How one paper cup designer created the look of the 90s
June 21, 2015 8:19 AM   Subscribe

"A design so commonplace you've never thought about it. It's just there. When you ask if you can get some water...when you opt for the combo meal...when you're given a drink in the hospital." That teal-and-purple brushstroke combination that you've seen thousands of times since the early 90s has a designer, and her name is Gina Ekiss. A mystery launched on Reddit, solved by Thomas Gounley of the Springfield News Leader.
posted by How the runs scored (54 comments total) 48 users marked this as a favorite
 
Someone named "Stephanie" claims she originally designed it, and the design was modified by Gina:

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/394teo/ama_request_the_graphic_designer_who_made_the/cs19yki
posted by mecran01 at 8:27 AM on June 21, 2015 [2 favorites]


I was just having a conversation about this last night- it's fascinating to see the origin of this particular design, but it was also part of a more general aesthetic in the mid- to late-80s. Many a shopping mall had similar accents on any wall that wasn't a storefront or advertising placement.

When exposed to radioactive material or some other sort of mutagen, this aesthetic also turns into Lisa Frank.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 8:33 AM on June 21, 2015 [12 favorites]


t was also part of a more general aesthetic in the mid- to late-80s.

Agreed! Loose, pastel-y, brushstrokey, free-form.
posted by Miko at 8:34 AM on June 21, 2015


Thanks for this. Interesting.

From the Springfield News Leader piece:

The design was similar to something she had designed in college, Ekiss said, rejecting the idea that she ripped off another cup company's design. Teal and purple were her two favorite colors.

Seems original, whoever came up with it. But it's not unfair to say it's a bit of an homage to or was influenced by Memphis-Milano.

A graphic designer friend and I were talking about this one day - it came up because "Hey, you know that 80s to early 90s thing? With the squiggly lines and geometric patterns and pastel colours?"

"Yeah. Like the graphics in the opening credits to Saved by the Bell?"

"Yeah! That's exactly what I'm thinking of!"

"Let us go then to Google!"

So yeah, to me the jazz cup design totally has a Memphis Milano sensibility to it, and I'm just glad I have words for what that thing is called, rather than having to reference Saved By the Bell every time I want to describe it.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 8:34 AM on June 21, 2015 [12 favorites]




All the motorhomes and RV's still look like this.
posted by yesster at 8:37 AM on June 21, 2015 [11 favorites]


Huh. I always chalked that aesthetic up to Miami Vice.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:39 AM on June 21, 2015 [11 favorites]


Someone named "Stephanie" claims she originally designed it, and the design was modified by Gina:

I don't know, there's a big gap in that story.
posted by grog at 8:40 AM on June 21, 2015 [2 favorites]


The ubiquity of the design reminds me of the pattern used for bus and subway seats; once you see it, your inner homunculus remembers seeing it everywhere and nowhere in particular.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 8:41 AM on June 21, 2015 [5 favorites]


Nostalgia sure but mostly that article made me glad I don't live in Missouri.
posted by 7segment at 8:46 AM on June 21, 2015 [1 favorite]


See also: this Z-Thomasso cycling jersey.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 8:48 AM on June 21, 2015 [1 favorite]


The design is an abomination.

Anyone know where I can get one of those printed sweaters?

Asking for a friend.
posted by clvrmnky at 8:51 AM on June 21, 2015 [13 favorites]


So I guess I'd have a friendly quibble with notion that "...one paper cup designer created the look of the 90s" because some of the shorts and shirts of my mid-80s childhood kinda looked like this.

But I guess more generically it's "80s postmodernism." So anyway, it kinds predates the 90s a bit. By the 90s, it had been around long enough to be incorporated into something as quotidian as a disposable cup you'd get in a hospital cafeteria.

TheWhiteSkull: I followed the Tour de France pretty closely as a kid. I'm now having flashbacks to watching Greg Lemond when he was riding in the 1990 Tour de France. Totally familiar and yet so long ago...
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 8:54 AM on June 21, 2015 [3 favorites]


it was also part of a more general aesthetic in the mid- to late-80s

Indeed it was! The teal-and-purple color combo is deeply 80's. I remember it being absolutely everywhere in fashion (and on eyelids including mine) circa 1985.
posted by Rosie M. Banks at 8:55 AM on June 21, 2015 [6 favorites]


I have a thing for late 80s/early 90s tennis shirts. a lot of them look like that.
posted by lmfsilva at 8:57 AM on June 21, 2015




Ah, the nostalgia! So many fond memories of the free cups of water served at aggressive sales pitches, cattle call job interviews, corporate waiting rooms, and hospitals.
posted by ernielundquist at 9:12 AM on June 21, 2015 [1 favorite]


Ah, Memphis style! Always inspires a lively game of Living Room or Cat Gymnasium?
posted by mochapickle at 9:12 AM on June 21, 2015 [8 favorites]


The teal-and-purple color combo is deeply 80's. I remember it being absolutely everywhere in fashion (and on eyelids including mine) circa 1985.

When I moved into the apartment I'm in now, I discovered that the woman who'd had my bedroom before me had painted it this very teal-and-lavendar combo. I bought two cans of white paint and went at it before I unpacked anything.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:13 AM on June 21, 2015 [6 favorites]


Wait a minute. Wait a minute, Doc. Ah... Are you telling me that you built a time machine... out of a '96 Chevrolet Impala?
posted by Auden at 9:28 AM on June 21, 2015 [4 favorites]


Surprisingly, that Impala works. It wouldn't go on anything other than a monument to 90s Detroit mediocrity, but there it is.
posted by wierdo at 9:32 AM on June 21, 2015 [5 favorites]


Please ask the Google vision folks to sic their neural networks on this thing so we can see what hallucinogenic horrors lurk within.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 9:37 AM on June 21, 2015 [8 favorites]


Early 90's teal cars, so ugly. The only person I know who owned one got an enormous amount of grief for it. "Did you buy that in the dark?"
posted by Confess, Fletch at 10:13 AM on June 21, 2015 [1 favorite]


Yeah, if we just went with "epitomizes" rather than "creates" I think nobody would contest that.
posted by RobotHero at 10:36 AM on June 21, 2015 [2 favorites]


The Seattle Mariners adopted their teal colors/logo in the early 90s as well...amusingly you see more of the throwback blue and gold stuff than the current team logowear these days.
posted by Existential Dread at 10:39 AM on June 21, 2015


Here, have a picture of Hatsune Miku as a teal deer.
posted by Wolfdog at 10:46 AM on June 21, 2015




No teal, but definitely purple and cyan and glassine and all kinds of other rococo bizarrerie going on in this mid-80s album cover (and its endlessly-multiplied Princely ilk).
posted by blucevalo at 11:39 AM on June 21, 2015


Check out the intro to Miami Vice. Same sort of theme in the logo.
posted by persona au gratin at 12:20 PM on June 21, 2015


Dammit! I live in Springfield, and was so excited to make this same FPP after work tonight!

Oh, well. Here's a picture of the recently torn down building where those cups were made. The City passed on my proposal to turn it into an Aqua Teen Hunger Force museum.

I was robbed, I tells you.
posted by sourwookie at 12:44 PM on June 21, 2015 [4 favorites]


I have a thing for late 80s/early 90s tennis shirts. a lot of them look like that.

Stefan Edberg 1992 U. S. Open shirt.
posted by bukvich at 12:57 PM on June 21, 2015 [4 favorites]


I appreciate the forerunners to the design, and that perhaps this was more of a "how it was cemented in our culture" thing than a "where it all began" thing. But the symmetry with the mythology around the Anthora Cup is compelling.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 1:34 PM on June 21, 2015 [2 favorites]


Well if the Simpsons were parodying that aesthetic -- pastels, a 'flowing' geometry -- in roughly 1992 (the intro to Eye on Springfield; full version), clearly the seeds to this look had been in the air for sometime.

Neither can I imagine a better soundtrack to go with that visual than the send up offered here. A Roland keyboard vamp with shredding guitar licks in-between. Taken literally, the name "jazz" is astonishingly ignorant of the artistic ground the pattern sprung up from (my first choice would be "synth"). But, realizing that pattern is meant to be mass-produced into the billions and disposed of without a second thought, the incongruous name seems perfect.

Also: Springfield News Reader, Eye on Springfield. Heh, didn't catch that at first.
posted by Theophrastus Johnson at 1:40 PM on June 21, 2015 [3 favorites]


Early 90's teal cars, so ugly.
Hey, Conan O'Brien's '92 Ford Taurus was... well, one shade darker, but totally cool.
(Disclaimer: I once bought a used Taurus of the same era and same color - but I think I saved a couple grand just because of the color. Not proud, just cheap.)
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:07 PM on June 21, 2015


Theophrastus:
Being able to write new music with that aesthetic pays my bills every month. It's still very much in demand, haha. There are not many of us who can still do it authentically (hitting that "sweet spot" phrasing with guitar licks in particular is actually hard as hell -- think Double Dare theme. Cheesy as hell, but harmonically adventurous and incredibly driving and energetic).

I see a lot of people approaching this kind of thing ironically, cynically, and it sounds like shit because they don't have any of the actual skill that the original creators did, and are just making a "remember this? LOL" caricature. It actually takes substantial production chops and a sort of "tactful tastelessness" to do it right, if that makes any sense. To get into the mindset of someone working in a laughably outdated style, but at the absolute peak of their genuine aesthetic game.

I don't know shit about visual design, but I imagine it's a similar thing with 80s/early 90s designs, like.. sneering at it isn't the way to do it justice, and it's actually harder than it seems.

I'm trying to track down a Jazz Cup vinyl decal so I can put it on my gigging laptop. Or, um. My keytar. YEAHHHHH.
posted by jake at 2:11 PM on June 21, 2015 [14 favorites]


All the motorhomes and RV's still look like this.

This was my first thought as well. Travel trailers and RVs -- with the exception of a few models, such as Airstream trailers -- have been using swooshy graphics down the side ever since these cups first came out. It's mostly gone away as a design approach except for the RV industry, where it seems to be here to stay.
posted by Dip Flash at 2:14 PM on June 21, 2015


Has anybody seen a free vector collection for those '80s and '90s shapes, swooshes and scribbles? I periodically find myself in need of that.
posted by Faint of Butt at 2:27 PM on June 21, 2015 [1 favorite]


Teal and purple were more early '90s than '80s. Charlotte Hornets Starter Jackets, Yo!

Goddam, it seemed like things were going to be ok in those days.
posted by batfish at 2:38 PM on June 21, 2015 [2 favorites]


Surprisingly, that Impala works. It wouldn't go on anything other than a monument to 90s Detroit mediocrity, but there it is.

I'd wager it would look mighty fine on a Dodge Aries too (OK, so technically, K-cars were 80s Detroit mediocrity, but still).
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 3:43 PM on June 21, 2015


Ocean Pacific, mid-1980s. Teal and purple OP designs.
posted by Miko at 5:21 PM on June 21, 2015 [6 favorites]


I like to think of this design as the "Over Our Heads" style. The name of the store on The Facts of Life show. By the time it appeared on Saved by the Bell it was already old and hacky. (as far as fads go) At least that's my memory of it.
posted by readyfreddy at 7:13 PM on June 21, 2015 [1 favorite]


The Geo Tracker was the ultimate teal car, with its contrasting pink/purple accents, although its sibling the Geo Metro tried hard, too.
posted by gingerest at 8:09 PM on June 21, 2015 [2 favorites]


The '92 Geo Storm was also available in teal.

I always wanted a fridge magnet of a Geo Storm so I could have a Geomagnetic Storm.
posted by Confess, Fletch at 8:22 PM on June 21, 2015 [2 favorites]


clvmnky: Anyone know where I can get one of those printed sweaters?

You can build a computer controlled knitting machine, or maybe you could contact them. People have done crazier things, like knit a sweater with a recursive picture of Bill Cosby wearing the sweater.
posted by plinth at 6:25 AM on June 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


I currently own two teal vehicles: a 1989 Mercedes 190E (this one isn't mine but it's the same color; mine doesn't have that stupid trunk spoiler) and a 1995 Kawasaki KLR250, which fulfills its mortal destiny with a factory teal and purple paint scheme. Kawasaki was bad for doing these weird Miami Vice paint jobs. They're known colloquially as "Barbie bikes."

And I don't even like teal.
posted by workerant at 7:08 AM on June 22, 2015


This must be how my parents felt when I started waxing rhapsodic about avocado-colored appliances and burnt-orange upholstery back in the mid 90s.
posted by entropicamericana at 8:30 AM on June 22, 2015 [7 favorites]


And now I want a car or a sweater or something with the 1970s/80s equivalent of this -- the orange and yellow baby's breath pattern that showed up on Dixie cups and is impossible to find on the internet.
posted by pxe2000 at 9:02 AM on June 22, 2015 [3 favorites]


Has anyone done this for the cups they used before the Jazz Cup? I vaguely remember milk shakes from non-chain fast food places always being served in some sort of turquoise and orange swirly polka dot sort of cup in the late 70s and early 80s.
posted by cardboard at 9:04 AM on June 22, 2015


According to the article, the Sweetheart Cup Company's previous "stock" design was called Preference, and it looked like this. If you're a little older, it's as familiar — although nowhere near as memorable — as Jazz.
posted by How the runs scored at 12:05 PM on June 22, 2015 [5 favorites]


Preference is still around. I occasionally work at a couple of places that stock those cups in their breakroom to this day. Well, they did last time I was there, which has been nearly a year now. I did say occasionally, after all..
posted by wierdo at 8:37 PM on June 22, 2015


According to the article, the Sweetheart Cup Company's previous "stock" design was called Preference, and it looked like this. If you're a little older, it's as familiar — although nowhere near as memorable — as Jazz.

Oh wow! I'd forgotten about that one. When I worked at Aramark concessions in the early 90s, we had Jazz cups for soda and Preference cups for coffee.

the orange and yellow baby's breath pattern that showed up on Dixie cups

And I forgot about, those, too! Those had wax coating on the outside that you could scratch off with your thumb. It was really satisfying.
posted by mochapickle at 5:24 AM on June 23, 2015 [4 favorites]


The Geo Tracker was the ultimate teal car, with its contrasting pink/purple accents, although its sibling the Geo Metro tried hard, too.

Last year, I saw a Geo Metro with a bumper sticker that said "My other car is also a Geo Metro," which was just the perfect level of self-deprecation for my mental state at the time, and I giggled for the rest of my drive home.
posted by schmod at 7:40 AM on June 25, 2015 [3 favorites]


My first car was a Geo Prizm and it was badass.
posted by Miko at 1:55 PM on June 25, 2015 [1 favorite]


readyfreddy: "I like to think of this design as the "Over Our Heads" style. The name of the store on The Facts of Life show."

Edna's Edibles or GTFO.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:35 AM on July 1, 2015 [1 favorite]


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