Sottsass founded the Memphis group with a band of radical creatives including Alessandro Mendini, Andrea Branzi, Aldo Cibic, Hans Hollein, Michele de Lucchi, Shiro Kuramata, Matteo Thun, Paola Navone and Nathalie du Pasquier. The movement launched its visual fireworks at Milan’s Salone del Mobile in 1981 with hyper-patterned, technicolour furniture... See more

“The artists who were pioneering the modern movement in the visual arts looked widely for inspiration, breaking away from the old hierarchy of ‘high’ and ‘low’ that had long divided visual culture into fine art and decorative art,” said business historian Regina Lee Blaszczyk. 

For this reason, websites like Craigslist and Are.na strike a chord: Their analog internet style and chunky buttons feel daring and intriguing in this modern context. Compared to the blasé, blue-branded modern tools we all spend so much of our time using today — and that contribute to that uniform sameness described earlier — these tools feel decid... See more