This is sort of tangentially related, but if anyone is interested in reading about this time period of design history, a really good book to pick up is
Obey the Giant by Rick Poynor.
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It was published in August 2001, so it's almost like a true time capsule of the Y2K era. For the most part it's through the lens of critique and analysis of the commercial culture at the time, but he cites a
bunch of specific projects and trends you can look up separately. One specific trend that piqued my interest was lomography, which uses a specific type of cheap camera that created highly saturated photos with optic aberrations that seemed to permeate late the `90s.
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Some other fun things in the book that I remember being interesting (it's been a while since i read it so details are fuzzy, currently re-ordering a copy):
- He talks at length about a visit to a megamall, I recall him going into depth about the general atmosphere and history of the place
- talks a bit about a particular style of illustration that looked almost like the ikea manual line style (does anyone know what I'm talking about? the cover kinda looks like it) that was apparently popular around that time
- As you can probably garner from the title, towards the end of the book he talks about a college aged Sheppard Fairey and how at the time his work was considered subversive, which is kinda hilarious to think about now lol
- Discusses the concept of culture jamming, which is a very fun rabbit hole to dive into imo