It’s almost every other day that I see new merch of things I grew up with whether that be game discs or catridges, toy packaging, UI assets, or ‘retro’ tech. And for the most part, that’s awesome, I love to see others in this field that might also be 30 at this point.
But there’s a pretty consistent issue that I’ve witnessed when it comes to the rising popularity of “nostalgia” as a subject matter.
The original artists and designers of the source material are still alive.
And beyond that, many are uncredited or entirely obscured. When we use this material and repurpose it with the intent to sell something, there has to be a clear intention to transform it. Otherwise… you’re kinda just stealing it, right?
I think A LOT about this video.
There are cases in which some source materials are free to use but I’m going to speak to a broader misuse of this as a ‘genre.’ So often there are things like product and package design or small assets like UI icons or emoticons that get lifted and repurposed for merchandise without the designer so much as redrawing what they are referencing. That missing intentionality is what pushes this influence closer to plagiarism.
Redrawing what you are referencing is the bare minimum.
Even if the asset you are lifting is becoming a completely different medium, you don’t own that design. Better yet- there’s likely still a hot copyright hovering over every part of the source if it is owned by a company making active sales today.
Overall the reason to be intentional in transforming artwork is because as an artist that is your job. Your work is defined by how you interpret the world you see- it only makes sense to want to put your vision into your art. And I’m not unaware of the reasons why people want to match source material more closely. Customers immediately recognizing the reference you’re making changes the outcome of a sale. That doesn’t mean you’re out of room to experiment even in that case.
There are definitely ways to work directly with original artists or copyright holders on unique merchandise designs that better match the source material. One of my favorite examples of this being done right is Tern’s WinRAR bag (as well as their whole catalog, incredible work). The construction of the bag was the design-intensive part while the likeness is matched- and in this case, a collaboration would be near-necessary. Tern’s other designs follow very similar construction pointed to match likeness but you can see in other bags- logos are entirely re-imagined and some layout is re-mapped from the source material. The recognition of ‘what’ the design is referencing is immediate but the actual design is still undeniably unique and owned by Tern.
The landscape of nostalgia merchandise overall is unlike this. And we’re breaching into a whole different problem associated with this attitude of “old art = free use.”
The point of nostalgia is how you remember something that used to be not how you consume something to don a personality trait.
Like… nostalgia merch becoming a trend is kind of irritating and exhausting to see. It is the antithesis of what nostalgia is even about. You could argue that in a way the temporary consumption of reminders of the past is exactly what fills the bittersweet void of nostalgic thinking but that’s depressing as shit and I hate it.
The whole reason we are OBSESSED with old internet and physical media and analog hobbying is because none of that was constantly plagued by advertisements and subtle marketing injected into the media you actually wanted to watch! At least that’s MY reason. I don’t understand why there is this rush to reprint everything from the early 2000s without second thought and better yet why there is a high consumption of this. I want to connect with people about things that I enjoyed as a kid but this feels so watered down and baseless. Why would I buy a piece of merch that just has a near direct print of a box art of a game I liked when I was 10… when I have that game box in my collection? I feel as though if something wasn’t easy to label as ‘nostalgic’ we would call that what it is: bootleg.
I think there’s another aspect to this that hasn’t been touched either: ‘nostalgia’ isn’t even specific. It’s not a genre, it’s not an interest, it’s not a medium, it’s not a category- it’s a vague idea that if something is from the early 2000s or older, it is ‘nostalgic.’ This feels like the phenomenon of people labelling everything a ‘liminal space’ without understanding what term was meant to categorize. If we’re talking about video games, I see so many Gamecube and even Wii games, EVEN DS GAMES (genuinely, how?) considered ‘nostalgia’ merch designs. Are earlier tabletop RPGs part of ‘nostalgia?’ Not that I’ve ever seen labelled because the idea of something becoming part of this non-category is whether or not they have a consumable aesthetic. And this quite literally blocks out a LOT of niche from being ‘marketable’ — not that it has to be but that it would determine a lot of visibility towards an audience that is more uniquely invested in art and media and not a vague age-based personality trait.
So what exactly are we buying and WHY? There’s actually an issue that comes with this trend-based consumption. People in collector spaces are priced out of their actual hobby by those who want to fit into this trend. There’s a number of videos on this but the general idea is that- those who were already into collecting for analog and physical media, people who buy devices to restore them, etc. the prices of these devices has skyrocketed. Old iPods and MP3 players, CD players, anything handheld- the trend surrounding these items becoming a vague aesthetic leads to people being price-gouged. And for the most part what people in these communities have witnessed is just pure consumption for the Idea of owning something- that device owned rarely getting actual use. We are in the drowning cycle of consumerism controlling our expression.
Clearly these issues aren’t something that stems from any single artist or person being a participant but there’s plenty that we can be more mindful of. I’m a firm believer in the idea that change comes from communal effort, not individual. There’s just one thing we need when it comes to creating inspired by things we are nostalgic for: intention.
As someone who does a lot of ‘old-school-web’ style things- one of my aims with my art is to entirely recreate the early 2000s internet. I feel like one huge reason why I got into art as a kid was the fact that I loved story-telling. I love writing lore and history for fictional things! I want to create a full brand history for the fictional software, MX Paint, and have different connections to characters and digital creatures I have in my head. I don’t need the real-life brands that constructed the old web, I can just make them up- create a whole new alternate timeline that tells a story of an idealized digital library that everyone in the world has access to juxtaposed against an inherently greed-run nightmare algorithm that keeps its users powerless and appeased.
If you ever come across something old you want to appreciate, take it as a challenge to reimagine it. What if this operating system was entirely purple and based on snakes? How would you still make it recognizable as influenced by the source material? Alternatively, if you want to stick closer to reference, take it as an opportunity to research and learn about the original designers. Maybe you’ll get to learn new things about something you were obsessed with as a kid.