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Phew! After some late nights our CARI site is finally up! While it's still a work-in-progress, we've compiled quite a bit of our research over the past few years in here!

I've got some fun ideas for the future, eg. each aesthetic page themed in its respective style
It's official! Our CARI website is finally up & open to explore!

After years of hard work by our dedicated team, we've created this platform to share our research into the ever-expanding landscape of 1970s-present consumer design.

cari.institute
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Evan Collins | BLM πŸ³οΈβ€πŸŒˆπŸ‡΅πŸ‡Έ retweeted
Replying to @domesticetch
Big thanks to @being_on_line, @EvanCollins90, and @_MichaelOswell_ for their wonderful insights about naming, etc.!
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Evan Collins | BLM πŸ³οΈβ€πŸŒˆπŸ‡΅πŸ‡Έ retweeted
β€œWhat aesthetic is this?” My newest @itsnicethat column is about visual trend culture online, the rise of taxonomic warfare, and what gets flattened when culture becomes searchable infrastructure 🏷️itsnicethat.com/articles/eliza…
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Evan Collins | BLM πŸ³οΈβ€πŸŒˆπŸ‡΅πŸ‡Έ retweeted
sign-ups are now open
for the February edition
of CARI Lab! CARI Lab is
a monthly meet-up for anyone
doing research on consumer and
Internet Aesthetics to connect with
community. this month it will take
place on Sunday, 15 February.

sign up today!

form:
forms.gle/3mkZEP9nyLZHsz…
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Thanks to @itsnicethat for this wonderful feature on the origins of CARI and our work! I especially appreciated being able to incorporate a number of images from our archive of design book & magazine scans

itsnicethat.com/features/the-c…
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Just finished this in-depth article diving into one of my favorite underappreciated aesthetics, Factory PoMo!

Thanks to Are.na and Dirt!
On Factory Pomo, the first aesthetic of the Information Age. are.na/editorial/the-…
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Evan Collins | BLM πŸ³οΈβ€πŸŒˆπŸ‡΅πŸ‡Έ retweeted
Nonstandard - A Documentary

youtu.be/vudDjqGu0LU
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Hey everyone! Just a note that I have moved to Bluesky, going to try to really keep up posting there

Definitely no shortage of wonderful & extremely varied 70s-00s design & CARI research to share!

bsky.app/profile/evanco…
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Thanks so much for having me on! Really enjoyed the in-depth discussion on all things CARI: the origin/evolution of our project, our goals, and how we're dealing with our work & coined terms 'breaching containment' & entering the overall social media sphere
This week, we are joined by special guest @EvanCollins90 β€” architect, archivist, & cofounder of Consumer Aesthetics Research Institute β€” for a conversation about the Institute's work in defining the most fascinating aesthetics of the past half-century nymphetalumni.transistor.fm/110
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What happened to the commercial art of elaborately-carved & painted wooden signs? looking at design books of the 80s-90s this was like an omnipresent thing -- I mainly remember them as monument signs for new subdivisions in NoVa
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Replying to @EvanCollins90
Following up to that -- I might need to leave this platform; I'm a leftist and I don't support a website owned by a fascist POS -- spend any time researching this stuff like I have and you'll end up at the same conclusion.
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Replying to @EvanCollins90
Just to end -- these are all scanned from the book, 'Successful Sign Design' by the editors of 'Signs of the Times' magazine (1989) -- it's such a wonderful, exhaustive overview of signage in the 1980s
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found a book from that era of wildly-themed home theatre design during the 2000s housing bubble - this one's probably my favorite, they really committed to the amazon jungle/Mayan temple look
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Replying to @EvanCollins90
Will be adding some more as I scan 'em -- the book is 'Home Theatres and Electronic Houses' by CEDIA & Tina Skinner (2003)

Design credit for the original post: Atlanta Home Theater of Roswell, GA
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forgotten late 90s-00s motif i really love -- surreal vibrant green grass and blue sky setting (windows xp bliss vibes)
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Replying to @EvanCollins90
Also - y'all are sleeping on Imani Coppola; she deserved much more than one hit wonder status - both this and the follow-up "I'm A Tree" are some classic late 90s gen-x genre mixing fun -- the latter fits the zen-x spiritualism thing im talking about too

youtube.com/watch?v=n26hAO…
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Replying to @EvanCollins90
I also wonder if it was like the diametric opposite to the (mainly) later 'desolate surreal cgi desert' trend of the very late 90s-early 2000s
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