A Look Into: Futurism & New Age Digital Artwork

Futurism is a style used to depict the ideal futuristic Earth society. Artists from around the world have contributed their ideas to the pool. Thus the genre of futurism is heavily fractured into separate disciplines. Ranging from painted scenery to abstract and extra-terrestrial, the futurism movement brought about some fantastic ideas in the late 21st century.

What many don’t consider is how the abstract arts have grown and affected modern trends. These factors constantly influence digital artwork, and we can see examples in DVD covers, CD artwork, movie posters, and other alternative media.

The futurism movement began picking up steam in the mid-1980s. The word retro-futurism was originally coined by Llyod Dunn in 1983. The genre is heavily reminiscent of early-age 1960s cafe and diner styles.

The old-fashioned retro themes brought new life to examining our culture. The overarching trends can be expressed with two brief ideas: the future as seen from the past and the past as seen from the future. It seems a bit confusing at first, granted it has grown and matured since originally hitting the scene.

Image Source: Klaur Bürgle

However, as time progressed, new ideas emerged. Societal growth has increased along with the trends in media. Common themes of artwork created in the 21st century often include spacemen and aliens. Also, crude symbolism, such as triangles or beams of rainbows, is common in abstract works.

Explanation of the Futuristic Art Style

As retro-futurism was just getting started, the common ideas between artists were fantastic. The initial retro-futurism was based on creative ideas about how the future would look. Most artworks were symbolic and not meant to represent reality – thus, the paintings often adopted 1920s technology with a futuristic style of living.

Image Source: Klaur Bürgle

Examples could include flying cars or robots using a cooking range. Artists also kept major infrastructure, such as buildings and streets, to keep the scenes grounded in our modern world. Cars were sometimes depicted as driving along the road with flying buses above, which could be symbolic of a transition between automobiles and alternative travel.

Image Source: Prof. Michael Stoll

The purpose of retro-futurism artwork was to evoke a state of nostalgia in the viewer’s mind. This ties hand-in-hand with the secondary ideology of looking to create a better world in which to live in. World War II and the Cold War are often sub-themes that can be felt in some dated artwork and paintings. Though much of the latter works focused on optimism and societal improvement with outstanding technological innovation.

Retro Old-School Effects

The style of life in western society can compare to no other. During the 1940s and 50s, we saw the largest expansion of families and lifestyle changes. Looking back 60 years later, it seems the lifestyle was much more vintage than our modern day.

These themes are expressed heavily with bright colors and lighting. Setting the mood for these futuristic societies seems to point towards upbeat spirits among each person. Bright lights are also used in random geometric shapes fitted above retro artwork.

Image Source: Peter Nudo

Adopters of this new style were able to transform the original scenery into abstract projects. These pieces of artwork wouldn’t include any specific place or time. There are often scenes that cannot realistically happen or don’t make any sense! Artists haven’t lost touch with the vintage by the inclusion of old-school themes such as Leave it to Beaver-style men and women.

Image Source: Peter Nudo

Human faces are a wildly common theme for expressing emotion. Artists pour their hearts into each project, and this can be most easily represented with another human being’s facial expression. It’s not uncommon to see two or three people all expressing polarized emotions or even in sync with the same appearance. The direction towards where the face is looking also affects the mood of the whole scene.

Shapes and Mystical Geometry

Geometry is powerful imagery in all forms of art ranging back thousands of years. Digital artwork is no different, as futurists love using geometric shapes. Commonly triangles are seen representing the trinity with 3 sides and 3 angles. It also seems that although most triangles are created in 2D, they seem to represent 3D pyramid-like objects.

Artists can create this effect by applying light beams from behind the shape and casting shadows across the canvas. In more contemporary art, you may see people walking toward triangles. In these cases, the artist may include a small door on the front or possibly a walkway leading in. This effect adds a secondary structure in the viewer’s eyes to recognize not only the shape but some sort of building.

Image Source: Sakke Soini

Bright colors help to bring shapes out from the background. When we see modern-day futurism, up to 5 or 6 different swatches may be included together at once to create a rainbow of color. The magnificent barrage of colors and shapes is meant to jump out off the page and entice the average person.

Image Source: Benjamin Koh

Certainly, with more bizarre works, it’s easy gaining attention. Bright beams of color and light naturally catch our eyes even from great distances. This could be the reason many new musical artists include these themes within their album artwork.

Space and Astronaut Themes

One of the most prevalent themes in retro-futurism is space. As humans living on this earth for thousands of years, we have dreamt of exploring the cosmos. Once reaching the year 2000AD, it was obvious that our society had graduated into a new era.

Image Source: Tonic Vision

The symbolism in many pieces includes background designs of stars and galaxies. Notably, artists will include detailed galaxy formations along with close-up renders of planets. Star Wars plays a factor in the works of a few artists, as with UFOs and similar flying space crafts.

Image Source: David Fuhrer

Coupled with the space exploration theme comes a Jetson’s style future. Robots are depicted often performing human tasks. This can include drinking, eating, or exercising. Spacemen and spirit-like beings are commonly seen interacting in the same scene.

Image Source: Ed Price

Take for example, the flyer artwork above. This clearly displays a bright and vibrant star cluster in the background which sets the mood for much of the foreground work. Beams of light are prevalent and stem from a center circle of light. All common themes draw upon retro-futurism for guidance.

How Society and Retro-Futurism Have Advanced

The journey began from a nostalgic envisioning of our 1950s western society and moved forward into the most abstract of creations. Retro-futurism has changed dramatically in just a couple of decades, and digital illustrators have been changing right along with the trends.

More people are learning how to create digital artwork, and it’s expected to see such an increase in abstract trends. Adobe Photoshop is the premiere software suite for creating layered digital art for web and print. Vector artists have also worked deeply with futuristic trends creating not only clip art but detailed scenery.

Image Source: Alex Beltechi

As the genre now focuses heavily on themes in space, the trends in retro-futurism have become fractals of their previous form. Granted, the nostalgia and vintage feeling haven’t been lost and have adopted many of the latter generations in American history. An example could include clothing or media from the 1980s with themes such as dancing, disco, and crazy sunglasses.

Trends in Retro Web Design

The vintage art style has elegantly carried over onto the World Wide Web. Digital interfaces of the modern day often include hints of retro effects. These can include checked or spotted backgrounds, emboldened typography, and exquisite vector artwork.

Often, you can find fantastic illustrators who are devoted to the practice and style of retro-futurism. Scenery depicting 1950s cafes and gas stations are just some of the brilliant works. Bright stripes are still used quite visibly in website layouts, often times included in soft background patterns.

Standard fonts have been replaced with many old-school effects. This can be accomplished with font replacement techniques in CSS or static images. Google Web Fonts is another amazing service which boasts a handful of beautiful typefaces.

Image Source: X-ray Delta One

Paper and photographs are common themes throughout these designs, too. Notebooks and paper backgrounds may have typewriter-style lettering. This invokes a feeling of World War II technology with information transmission. Similarly this style can be compared to old-fashioned newsprint from the printing presses of the early 1900s.

Gallery of Vintage-Style Layouts

With so many fantastic examples it’s difficult to pick favorites. Retro artwork has greatly enhanced the styles of many popular websites. Layouts and vector artworks are fantastic inspiration for bringing the vintage feeling back into perspective.

Many of collections below include multiple elements of old-school artwork. Links and logo designs are some of the best examples, along with in-page text. Vector artworks play a key role in backgrounds and branding as well. Although it’s much more rare to see digital artists sticking with vintage illustrations in the foreground layers.

Farinella Bakery

Hipstery

Tennessee Vacation

Tricycle Terror

The Antique Piano Shop

The Wayward Irregular

The Dollar Dreadful

Five Cent Stand

Level 2 Design

Custom Design

The New York Moon

Eighty Two Design

mediaBOOM

singularity concepts

Zen Garden CSS

Taywell Ice Creams

Michela Chiucini

Jeff Sarmiento

Lord Likely

Web-o-matic

You may also be interested in:

• Retro & Vintage Photoshop Tutorials
• Over 70 Retro And Historic Artwork Around The World
• Best of Retro And Vintage Web Design
• Vintage Advertisement Of Modern Technology

Conclusion

New age digital artwork has come a long way from our ancestors. With the personal computer becoming commonplace, it’s not unusual for kids and young adults to pick up these skills and begin creating their own artwork.

The genre has imposed a great deal of abstract imagery and forges ahead with futuristic trends. The styles are even now working their way into web design via vector characters and layout patterns. Icons are also seeing a change with so many open source projects available for free download.

What are your thoughts on the changing trends of retro-futurism? Do you see any of these examples in modern-day websites? If you have similar examples of great artwork, please share them with us in the comments below.