Retro Futurism and Can Crushing

When thinking about what could be my own personal aesthetic, I had difficulty narrowing down a style. I am generally an enjoyer of things and don’t tend to follow one type of aesthetic or subculture very strictly. Thinking about my music taste, personal fashion, and even my interior design choices for my room I often take bits and pieces from a lot of different styles and flex to each one when I feel the need. With this in mind, I aimed to narrow down common themes with things in my life. From what I could see, I tend to enjoy things that are stylistically ‘clean’ with not too much noise, but not necessarily minimalistic. In doing some research to try and find a specific aesthetic that fits this sort of criteria I came across futurism and later retro-futurism. While I can’t say this exactly sums up my taste and personal aesthetic, I do think it is neat and I would like to try and create something fitting this aesthetic.

The image above particularly spoke to me when regarding this aesthetic. I like the amount of color and detail, everything seems intentional but not too much. As I started to explore this aesthetic more, I found a motif of this square-stylized robot which is what I think of when I think about the word ‘robot.’

Feeling inspired, I tried to think about what I could make using this style, particularly with this robot aspect. Several things came to mind, but I think one idea could work really well. I think my main idea moving forward is going to be to create a can crusher using these concepts. It will be something that is interactable and dynamic, but also I will aim to achieve this aesthetic as much as possible while maintaining a level of functionality. With this aesthetic, creativity is boundless and I could place a can in all sorts of different places into a robot head or body. The inner crushing mechanism can be visible or kept away from the user. A variety of lights and sounds could be used to achieve this retro-futurism effect and there would be plenty of space to hide internal components. The piece could be wall-mounted or it could sit on a table top.

Being an engineer this type of style is really inspiring to me as it seems to embody the spirit of innovation and creation which drew me to become an engineer in the first place.

Sources :

https://99designs.com/blog/design-history-movements/retrofuturism/

https://desenio.com/p/posters-prints/children-and-youth/vintage-robot-print/

https://pixels.com/featured/retro-robot-little-bunny-sunshine.html