Memphis design: playful patterns and how to use them now

Memphis design is the playful, deliberately clashing style of the Memphis Group, a collective of designers formed in Milan at the end of 1980 around the architect Ettore Sottsass. Think bright pastels next to primaries, black and white squiggles, confetti dots, terrazzo specks and chunky geometric shapes stacked as if by a child. It was a protest against tasteful modernism, and its patterns are now everywhere from packaging to brand illustrations.

A short history of the Memphis Group

In December 1980 Sottsass gathered younger designers, including Michele De Lucchi, Nathalie Du Pasquier, George Sowden, Martine Bedin and Matteo Thun, at his flat in Milan. A Bob Dylan record, Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again, kept repeating, and the name stuck. The group showed its first collection of furniture, lamps and objects in Milan in 1981, to a mix of delight and outrage.

Memphis pieces used cheap, cheerful materials such as printed plastic laminate in places reserved for fine wood, and mixed references from suburban kitsch to ancient architecture. Sottsass’s Carlton room divider, a totem of coloured laminate shelves, became the emblem of the style. Sottsass left in 1985 and the group wound down later in the decade, but its look had already spread through fashion, television sets and graphic design.

Memphis design colours and palette

Memphis colour is about friction: sweet pastels set against hard primaries and a lot of black and white. Nothing is muted, and nothing is supposed to match politely.

How to make a Memphis pattern

A convincing Memphis pattern layers three things: a small repeating texture, a few large flat shapes and one hand drawn element such as a squiggle. The texture and shapes can be pure CSS, which keeps them crisp at any size. More pattern techniques are in CSS patterns.

.memphis {
  background-color: #fdf6e3;
  background-image:
    radial-gradient(circle at 100% 0%, #29c5c5 0 22%, transparent 22.5%),
    linear-gradient(135deg, transparent 0 80%, #ffd23f 80%),
    radial-gradient(circle at 0% 100%, #ff5fa2 0 18%, transparent 18.5%),
    radial-gradient(circle, #1d1d1d 2px, transparent 2.5px);
  background-size: auto, auto, auto, 22px 22px;
}

1. 1

   Lay a quiet texture

   Dots, hatching or terrazzo flecks in black on off white, small and even.

2. 2

   Drop in two or three big shapes

   A circle, a triangle and a half moon in different brights, partly off the edge of the frame.

3. 3

   Add one squiggle

   A thick black wavy line crossing one of the shapes. It is the detail that says Memphis.

4. 4

   Leave a clear field for words

   Keep the centre or one side calm. The pattern frames the message; it never runs behind it.

Memphis type and lettering

Memphis graphics rarely used delicate type. Lettering was chunky, geometric or slightly odd, and it often sat at an angle or inside a shape. Pick one heavy or rounded display face, set it large, and let the pattern do the decorating.

• Heavy geometric sans serifs for headlines, set in capitals or bold lowercase.
• Rounded faces for a softer, toy like feel on kids’ and food brands.
• Type tilted a few degrees, or set on a coloured shape, for the off balance look.
• Black or a dark cobalt for text, never a pastel on a pastel.

Using Memphis design now

Memphis returned in the 2010s through packaging, tech illustrations and fashion prints, and it still fits brands that want to feel fun, young and unpretentious: snack and drinks brands, toy shops, kids’ events, creative studios, playful apps. It suits banks, clinics and law firms far less, because their customers are looking for reassurance, not a joke.

Readability is the hard part with any patterned style. In Gradiently, a Mark moves its calmest region behind the words, relaxes busy detail near them and picks light or dark ink per line, which solves exactly the problem a Memphis layout creates. For more of this energy, see bold graphic design, playful branding and the neon decade around it in 80s aesthetic. For the modernism Memphis was rebelling against, read Bauhaus design.