Pablo Stanley is a Mexico City-based illustrator who’s operated several large image databases, where his own flat, wacky SVGs are available open source. It’s also drawing intense criticisms from those within the design world.Īnother factor in the proliferation of Corporate Memphis is vast image banks for vector graphics. Corporate Memphis is inoffensive and easy to pull off, and while its roots remain in tech marketing and user interface design, the trend has started to consume the visual world at large. It involves the use of simple, well-bounded scenes of flat cartoon figures in action, often with a slight distortion in proportions (the most common of which being long, bendy arms) to signal that a company is fun and creative. It’s an aesthetic that’s often referred to as ‘ Corporate Memphis’, and it’s become the definitive style for big tech and small startups, relentlessly imitated and increasingly parodied. Even Transport for London’s own branding, with a special place in the history of Modernist graphic design, has started to replicate the style.
Nondescript figures are plastered across train stations and bus stops, from fintech company MoneyFarm, to Trainline, to the Viagra delivery service GetEddie. The illustration style is flat, geometric, figurative, and usually made up of solid colours.
