The Consumer Aesthetic Research Institute (CARI) is an online research community dedicated to developing a taxonomy of recent design aesthetics in modern consumer culture, interpreting and critiquing them in the context of societal trends. Our work spans a series of online platforms, taking advantage of their unique formats & structures to engage the public in design discourse, and the development of the aforementioned taxonomy. Through the cultivation of a diverse group of designers, students, researchers, artists, musicians, and writers, we’ve been able to tackle a variety of fields. Currently, we’re in the process of creating a centralized website to collect and present our findings over the past four years in an accessible and engaging manner.

Our work began four years ago as an interest in developing a more cohesive understanding of an era we vaguely remembered from childhood, the turn-of-the-millennium. Through intensive research incorporating a wide range of digital and physical sources, we’ve been able to both repair the era’s infamous archival ‘black hole’, and formulate a detailed understanding of what we’ve termed the ‘Y2K Aesthetic’. An optimistic, techno-utopian style; it epitomizes that brief moment of dotcom fervor when the future was composed of shiny pleather pants, silver eyeshadow, rimless tinted shades, sleek computer-generated graphics, and blobby translucent electronics.

Building on this initial investigation, our work has since branched out to form a small universe of design research, constantly evolving as more contributors become involved. We’ve been able to expand on existing design history & research, filling in archival gaps and connecting more well-documented design movements with those that have previously been underexplored, or deemed too insignificant for study. For example, our research led us to rediscover a design aesthetic that seems to have been forgotten in the collective consciousness, one we’ve termed ‘Global Village Coffeehouse’. It’s that earth-toned, woodcut spiral, kokopelli figure, tribal-themed coffee shop style that never seemed to have a name, but was omnipresent from the late 1980s to the mid 1990s. Then there’s ‘McBling’, the maximalist reaction against Y2K that dominated the pre-‘Great Recession’ era, coating the design landscape with a layer of gold leaf, fleur-de-lis, flowery vector graphics, and oversized baroque-inspired furnishings.

These are just a few examples of the many aesthetic ‘channels’ we’ve been investigating. Our hope is that through further research we can develop a better understanding of the recent past; making design history and discussion more publicly accessible by dissecting the aesthetics of the consumer-driven world we occupy. For the SDF, we’ll be engaging in an interactive activity to apply these categories we’ve been developing to the local context of Seattle, and it’s ever-shifting design landscape.

A core component of CARI’s mission is to educate the public about design, making it more accessible by dissecting the aesthetics of the consumer-driven world we occupy. The astonishing proliferation of designed objects, spaces, and experiences over the past 40 years has led to a collective sense of confusion regarding the economic, societal, and cultural forces behind their origin. By developing an understanding these forces, and breaking down the perceived impenetrability of consumer design, we can help restore the balance of power back to the public.