Atlanta-based restaurateur Fred Castellucci had a challenge on his hands with Recess, which Castellucci Hospitality Group opened in 2018: surrounded by competitors in the packed food hall environs of Krog Street Market, it was hard for a tiny lunch counter to stand out. “The goal initially, with that space, was to draw people in, to make people realize it’s more than a food stall,” he says. Though the space was tiny, it was blessed with one big wall. “We wanted to do something really impactful with it, something that went along with the colorful, playful aspect of Recess,” he says. Cue the blobs.
The restaurant group commissioned Atlanta-based illustrator Meredith Anne White to create three-dimensional wall art comprising amorphous shapes in bold colors. “Victoria Shore is the head chef [of Recess], and she’s young, and her menu was very playful,” says White. “So I wanted to sort of mirror that, because there’s such a great deal of play.” White frequently lends her abstract expressionist aesthetic to paintings and textiles, but her blob-filled aesthetic was also a perfect match for the vibe Castellucci had in mind.
Much like the titular villain of a certain 1958 horror movie, the blobs appear to be taking over. They’ve come for our yogurt, our rugs, even our jigsaw puzzles. “This is graphic design now,” Twitter user @bobby pithily observed earlier this year, compiling nine brands that seem to have nothing in common (a maternal wellness app! A line of zero-waste home goods! A coffee roastery!) beyond the colorful abstract shapes in their visual identity. But unlike “the Blob,” these organic, amorphous, colorful shapes didn’t strike from out of nowhere.
Covering the trend last year for AIGA, design writer Liz Stinson tied the aesthetic’s historical roots to its pre-Instagram progenitor, Henri Matisse, adding that in the last few years, the contemporary riffs on Matisse’s iconic cutouts have appeared everywhere from shoe brands to Dropbox. (It’s probably not a coincidence that in the year or so before this aesthetic began to take off, MoMA mounted a popular exhibition of around one hundred of Matisse’s cutouts.) Hannah Collins, cofounder of hospitality design group ROY, noticed the blobs hit fashion before they trickled over into logo design and, later, hospitality. “Design typically follows fashion,” she says, “and if you look at designers like Mara Hoffman, it was really hot in spring fashion around 2017 or so.” (She’s right.)
Since then, blobs have wriggled their way onto the websites of popular spots like Bar Agricole in San Francisco; the menus of restaurants like Tope at the Hoxton Hotel in Portland, Oregon; the walls of bars like Last Straw in Austin; and even the merch of cafe-meets-lifestyle brand Dimes in New York City, where one can snag a $36 candle adorned in loose splotches of color while waiting on matcha pancakes. Some, like Marleigh Culver’s framed works inside Jeune et Jolie in San Diego or Cody Hudson’s paintings in Lonesome Rose in Chicago, are restrained and rather minimalist; others channel a more Pee-wee Herman vibe, resplendent with clashing colors and frantic squiggles.
Joseph Szala, who designs for restaurant, food, and beverage brands at Vigor Branding and curates the Instagram account Grits x Grids, sees the aesthetic as a rejection of the homogeneity of recent trends like reclaimed wood and subway tile. “People are trying to shake off [that] massive emulation,” he says. The blobs, according to Szala, are shorthand for communicating an artsy, imaginative, handmade feel to customers without actually saying it — or, god forbid, literally writing it on the wall. “I’m just happy to see that we’ve gotten past those word walls,” he says.
Will Bryant, an Austin-based artist who helps oversee creative direction at Last Straw, worked in this style well before it took over Instagram feeds, but he’s noticed it in restaurants over the last three years. “This kind of zany, wacky sensibility is what I really gravitate toward,” says Bryant, who cites ’90s-era Charlotte Hornets and, yes, Pee-wee’s Playhouse among his visual references and inspirations. In addition to his work at Last Straw, Bryant’s blobs, squiggles, and bursts adorn the walls of Austin restaurants and coffee shops Wright Bros. Brew & Brew, Cava, and Better Half, among others. He says the style works particularly well for restaurants because it activates large spaces in a simple, yet super engaging, way. “I also think that aesthetic is automatically pleasant,” he says. “If you like color, and you can see it meeting on two planes… it’s an easy approach to create visual interest. It makes a space feel welcoming.”
Marleigh Culver, an artist based in Brooklyn, uses similar words to describe why this aesthetic appeals to companies like Sweetgreen, for which she completed a mural earlier this year. “These bright, fun shapes... people are just drawn to them right now,” says Culver, who started sharing her abstract work on Tumblr circa 2014 and has since collaborated with brands like Coach, Need Supply, and Nike Skate. “I think people like creating a more inviting space for everyone by using interesting design or art in a food space, to help tie a bunch of things together.”
A restaurant awash in pistachio- and rose-hued blobs suggests the likes of colorful bowls and complicated toasts: Dishes that are thoughtfully assembled and seasonally appropriate, and designed to be photographed from above by clog-shod diners. The blobs are “vibey,” and that vibe is quirky without being twee; eccentric without being too weird for the general public; aspirational without being alienating. It’s a backdrop, and it does exactly what we ask it to do. It is, as Bryant said, simply… pleasant.
The loose imperfections of blobs may lend them charm, but there’s another, far more precise reason restaurants love them: Just as the right tabletop can really tie a flat-lay together, a handful of colorful, painterly splotches make for excellent Instagram calling cards, and restaurants know it. “That’s like, the magic touch: add a mural, and everyone’s going to regram it,” Culver jokes. (Of course, she’s right.)
A few loose, squiggly shapes in millennial pink, mustard, and hunter green may very well have taken the place of the neon sign or botanical wallpaper in communicating a certain cachet. “A lot of restaurant interior trends these days are Instagram-based, like neon signs or patterned tiles or wallpaper,” says Collins. “We are very attracted to beautiful photos, and it’s something we spend an insane amount of time looking at. It’s what draws people in, it’s free marketing, and it’s part of your survival strategy as a restaurant.”
But no trend is immune from being, well, a trend, even one that was born out of a desire for idiosyncrasy. What felt fresh and young and fun circa 2018 might now already be approaching the realm of, say, the Edison bulbs I spotted dangling over the Bloomin’ Onions inside my local Outback Steakhouse last week.
Are we approaching peak blob? Probably, says Szala. For most restaurants, a primary goal of design is to get someone’s attention — “but once you have that attention, it should be worth the time to look at,” he says. “With the blob, if there is a deeper story that is being told, I think it’s brilliant. But if it’s art just for the sake of it, I think it can feel shallow.”
Ask Alvin Diec of Atlanta graphic design firm Office of Brothers, and he’ll say the trend is “overdone” and “not good on walls.” “It’s easy to complain about,” says Diec. “But I have decided to find peace instead.”
Still, after minimalism’s reign of sameness, it can be nice to let loose, channel some playful exuberance, and maybe even get a little weird — for artists, restaurant operators, and diners alike. “I remember walking into restaurant spaces and it just being like, concrete walls, Edison bulbs, and very simple barstools, and that’s it,” says White. “And now, some of my favorite restaurant spaces that have opened in the past year are heavily wallpapered, and there’s a lot of organic life. It’s much funkier.”
It’s easy for me to side-eye the cute tile and nice wallpaper because I am acutely aware that it is pandering to me, directly — and often, infuriatingly, it works. (I’m a sucker!) But pandering or not, one thing is true: It beats what came before. Minimalism was antithetical to what I love about drinking and dining: It was chilly, boring, uptight. A salad chain or neighborhood cafe loaded up with overflowing pothos and statement wallpaper and painterly blobs will surely feel So Very 2019 by this time next year; some would likely argue that it already does. But at least it echoes the sense of looseness and fun that I personally equate with dining out. “Funky” is fun. And at least for now, funky is just fine.
Gray Chapman is a freelance writer living in Atlanta.