It’s everywhere.

The rectangular yet noodle-like bodies, the freakishly small heads, the plain, devilish smiles. 

You have already seen one or more of these monstrosities today, but you think so little of it. 

This is the work of Alegria, or Corporate Memphis: the art style that encompasses disproportionate bodies alongside widespread use.

It’s normal now to see dimensionless beings in a neon abyss advertising some way to save up on groceries or build a website. 

We’re used to it.

Google uses it; Schoology posts use it; Grubhub uses it. It’s possible you’ve even used it yourself by quickly searching for a graphic on Canva.

Corporate Memphis is a product of sheer laziness, made to replace the effort it takes to make good-looking graphics.

Usually two-dimensional, the characters depicted lack shading or any real defining features besides their cartoonishly simplified silhouettes.

They’re weirdly colorful and stand out from the background, given how saturated they are.

These soulless characters are always smiling, always looking as though they are attempting to mimic normal human activities.

Despite it being so outwardly uncanny and indistinguishable, businesses continue to use Corporate Memphis because of its simplicity. It’s as easy as going on a drawing app and putting together circles and lines to emulate a person.

It’s boring and uninspired, just like the corporate world.

When all you’re concerned with is sales and profit, you fail to recognize when something strays away from being human and more towards machines.

Adobe Illustrator is a factory for these behemoths. The tools for perfectly cut, symmetrical vector assets are already there. And once you finish your first flat character, it’s easy to replicate and implement them into all your other work.

Many corporations were going down in value in the midst of the pandemic, having to lay off workers and reconsider how they should market their products. 

Retail businesses, especially those that require more contact, dropped significantly in purchases. Forbes reports that retail traffic decreased by 30% just in the beginning of March 2020 alone.

That’s where Corporate Memphis stepped in.

Not only was it cheap, but it could also be done at home with absolutely no in-person contact needed.

You don’t necessarily need much creativity for it either.

There doesn’t need to be any rhyme or reason to how one places the characters and backgrounds. After all, it’s so incredibly vague that you could practically apply it to anything.

While there isn’t anything inherently wrong with employing a style such as Corporate Memphis, it paints a very dull picture for the state of businesses today.

The art style is repetitive and overdone. It’s also not really seen as a style that artists have; it’s purely corporate.

It sacrifices originality for mediocrity and convenience that invalidates the art that could have been done by people who actually care.

There is a disconnect between artistic individuality and businesses nationwide. What started as cutting costs during the uncertain time of covid has spiraled into a passionless venture that belittles actual artists.

With the constant development of AI art, artists will only continue to get put down and replaced by empty characters and backgrounds.

So long as we tolerate this, the state of corporate art will never amount to anything more than what it is now.