Frutiger Aero: Gen Z's make-believe nostalgia 

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Frutiger Aero is the same to the 2000s as Vaporwave is to the late 80s/early 90s. Some real elements but highly exaggerated and romanticized.

I kinda like that it has a name. Now if I want to see it, I can just say "fruitiger aero", not "hey you know that way some things looked in 2004, but not all of the things?"

I think people are just sick and tired of flat design tbh and want a return to colorful, vibrant styles

"Old man yells at glossy clouds"

As an older Gen Z, I definitely grew up seeing this aesthetic in ads, textbooks, etc., often with the appeal of cool high-tech, eco-friendly design choices. Seeing this aesthetic categorized to me isn't gatekeeping, but rather finally having a way to describe this "vibe". I know people don't seem to like it, but this categorization trend is kind of an interesting way of seeing just how creative humanity has become that we have this many aesthetics, genres, -cores, etc. and can have so many people enjoy them.

I'm a millennial and this just feels like weird copeing with your ageing. Is gen z not allowed to have nostalgia? Odd take.

I think the people who gate-keep and fight about niche subcultures like you mention tend to be hyper online rather than gen z as a whole

Fun Fact: Hyper-Categorization for the sake of categorization pretty clearly originates from Millennials. 2005-2015 was the heyday of that kind of thing. What we’re doing is called “Absurd Specificity”.

Bro is acting like gen z didn’t also grow up with fruitiger aero when I vividly remember this from my childhood

I think the reason why this generation tends to hyper-categorize everything is because we have grown up in a time where there is an internet full of things that require keywords to search for, and the internet is our main interface with culture. In previous generations if you heard a song you liked, you didn't need a very specific genre to describe it because your only ways to listen to music were on a radio station, which plays broadly similar music, or to buy a cd from a cd store. If you liked a song you'd just tune into the same radio station, or you would ask a music savvy friend or a shopkeeper at the CD store for a recommendation and they'd point you to something similar. There was no technological interface that you needed to use to find it. Nowadays if I hear a song that i like, I need to link it to a word that I can put into google to find more music that is in a similar style. It doesn't suffice to tell google that I want to listen to electronic music, I need to tell google that I want to listen to speed garage, or colour bass, or jungle, or psystyle, and that will let me find what I want to listen to

As Gen X can attest, every generation struggles with the feeling of aging out of the cohort that the majority of culture is targeting.

You guys realize this is how language evolves right? You make some sounds with your mouth or scribble some shapes onto paper and if enough people understand what you are trying to convey then it becomes as real as any other word.

3:20 "The Gen-Z tendency to make everything a Pokemon" Did this friend of yours realize he was speaking to the writer of *Canadamon: Canadian Culture Monsters*?

This man lived under a rock during the 2000's and it's sad because he is genuinely old enough to know that those things existed. I guess he was not familiar with AOL,those weird glossy colored apple computers,and the 2000s obsession with making interior design the most glossy,futuristic,and freshly designed style.

All i pretty much hear from this is “im 40, blah blah, gen z isnt allowed to be nostalgic blah blah.”

Did this man really go "Yeah, my generation made music about going to the barber shop and mall in the 90s called Barbercore and Mallcore music. By the way, Gen Z is dumb because they have to name their nostalgia!" Love this channel, but how can you directly contridict your point before you've even made it?

I think you're too harsh on this. Literally the same thing as vaporwave which I've never seen you disapprove of.

i feel like i’m being gaslit

I am truly sorry i don’t understand your title of gen z “trying to be nostalgic?” Excuse me what do you mean trying? Do you not think that gen z is old enough to be nostalgic? Sound like you’re gatekeepering. I am gen z almost 25 and nostalgic for a lot of things. Frugtiger Aero geels like its supposed to be build on fun, comforting and down to earth. I am gen z almost 25 and nostalgic for a lot of things. A perfect blend of technology and nature. Thats what makes it so appealing. So what if its not realistically accurate its supposed to be fun. Im not about to have some Millennial tell me otherwise

JJ found the aesthetics wiki and was not pleased

Gatekeeping nostalgia is the most millenial thing i’ve ever heard

Hi JJ love your videos. Early Zillenial here. Unfortunately I think you're a little off base with this one. All sorts of specific aesthetics and design trends were broken into different strata by designers of the 20th century too. Art Deco alone has many ultra specific spinoffs and styles like streamline moderne and googie. Categorization and overcategorization are just components if how humans think. We like recognizing patterns.

I think that categorizing aesthetics is pretty inconsequential. It's nice to have a name for a style that you see every now and then

"I'm getting old, so let me tell people half my age on the internet that their childhood is make-believe!"

Is every generation doomed to forget what it was like to be young? Kids in the 90s did the same thing with their hyper specific sub cultutes and music genres. A lot of these "zoomer" classifications were originally coined by millenials and gen x.

as part of Gen Z myself, I feel like we're a very nostalgic and sentimental generation in general. But specifically with fruitger aero, I think it comes from how we "grew up" fast and were exposed to adult things very young, so now we cling to anything that represents a sense of innocence before our unrestricted internet access. Things like fruitger aero provide a sort of romanticized view of the internet, not that the items in fruitger aero themselves are "hopeful" or "optimistic", but that our views at the time of seeing them were, if that makes sense. It's not the images or the creation of the images that represents the aesthetic, it's the context in which we consumed them, as optimistic kids ourselves.

How is it make believe? Some people chose bad examples of it, but I was alive in the late 2000s/early 2010s and this was definitely a trend.

I’m Gen Z and was so confused by the title. I have no idea what Frutiger Aero means as a term, but as soon as I saw the aesthetic I instantly knew it and was nostalgic for it. I just thought if it as the Wii/DS aesthetic since that was where I remember it from the most. I definitely have noticed an uptick in nostalgia among people my age. All my friends and I have been playing late 2000s/early 2010s pop hits that we grew up listening to and we all talk about the Wii and older Xbox games. Stuff like beyblades has seen a big resurgence among people my age too. There is also a lot of nostalgia for the mid 2010s era of SoundCloud music that dominated while we were in middle school (I was born in 2004).

I bet this one will be as controversial as the Wikipedia episode.

god forbid gen-z be nostalgic about something!

"As someone who is turning 40 this year" Damn, I wish I'll look nearly as good at almost 40.

"Zoomers are inventing fake nostalgia, frutiger aero isn't real!" - Man with a Floral Shoppe vinyl over his shoulder

This guy is in my nightmare blunt rotation

According to JJ: Kids aren't nostalgic like we used to be.

And on this episode of JJ Doesn't Get It™: Why modern schools of graphic design aren't real. JJ, I love you, but Frutiger Aero was a legitimate design movement that had wide reaching influence on many different industries including architecture and interior design. Your comments about why having to explain what the name Frutiger Aero means demonstrates its failure could be said about literally any design style with strange or silly names (Art Deco and Bauhaus come to mind). Also, being able to subdivide the style into more specific aesthetics is useful to narrow down the emotional impact of art composed in those styles. Having been exposed to far more diverse media over our lives, Gen Z attaches emotion to our nostalgia differently to Millennials, but that doesn't mean it's any less significant or valuable than yours.

This was a tough cringe watch... Go outside, touch grass, and maybe walk your "doggo" LMFAOOOO...

ah crap, who let the nursing home door unattended again ?

Look I’m gonna be honest, I don’t vibe with this one JJ. I love your videos, as have I loved this one however, the need to categorise aesthetics is sort of born from the archival nature of the internet is it not? I think names grant access to a specific type of subject, one that encodes a certain feeling not akin to those found using more broad strokes. For example, we can say “I like metal” but you can also say “I like Finish gothic Black Metal” (metal heads please don’t kill me, I love you dearly.) The first example is said to someone who may not be as familiar with you or this fact while the more specific option could be said to someone who is also familiar with the genre of metal music. By giving names to “cores” and aesthetics we can communicate more effectively the visual and feeling we are trying to describe. We can rag on them but Gen Z have an amazing knack for navigating the infinite archive of the internet and gathering information. They can very easily create mood boards, places of discussion and also contribute to these aesthetics that then dominate advertising campaigns, clothing and even promote a way of thinking that applies itself to the real world. I do appreciate the time and effort you put into your videos. I am an avid watcher of your channel and having a Canadian partner myself, I am able to relate to topics he has mentioned when talking about his home country. That’s all I have to say really, if you see this (doubtful) all the best wishes from your many European viewers :)

The past is now old man!

don’t make it other peoples’ problem that you don’t understand things lol

A good example of "it's not that deep". Sure, as someone born in 1996, the style does make me nostalgic, but Occam's razor seems to apply here.

JJ: "I'm interested in the advancement of culture and its effect on people" Culture: **advances and has an effect on people** JJ: "NO! NOT LIKE THAT!"

this video is so genuinely filled with seethe its actually insane

Ok, but genuinely, the the shiny stuff and gradients and blues and transparents and all that stuff from the 2000s looks a billion times better than the terrible 2010s and 2020s artstyles of everything. Like, people complain about the "corporate" artstyles, but that stuff is literally everywhere, not just in corporate messaging.

Regardless of whether Gen Z is really more prone to hyper-categorizing concepts into smaller and smaller subcategories, I don’t see how that objectively encourages gatekeeping or minimalization. You can easily label multiple different aesthetics while still recognizing their similarities and how they can heavily overlap one another, or even fall within larger, more encompassing genre umbrellas. Even JJ admits that Millennial vibes like Vaporwave or Synthwave can be further broken down into further subgenres and this presumably doesn’t have a negative affect on their greater nostalgic aesthetic, it feels weird that he thinks this is fine but when Zoomers do the same thing suddenly it’s “narrowminded” or “limited”. Also how can we be too fixated on categorization, but also trying to “broaden the term” to include “unrelated themes” at the same time? Are we really the ones being nitpicky here?

“GRRRR HOW DARE TEENAGERS BE NOSTALGIC GRRRR😡😡😡 KIDS THEESE DAYS MAN ” Go cry about it old man

This video is actually awful. He makes like 1 point in the entire video and then for the rest of it he rambles on about how gen Z "just wants to be nostalgic". He LITERALLY AGREES that the aesthetic was popular in the late 2000's and early 2010's, so he refutes that one point he made. Just generally a badly put together video

"Aging millennial angry at kids for creating their own nostalgia language"

As a gen z myself, I only see this in certain spaces anyway. No one I know irl knows or cares. I wouldn’t necessarily be nostalgic over it. There’s plenty of media that came out of the latter half of the 2000s and early 2010s that I am nostalgic over, and I liked seeing those designs as a kid. But most of my nostalgia is not purely aesthetic driven.

Bro just let us remember and enjoy the good parts of our lives and some of our childhoods

Liking things isn't supposed to be stressful.

Welp, it’s real. JJ McCullough mentions Frutiger Aero.

turning 40 means shit that happened 10 years ago isn't nostalgia. that just happened like .. a minute ago.

As a Gen Z myself, I think why we like the fruitger aero aesthetic so much is because we finally have something to be nostalgic about, instead of being called “too young” to be nostalgic for anything, we’re just trying to cling onto our childhood as much as possible.

I think you may have missed the mark on this one unfortunately, though this kind of fanaticism over aesthetic 'lore' is not something I partake in, I see it as a communal activity that is good for this generation, I don't think its an exclusionary thing to chop it up, merely by doing so I think it provides a easier way for young people to define and then discuss and create in those styles, I'd say that by merely calling it the '2000's aesthetic', you would be depriving the opportunity for lots of young people to create interesting things for each other, and how is that not a good thing? I think you may be seeing this level of fanaticism as something of a symptom of this generation's internet obsession, but I think it is unfair for a generation which was (involuntarily) raised in large part by the internet to then use the internet in this way, to me this comes across as someone a bit older misunderstanding a new social phenomenon as some kind of crisis, Though I agree that intenet-fuelled isolation and obsessiveness are issues with our current youth, this is an outlet of that which doesn't see any real harm and is not a good use of time to try to discredit.

Even being Raised in Mexico for the first 12 years of my life, i can even say we Went through this Frutiger Aero Nostalgia, it irritates me that i have heard people say the early 2000s didn't have the nostalgia the 80s or 90s brought, but as someone who wasn't allowed to get out of home at a young age, and I would submerge myself into my computer for Hours at a time, I can assure you that I can remember when i would have vivid dreams of this Futuristic warm future feeling the themes of Microsoft and even early 2000s phones would bring, before I even knew what an asthetic was or before I knew how to even describe it. There wasnt a lot of money in our house hold but all i wanted was a computer to play those Flash Games Cartoon Network advertised all over on TV in the early 2000s, i can clearly remember when i was trying to navigate the slow Internet we had back in the day. Good times

i just like the way the silly fish looks next to the monitor

How insufferable do you have to be to gatekeep nostalgia? I never realized how entitled your opinions can be

i feel like this is really contradictory when you literally THE vaporwave album in the background. you need an explanation for it. Frutiger Aero is just a subsect of the Y2K aesthetic. you are really sounding like boomer here more than usual.

Despite agreeing with the "turning everything into a Pokemón" thing, I think our generation should define our own nostalgia in our own way. If we percive these design trends as niche aestethics that symbolize a utopic, eco-friendly and high-tech future, we should define them as such. That's one more for the list of "I like this guy but I totally disagree here" videos.

This isn't it chief. As an 80s kid, naming this era is 100% valid. The graphic design, sound, associated games and media, absolutely an era worth categorising and remembering.

Millennial’s one sided beef with gen z is real😭

Make believe? Just because you don't experience or relate to something doesn't make it less real. I used to believe the future was going to be some beautiful, eco friendly utopia because of this aesthetic. I loved the aesthetic before it had a name.

bro is 40 and yapped about a nostalgia term for 20 minutes 😭💀

Zoomers: pokeemon yeee JJ: I'm a Millennial so I don't believe in labels.

I love watching other generations be confused about other generations

I think JJ doesnt get that aesthetics have become their own subculture. Its not just "2000s era UI", its the broad aesthetic that itself is a culture. In the past, most subcultures only had aesthetics as a by-product, but it wasnt the main thing the subculture was based upon. Punk has a look, but its mostly based around music and politics. In current times though, a lot of subcultures have sprouted out, probably because of Tiktok, that are almot entirely based on aesthetics, like Cottagecore, or Dark Academia. The aesthetic itsrlf is the subculture.

Being born in the first year to be considered gen Z (1997), I'm in this weird position where I can relate on some level to both generations, but more so the latter end of the millennials. Frustrating that people tend to associate gen Z with being kids when I've been an adult for a while now lol

“back in my day 👴🏻” ah video

I would say the problem isn't so much frutiger aero being a faux nostalgia genre but more of how gen z can not stand to let things with slight differences remain grouped under the same banner. All of those "-cores" mentioned during the super monkey ball segment remind me a lot of the hyper balkanization of music genres or language family trees and in turn their experts who nitpick those things endlessly

Old man shakes his fist at aquatic clip art

the name literally comes from two of the main things associated with the aesthetic. the fact that you think things that require an explanation are not worth talking about says more about you than the way this aesthetic was named

I really dislike the fact people my age are all about making labels and then proceededs to tell people those labels shouldn't matter. Like if you're gonna sort and label everything then just admit it.

Ok if you’re telling me “Clownwave” is a thing, Then Frutiger Aero can also be a thing….

why is this dude so mad at water bubbles in a field

I love the warm tone 2000s interior design aesthetic. You know the one. Its like McMansion chic

this kinda feels like how boomers would react to vaporwave, you can’t argue that it’s not a hyper specific exaggerated astetic od 80s neon colors and Greece architecture for some reason. That also has all its like off shoots of outrun and synthwave with constant infighting which basically has all the same flaws as thoese you pose to AF. I love futiger aero as a concept and aesthetic, but I honestly I relate more to vaporwave in like a meta sense almost, I’m a middle/late zoomer. I’m 18, an adult now as apposed to the zoomer limits of 12 and 27 who would have a drastically different experience. Also I had internet from a young age so to me vaporwave is disconnected from the true 80’s to me it reminds me of the early 2010’s era of the internet and that’s what I’m nostalgic for. Also as for the like “political message” I think it’s not unique really like boomers have 50’s Americana with heavy conservativestism and generally vaporwave is considered a semi satarical anti consumerism aesthetic. I don’t think that the companies makeing futiger aero designs had the environment in Mind but for me I think it really represents one of the last times that tech had unique aesthetics. The skewmorphism of early iOS or windows 7 they where fun and unique as apposed to the modern simplistic aesthetics design Trends it feels like it had artists who enjoyed makeing it. And I think the modern tendency for purely utilitarian UI and design is why zoomer have such an obsession with “aesthetic” as an abstract idea. We want something that feels human in a world where we everyone feels more and more alone. We want to rember an internet of expression and connection not the current one of corporation and isolation. God this comment is too long

Holy shit the boomers were right about millennials

I was born in 2002, but i can still confidently say that my nostalgia is probably greater than yours.

Please tell me this is an april fools joke

Old man yells at cloud. I am a millennial and am happy Gen Z has their own vaporwave.

I don’t understand what is so dislikable or reprehensible about using the term Frutiger Aero. I first saw it a few weeks ago associated with a playlist of ‘00s Nintendo music. really, I saw a lot of Gen Xers and Millennials do the same thing before my generation, specifically with music genres as they became more accessible across the world. we’re just seeing that same thing with visual aesthetics now. while I agree that labels can become redundant or devolve into meaninglessness, in my experience people tend to embrace a large swath of similar ones. for example, “yeah, I love Y2K, ‘00s emo, Frutiger Aero, and the aesthetic of early websites!” sometimes a bunch of somewhat disparate but overlapping visuals are discussed with multiple terms. or “I listen to black metal, jazz, indie rock, shoegraze, death jazz.” we can forego these hyper-specifications, too. a lot of LGBTQ people in my life simply identify as “queer” or “gay” because getting into specifics may be unnecessary for a given situation. anyway, this is all to say I don’t see anything wrong with saying you like Frutiger Aero. editing now that I reached the last portion (guilty of commenting before the video is done, lol) to add that wow, I could not disagree more regarding the relationship between arts and politics/values. the idea that Frutiger Aero came about to show off tech advancement definitely makes sense, and I think the younger read on it that saw it as a promise of environmental concern is a symptom of being born into the phenomena-we don’t have memories from before this. but man. values in art are so incredibly deeply embedded. JJ, your videos are fascinating, but sometimes I think we are living in two different worlds altogether!

>Found a video essay making a negative remarks about a certain nostalgia. >Too good to be a joke. >Checked the description. >Yup. >April 1st 2024.

This all kind of reminds of how zoomers imagine the 80s looked like vaporwave, miami vice, and taco bell, when it actually looked like grandma's house more often than not

wasnt the term named by graphic designers to describe a graphic design trend from the early 2000s? Not just arbitrarily named by gen z

I am a bit nostalgic for MSN Messenger. I had a great time as a young teenager.

naming all the fish on the aquarium channel was one of my core memories

I mean if its an aesthetic that I remember from my childhood, and I'm nostalgic for it, can you really call it make-believe? Is it wrong to give it a name so we can easily discuss it?

Should have bought a house and built my credit instead of being six. That's what I'm nostalgic about

POV: the fun police arrived

Dude, you're literally standing in front of the Macintosh plus vaporwave album........

I lived through the 80s and it wasn't nearly as bright or exciting as we're told to remember lol

“Make believe nostalgia” yeah man. Nostalgia is make believe. What do you think vaporwave was? That never happened, it’s the imagined sensation of nostalgic aesthetics being modified to represent a feeling that transcends its original setting. Nostalgia is just a form of make believe.

Fellow '84 Millennial here ... Big fan of your channel, JJ, and I predominantly agree with your broader point. But I think you take a swing and a miss on the claim that the aesthetic choices of a particular cultural moment are "value-neutral." While it's certainly true that there wasn't any kind of coordinated effort among graphic designers in the 00s or early 10s to promote a specific view of the technological relationship to nature (or something similar), I would suggest it's kind of dismissive to suggest that these collective choices didn't express a broader view that was held, in aggregate, by that class of people in society. In the same way that the Art Deco movement, or Beaux Arts, or Greek Renaissance architecture didn't necessarily proceed from some shared directive at a class-creative level, but nonetheless expressed a viewpoint that was hegemonic among that class of people at that time I'll admit I had never even HEARD of Frutiger Aero before this video, so this is not a comment about the specifics of the subject matter. It is simply that I think you were somewhat unnecessarily dismissive of a dimension of the topic in a way that some more attention would have been both within your scope to explore, and to the benefit of the conclusion to which you came (and with which I agree!) I remain a big fan, and as always, look forward to your next

Being an older Zoomer, I don't think the Frutiger Aero thing misses the point, especially since I disagree with your claim that Zoomers are unique in how they chop up the bits of their nostalgia and categorize them. In the beginning of your own video you point out how your generation has created things like Barber Beats, Mallsoft and Clowncore, which are all meant to invoke rather specific feelings and a specific aesthethic. I mean, really, how much more specific do you have to go beyond music meant to remind you of going to McDonald's before it's missing the point? Every generation latches onto specific parts of their childhood-teenage years to define their nostalgia, and those generations are going to be much more aware of the different subcultures and aesthetics of their generation than outsiders. Not every young person from the 50s-60s was a hippie, nor were they all leather jacket wearing punks with slicked back hair and motorcycles. The people from those generations could tell you a lot more about their subcultures and differing, almost competing aesthethics, just like how you managed to specify Clowncore. Zoomers are no different, and I'd say Frutiger Aero might just be the first of many aesthethic subcultures that'll spring up as the generation gets older. And maybe that, in itself, is the point.

As a millennial it’s definitely legit, don’t know what this dude is talking about…

I mean does it count as fake if I legitimately have nostalgia for it..?

Really? I've always liked the positivity that your channel seemed bring to engaging and learning about culture. This is really not it, J.J. - The thesis of this piece sounds like "Gen Z is doing nostalgia wrong" ... which is either purely clickbait or some half hearted rage-bait to wrap around a surfshark ad. Sure, by the end of it, you give some lukewarm words and even some curiosity, but it adds basically nothing to the conversation. Hopefully this isn't what this channel is becoming. Hope all is well. Peace

Not that it’s terribly important, but the whole “desire to categorize everything” is something I do a lot of, mainly so I can use those terms in ways to either search for more of that thing. It’s like finding amazing chocolate and wanting to know exactly what type it is so I can go find the store that made this specific chocolate, and “it’s just chocolate” is kind of unhelpful.