So, I got this idea stuck in my head a while back, called it my “memphis nights” project. Wasn’t for anyone else, just for me. I’d seen some of that crazy 80s Memphis design stuff, you know, all the weird shapes and loud colors, and thought, “I wanna try making something like that.” But with a twist, like, for the nighttime. Darker, maybe a bit moody, but still wild.
First off, I just started messing around. Grabbed my tablet, opened up a drawing app. Tried to sketch out some of those squiggly lines, those bold geometric bits. Man, it looked so much easier in my head. My first few attempts? Total garbage. Seriously, it looked like a confused robot had a seizure on the screen. Not the cool, edgy vibe I was going for, that’s for sure.
I figured I needed to actually understand this stuff, not just copy it badly. So, I spent a bunch of evenings, yeah, mostly nights, just staring at pictures. Trying to get the feel of it. It’s not just random shapes, there’s a kind of logic to the chaos, if that makes any sense. I wasn’t trying to be a design guru or anything, just wanted to make something that didn’t suck.
Then I moved on to actually trying to make some patterns, some little digital pieces. Fired up some cheap design software I had. This is where the “nights” part really kicked in, ’cause I’d be up late, headphones on, just clicking away. Some nights, I’d think I was a genius. “This is it!” I’d tell myself. Then I’d look at it the next morning with fresh eyes and just groan. Like, “What on earth was I thinking?” Sleep deprivation really plays tricks on you.
There was this one night, I was super close to just quitting the whole thing. I had this color palette that was just… offensive. A sickly pink with a weird, dull yellow. Awful. I was staring at it, ready to delete the whole damn folder. But then, I don’t know why, I just started throwing in some really deep blues, almost black. Suddenly, those ugly colors started to, like, fight back in a good way. It wasn’t perfect, not by a long shot, but it wasn’t boring anymore. It had some spark.
So I kept at it, just tweaking. Made some shapes sharper. Added some bits that almost looked like weird, blocky neon signs. It was still a mess, but it was my mess. And it started to feel like those “memphis nights” I’d imagined. A bit loud, a bit strange, definitely not for everyone, but it had a certain energy.
In the end, I don’t have a big gallery show or anything. Just a collection of digital sketches and a few patterns that I don’t totally hate. The whole thing was more about the process, really. Those late nights, struggling with something that was way harder than I thought. It was frustrating, yeah, but also kinda satisfying to just make stuff, even if it wasn’t world-changing. Just a way to get some of the noise out of my head, I guess. And hey, I learned a bit about why some of that 80s stuff still looks so darn cool.