Why do 'Corporate Art Styles' Feel Fake?

2:57 credit to Jianan Liu

Music in order of Appearence:
Kevin MacLeod - Crinoline Dreams
Hans Zimmer - Mountains
18 Carat Affair - Modus Operandi
Kevin MacLeod - Samba Isobel
Ryo Kawasaki - Sweet Tears
Tobacco - Refbatch
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License

Sources:
A. M. Cassandre - Henri Mouron

[SolarSands]

Yes I mispronounced the name "Kurzgesagt" sorry. For the record I did look up how the channel narrator himself pronounced it and I thought he said it in that way clearly I didn't listen closely enough sorry. Also a small note at 7:25 I fail to mention that the New Yorker has been using flat illustration characters for a while but I think there's still a slight difference between these covers and the kinds of characters they usually have.

[LuciferianStrings]

This ad literally looks like what fake bad comercials look like in movies

[richards]

The official art style of "Trust us we are totally not going to use your data for any unethical purposes"

[emilybarclay]

This art style feels like it was designed to be emotional by someone incapable of feeling emotion

[asdf]

So inclusive it's exclusive
So universal it's alienated
So unique it's homogeneous
Don't be confused, these juxtapositions are done by purpose.

[sniper]

"Everything's fine" The art style. Historians will analyze it to death, that's for sure.

[MYO]

this art style is just visual representation of what a spotify ad feels like.

[taewae]

it's crazy how an almost indescribable trait like "soullessness" is instantly felt by the majority of people when looking at this kind of art. just empty, unfeeling lines and colors. it's at the point where they don't even feel human-generated anymore, they're like clip art

[RailwayRunaway]

It’s not that the art is inherently bad, it’s that it represents something much darker. The soulless feel of it all. It feels like a mask that the suits put on to appear human. Skinwalker behaviour.

[starchaser]

i love how every time a corporation tries to seem like a human, the more and more it feels like it doesn't have a soul

[JDsVarietyChannel]

So in essence. Soulless artwork intended to tick off the least amount of people possible. Characters that represent everyone and no one at the same time.

[laku-tikku]

The one thing that irks me the most with these corporate artstyles is the "optimism" and all the happy smiles with the characters is to appeal to you as 'Hey were just like you here in the Big Corpo' and said art can be visible a click away from them publicly apologizing for the most heinous shit known to man

[karanaki_]

As an artist, I want to feel when I look at art. When I look at corporate art, I feel nothing, and feeling nothing makes me begin to ask questions.

[devilhunterradio]

The weird thing about this art style is I don't like or hate it, it just exists.

[roscoejustros]

These art styles are supposed to gain the consumer's trust but whenever I see them I think, "They are going to sell my data."

[aff]

Ah, yes, "instead of just putting people of different colors in our art, we opted to just make them blue instead!" very progressive and relatable

[gavinthecrafter]

I feel that this art style is most prevelant among companies that want to be seen as “progressive” too. Since it represents a wide range of different looking people, I often see it in a context of “look guys, we’re not racist!”… which just makes me question their choice of non-existent skin tones even more.

[cleodoesstuff]

corporate art: even when the colors are warm, their tone is cold.

[hephaestus]

This art style just screams “we don’t sell your data”

[staelaa]

After examining the style, I've come up with a hypothesis on just why we tend to see it as psychopathic.

The first thing that stands out to me is that characters seem to exhibit what I'm gonna refer to as "reverse-neoteny". Neoteny describes childlike and appealing features, and as an example, humans are neotenous compared to other great apes. We have very reduced browridges, flatter faces, bulbous heads, expressive faces and much less broad body shapes, making us look more similar to juvenile hominids than adult ones.

The "corporate artstyle", however, despite commonly viewed as infantile, is the reverse of these features. Big, disproportionately broad torsos and limbs with tiny heads that, in the half of the time they do have faces, are extremely simplified and comparable to the NPC meme.

These unappealing features seem to do a good job at dehumanizing the humans they're intended to represent, and in tandem with the otherwise kiddy style supplementing the grossly proportioned figures, give it the "soulless" and psychopathic look.