Ugly is in: grieving the death of the Millennial aesthetic

Last summer, I wrote about Charli XCX and her new album, brat.

But I left out a piece of personal commentary because it was irrelevant to the topic of the piece (her passive aggressive beef with Lorde and their make up song). My burning internal question:

Why is the album art so intentionally low-budget-looking?

A few obvious designy things I noticed that led me to that question:

• The logo is stretched out and distorted
• It’s also superrrrr pixelated and fuzzy
• It looks like it was made in Microsoft Paint
• It’s so purposefully poorly-designed (aka “un-designed”)

I took my question to Instagram Stories, where I do all my hard-hitting Journalism. The specific question I posed was:

“Why does Gen Z like when things purposefully look low-budget and shitty? Clearly this is meant to be pixelated and look undesigned, but why? Why is ugly and pixelated and uncropped and washed out the whole Gen Z aesthetic? Is it a cultural response to the Millennial urge to perfect and crop and make everything look like a *BRAND* and Gen Z thinks it’s cringe? I’m curious.”

Here are some smart, interesting thoughts and theories that my friends submitted:

• “It’s a cultural response - pushing back against that glamorized influencer culture that dominated when Millennials first started using social.”
• “They don’t like anything that ‘tries.’”
• “It’s AI-related…once the robots take over, the only way we’ll be able to recognize real art made by real people is if it’s shitty, but shitty on purpose.”
• “I feel like it was made on Kid Pix and they’re just revolting because they never got to use Kid Pix.”
• “The trend of holding tiny mics comes from this same place as the ugly brat logo. Polish is corporate and mainstream. This is acceptable and indie…”
• “It’s universally accessible in the way that matters. Anyone can actually do this. With very little effort. Why go to all the trouble if you don’t have to? Communication doesn’t have to be flashy…low budget is everyone’s budget!”

A friend also shared this fantastic video with me, created by graphic designer Linus Boman. He does an extensive deep-dive into the design of brat and why it’s speaking to Gen Z, specifically.

TLDR; Boman posits:

• brat is a prime example of the new trend called “anti-design” or even “digital brutalism” - this trend features minimal layouts, along with a “raw aesthetic” which uses “ugly systems” and default fonts like Arial (an oftentimes looked-down-upon font in the design community for being a “knockoff” version of Helvetica).
• The text is distorted, which is a taboo for designers (“like putting ketchup on a nice steak”).
• The text is blurry (seems like there’s a soft edge to it).
• It’s deliberately constructed to have the feeling of something done shoddily or quickly.
• The design is “a big fuck you to the rules of good design, which portrays an ‘I don’t care’ attitude like the punk-collage aesthetic of the 1960s and 70s.”
• The designs adds to the authenticity; it feels like a human being did this (AI has broken metrics for high-effort art work); meant to show the imperfections of the human process

The design trends they are a-changin

It’s clear that the design trends are changing. You don’t see many lay-flat photos against pale pastel colors anymore. There aren’t as many fiddle-leaf figs being used as props. Millennial Pink has gone the way of the fax machine.

The new aesthetic is washed out photos. Wonky crops. Random captions. Septum piercings. Everything is tacky and ugly (IMO).

I know; I sound VERY old. I’m 41, so that tracks. Every generation hates the taste and style of the subsequent generation(s). In the words of the great Elton John, it’s the circle of life.

Dr. Carolina Are, a digital culture expert agrees and says this generational critique is not unusual: "I don't necessarily think it's just a reaction to beauty standards because this is often a cyclical thing — it often happens, where a generation contradicts what the previous generation has done.”

While the shift in style may not be personal, it’s still a direct assault on the Millennial design trends that have dominated the last 10 years. Taken from an article at The Cut from 2020 called Will the Millennial aesthetic ever end:

"Ever since modernism brought industry into design, tastes have cycled between embracing and rejecting what it wrought. A forward-looking, high-tech style obsessed with mass commercial appeal will give way to one that’s backward-looking, handmade, authenticity-obsessed — which will then give way to some new variation on tech-forward mass style. Furniture dealers joke that “brown” goes in and out with every generation. It’s a logic that gets filtered through the reliable desire for the world the way it looked when we were young, and lately this has meant looking back 30 or so years.”

Well, The Cut, I think the answer to your question is that yes, the Millennial aesthetic not only will end, but finally HAS ended.

Gen Z is calling the design shots these days, and lucky for me (sarcasm), Gen Z is obsessed with microfringe bangs, septum piercings and an overall ugly, low-budget aesthetic. It’s a big fuck you to Millennials who’ve spent our whole adult lives trying to look our best on social media: staging and styling our iced coffees and bookshelves, shamelessly using Facetune and filters. Fresh photos with the bomb lighting.

And who can blame them? I’m tired just thinking of all the effort we put into cataloguing and curating our IG feeds. It *is* cringe! Welp, ring lights, begone. Gen Z values weirdness and authenticity (aka bad lighting and unhinged haircuts).

Yup, frumpiness is in (and has been - remember Adam Sandler summer? Don’t forget about Iris Law’s rat tails. Or Julia Fox’s bleached brows meant to “repel men, namely her baby daddy.”)

Uglycore seems to be GenZ’s revolt against the clinical minimal aesthetic (aka “Blanding”) perpetuated by Millennials.

WHY though? After extensive research, I believe it’s probably some combination of:

• The value of authenticity
• Perfectionism fatigue
• Trying too hard (or really, at all) being embarrassing
• TikTok + the success of microtrends
• Casual 90s nostalgia
• Some kind of residual trauma from the Covid pandemic…YOLO - there are NO fashion/style/design rules anymore! Plus, comfort rules (hard agree).
• Anti-capitalism
• Feminism (it’s no longer about dressing for the male gaze)
• It’s also the opposite of Kim Kardashian and her beige MINIMALISM (and Khloe’s hyper-organization)

• Higher accessibility
• Being bored of normcore and beige
• Dressing for your inner-thirteen-year-old and enjoying more freedom of expression
• Makes Olds uncomfortable which is prob fun (“Turn that rock and roll down!”)
• Proves it’s not made by AI or some kind of machine or robot
• They’re chaos monsters and just like it?

Gen Z has come of age through a very specific set of circumstances: a pandemic, multiple financial crises, student loans, political upheaval, and a climate crisis. So the traditional influencer content of promoting NEW SHINY things and DIET SHAKES is not only out-of-touch with this generation, but also not feasible.

Whether it’s a neon green album cover, or pants suits, the Gen Z lewk is pure, individualized chaos. Weird girl aesthetic is the result.

Enter, brat.

brat will be an interesting artifact in our culture for years to come…perhaps the exact time of death of Millennial Pink.

May she rest in peace.

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