Every now and then, I take out the glossy, red Samsung point-and-shoot I have living in the top drawer in my bedroom. I knew it’d end up being the last of its kind I’d end up buying, and it remains one of the few items I have from an era when designers were bold in ways we perhaps don’t experience anymore.
As someone born in the 90s, you can then imagine the elation I felt when I stumbled across a Twitter account dedicated to the forgotten Y2K styles, attitude and fashion of the 90s and early 00s. Evan Collins and Froyo Tam, two designers based on the American west coast, are cataloguing these for all to see, with images extracted from books, magazines, mass-produced CDs and product exhibitions, creating a formal taxonomy all designers can use. I had to get in touch. During one moment in our group Skype call with them, I casually mention how even the graphical work and typography of old computer component packaging was so much more flamboyant than it is now.
“Yeah, we definitely explore these types of collateral. It’s very much about what people purchase, but it doesn’t mean it’s highbrow,” says Tam, who has also produced events focussing on digital photography. Collins talks about these ubiquitous designs too. “Because it wasn’t highbrow, it just wasn’t tracked as well. They’re not gonna publish as many books on it, like how the high art world is pretty well documented.” He goes to the heart of the issue of preservation, saying, “That disposability led it to get a little bit lost, and that’s where finding these old books is interesting.”
