stuff on Motionographer as varied? Not really.

If anything I would say that this kind of work is what's on trend in motion graphics and what's been on trend. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, but I can see and appreciate how that can pigeonhole artists.

Totally agree, and I would even say this is happening beyond animation and illustration. I increasingly see there being only "one right way" to do something or how something should look/move. Alternate ideas used to be welcomed for being unique and bringing something new/different to the table, but now it's considered lacking in efficiency or simply frowned upon. This is happening in graphic design, animation, video production, even socializing/dating sites, and pretty much across the board. The internet is homogenizing everything it can. People literally used to say, "different is good" and "think outside the box." Unfortunately, I think there is a counter trend to stop things that are different, and I see general conformity greater than it ever has been.

hm maybe designed isn't the right word because something designed could still be intentionally ugly right?

I think with everyone learning the same rules its easy for everything to look the same. Few push it beyond that. Theres a lot of "trade school" education that doesn't encourage experimentation or conceptual thinking. It's there, you just need to dig for it. ( https://www.instagram.com/calarts.ea/ )

I remembered Paula Scher talking about making it ugly in college, I just searched and found this quote which is kinda interesting. Maybe this is more exaggerated with social media.

“If you look through design history and you see something that looks really radical, that’s what you’re going to be doing now. If you think that’s nice, that’s what you’ve already been doing. If you think it’s tired, that’s what you were doing five years ago. But if you think it’s ugly, that’s what you’re going to be doing in five years.”

But yeah, the average person likes stuff thats expected, the algorithm rewards this.

Sounds like you're itching to make an ugly experimental film ;)

I think it's heavily dictated by trends in the advertising industry. Certain styles resonate with clients and consumers more than others. Surely there's marketing data to back that up somewhere, but that's above my pay grade. Another thing that effects style is obviously timelines and budgets. Maybe also some styles are more effective for communicating messages than others. These are all pretty obvious factors, but there's probably a slew of other things that contribute to it.