Subject Matter 12: Diminishing Marginal Aesthetic Value
A small update: I published a new report on Friday, which discusses how zero marginal cost distribution poses a challenge to the value of aesthetic strategies.
Report: The Diminishing Marginal Value of Aesthetics
It seems to me that aesthetics is something of a paradox today. In our brand-saturated environment, consciously designed aesthetics are more relevant and more omnipresent than ever; yet at the same time, it is getting easier and easier to create and distribute aesthetic artifacts, leading to their overall devaluation.
In my Ribbonfarm talk earlier this year, I touched briefly on some consequences of lowered (aesthetic) production and distribution costs, from the perspective of the moral crises that ensue when said costs fall. In this new post, I go more in-depth on exactly how the changing media landscape has contributing to those falling costs. To this end, I discuss network topology, the technology adoption life cycle, and Stratechery's well known Aggregation Theory. The analytical frameworks deployed here will be familiar to investors or analysts who may not be familiar with cultural movements and aesthetics. In the final section, I hint at opportunities for investments that leverage these signals. Parties interested in bespoke investment advisory or an opportunity portfolio on this subject, please reach out to toby@subpixel.space.
I'm concerned for graphic designers, art directors, and other professions who rely specifically on the development of novel aesthetic strategies to make a living. I've offered some suggestions for the future of aesthetics beyond images and videos, and I hope they are taken seriously; the essay is going moderately viral among designers, so I have hope that it's being interpreted as the warning cry it is.
Some brief thanks are in order: to Betty Wang, Darren, Gavin, Matylda, and many others for the conversations that led to these ideas; Paprika for supporting and encouraging my ideas and obsessions; Zhan Li and Venkatesh Rao for supporting my recent thinking; and David Rudnick for contributing his thinking to this piece. I was also happy to see my work featured on the New Models, replete with a shaky link. 😆
Until next time.
Report: The Diminishing Marginal Value of Aesthetics
It seems to me that aesthetics is something of a paradox today. In our brand-saturated environment, consciously designed aesthetics are more relevant and more omnipresent than ever; yet at the same time, it is getting easier and easier to create and distribute aesthetic artifacts, leading to their overall devaluation.
In my Ribbonfarm talk earlier this year, I touched briefly on some consequences of lowered (aesthetic) production and distribution costs, from the perspective of the moral crises that ensue when said costs fall. In this new post, I go more in-depth on exactly how the changing media landscape has contributing to those falling costs. To this end, I discuss network topology, the technology adoption life cycle, and Stratechery's well known Aggregation Theory. The analytical frameworks deployed here will be familiar to investors or analysts who may not be familiar with cultural movements and aesthetics. In the final section, I hint at opportunities for investments that leverage these signals. Parties interested in bespoke investment advisory or an opportunity portfolio on this subject, please reach out to toby@subpixel.space.
I'm concerned for graphic designers, art directors, and other professions who rely specifically on the development of novel aesthetic strategies to make a living. I've offered some suggestions for the future of aesthetics beyond images and videos, and I hope they are taken seriously; the essay is going moderately viral among designers, so I have hope that it's being interpreted as the warning cry it is.
Some brief thanks are in order: to Betty Wang, Darren, Gavin, Matylda, and many others for the conversations that led to these ideas; Paprika for supporting and encouraging my ideas and obsessions; Zhan Li and Venkatesh Rao for supporting my recent thinking; and David Rudnick for contributing his thinking to this piece. I was also happy to see my work featured on the New Models, replete with a shaky link. 😆
Until next time.
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