It's a kind of retrofuturism. An image that calls up what they once thought the future would be like.
When I was a kid anything science fictional or future-oriented was likely to be packaged with some kind of font that evoked a rounded-off square: no sharp points, but no actual circles either. The one on the right, now called Data 70, was especially popular. I think it got its futuristic image sometime in the sixties.
These were products of their time, and it seems especially of the daisy wheel printers used back then. The advent of the personal computer made it seem kind of old fashioned, although the prompts on the screens of early PCs and Macs weren't all that far off.
2 comments:
There's a certain charm about the elements of retrofuturism largely because it reflects the optimism and technological advancements of the post-war period (even though it was envisioned much earlier by Jules Verne).
It's a fascinating blend of past visions of the future that encompasses styles and themes of different eras. Much like Art Deco and Art Nouveau, that featured sleek lines and aerodynamic shapes, retrofuturistic designs aren't practical now the future the artists and designers dreamed has arrived in a stripped down state.
I wonder if the 'no sharp points' may be a sign of a slower approach being preferable. In a time that looks increasingly virtual, retrofuturism offers something you can touch, something to remind people of the power of idealism and familarity in the midst of too much change too fast.
While the future has always had a scary element it seemed to have a friendlier element to people in the postwar period, and to Verne as well. What changed all that? It may be that greater power imbalances now make the future feel less like something we can choose for ourselves.
Art Nouveau and Art Deco are markedly different styles, but what they have in common is that they gave architects and designers permission to play around at the edges. Modern architecture tends to be more grimly functional. Actually, I like Mies van der Rohe on the level of rooms and houses. When he starts building up tall he loses a lot of his charm.
They probably wouldn't have recognized it as a slower approach at the time, but in a way it was. This was before the 24-hour news cycle, the 24-hour everything cycle. When there's more waiting there's more contemplating. That's something we've started to miss, I think.
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