Memphis
The 1980s Milan group that weaponized bad taste — clashing primaries, squiggles, terrazzo speckle, toy geometry — deployed against good-taste modernism.
Example usage
“The brand refresh goes Memphis: squiggle dividers, confetti shapes, colors that argue on purpose.”
Editor’s note
Memphis is the joke design told modernism, and like every good joke it was serious. Tech rediscovers it whenever flat design gets too quiet — the blob-and-squiggle illustration era was Memphis with an HR policy. The style runs on deliberate wrongness, which is why committee-sanded Memphis dies: tidy the clash and nothing remains. If warm is a calm host, Memphis is the host who juggles.