Nowadays, the design language and pseudo-artistic movement known as “Frutiger Aero” has resurfaced on platforms like TikTok, often through glossy ecological CGI images accompanied by captions such as “This was the future we were promised.” These posts collectively point to a single idea: Capitalism used to be optimistic. This optimism isn’t common even when compared to past Western design languages such as Memphis and Y2K, which also featured futuristic imagery but differ from Frutiger Aero in the use of ecological, skeuomorphic, and optimistic imagery allied to the new translucent effects that CGI could generate. Today, however, it is rare to find new products, interfaces, or artistic expressions by major corporations that follow its aesthetic principles. This raises the question: Why did it vanish?

It faded not merely due to stylistic obsolescence, but because it reveals deeper socio-political dynamics that are obsolete and impractical nowadays. Through a historical materialist lens, Frutiger Aero can be interpreted as part of the superstructure — a reflection and reinforcement of the economic base of mid-2000s global capitalism, particularly as neoliberalism advanced across both the Global North and Global South (MARX, 1859). It emerged during a time of global economic expansion after the Dot-Com Bubble and during the logistical revolution with the internet and higher-capacity faster cargo airplanes that were reshaping the means of production throughout the world and, with that, the introduction of a new international division of labor — which posed the Global South not just as a source of raw material but also as a source of cheap labor for industrial work that First-World countries and their citizens did not want to do (MARX; ENGELS, 1848).

According to Marxist theory, this shift in the core of the global economy needed an ideological superstructure to obscure its contradictions and legitimize its consequences (ENGELS, 1893). Under these circumstances, the technological and media bourgeoisie tailored a new design language and pseudo-art movement that would be optimistic and ecological to mask real social contradictions — growing inequality, ecological destruction, war — under a veneer of harmony and fluidity, promoting a vision of capitalism not only as efficient but as benevolent: a form of ideological mystification (GUEVARA, 1965). The high-gloss water droplets, blue skies, and leaves suggest environmentalism — but only as a corporate commodity, not a material critique; this aligns with commodity fetishism, where the image of “green tech” or a “clean future” distracts from the exploitative labor and environmental costs behind the scenes (MAO, 1942).

Fredric Jameson’s concept of “cognitive mapping” is useful here: Frutiger Aero acts as a visual and ideological tool to help consumers navigate the abstract complexities of late capitalism, simplifying contradictions into easily digestible, optimistic imagery (JAMESON, 1991). Guy Debord’s notion of the “society of the spectacle” also applies — the glossy aesthetics function as a spectacle that masks social relations and alienation, turning consumption into a quasi-religious experience (DEBORD, 1967). Mark Fisher’s ideas on capitalist realism help explain why this aesthetic became obsolete: when capitalism’s failures become undeniable, such optimistic visions feel increasingly hollow and ironic, no longer able to sustain the fantasy of a benevolent future (FISHER, 2009).

In short, Frutiger Aero communicated:

“The future is now. We’re saving the environment. Sit down, consume, and watch the skylines rise.”

All while such promises were materially impossible under capitalism, whose logic is built on an insurmountable contradiction: infinite growth on a finite planet (ALLENDE, 1972).

The user-friendly, clean interface becomes the new factory floor — a space of consumption disguised as empowerment. The aesthetic functioned ideologically, persuading the working class and emerging middle class that consumption itself was an act of ecological progress. Capitalism’s survival depends on presenting itself as inevitable and benevolent, and Frutiger Aero was its glossy disguise to push the working class to consume. It appealed to the rising middle working class and the lower bourgeoisie — aspirational, professional, mobile — promising access to a “global” modernity suggesting a detached, frictionless life, available only to those with purchasing power. The poor, exploited, and excluded are never represented in this aesthetic as if they were not the ones supporting the system — the ones building the glassy skyline on a burning sun while the happy family sits and has a picnic using some 2000s gizmo — much like they are erased from liberal-capitalist narratives.

The decline of Frutiger Aero is rooted in a broader cultural shift. In an era marked by climate collapse, economic precarity, neo-fascist politics, and erosion of institutional trust, the promises embedded in this aesthetic ring hollow. The same corporations that once branded themselves with ecological optimism — Google’s “Don’t be evil,” for example — have become synonymous with surveillance capitalism and exploitation. We simply cannot buy it anymore because it’s too cynical for the present day. Companies are investing either in neo-brutalist design, such as Google’s Material 3, that communicates “The world is confusing and unfair, and we’re not going to sugarcoat it,” or are returning to glossy and translucent aesthetics analogous to their past eco-centered counterparts to appeal to Gen Z and Millennials, as Apple and Microsoft have done recently with Windows 11 and the rumored design for iOS 19.

In summary, Frutiger Aero represents the socio-political landscape of the 2000s, marked by emerging ecological problems and technological advances. It can be seen through historical-dialectical materialism as the optimistic smokescreen launched by the bourgeoisie to back increasing consumeristic trends and persuade the proletariat to blind themselves to the obvious unsolvable contradictions of capitalism and its newly introduced global neoliberal experiment. It was never meant to be real — just a fever dream living on a slightly scratched Galaxy Tab discarded by an American middle-class family, now polluting an e-waste site in Ghana and posing hazards to human and wildlife and leaking chemicals into the soil like it’s ideology once did to our people.

References

ALLENDE, Salvador. Speech at the United Nations General Assembly. 1972. Available at: https://www.marxists.org/archive/allende/1972/december/04.htm. Accessed on: May 17, 2025.

DEBORD, Guy. The Society of the Spectacle. Detroit: Black & Red, 1967.

FISHER, Mark. Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? Winchester: Zero Books, 2009.

GUEVARA, Ernesto Che. Man and Socialism in Cuba. 1965. Available at: https://www.marxists.org/archive/guevara/1965/03/man-socialism.htm. Accessed on: May 17, 2025.

JAMESON, Fredric. Cognitive Mapping. In: The Ideologies of Theory: Essays 1971-1986. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991.

MAO ZEDONG. Talks at the Yenan Forum on Literature and Art. 1942. Available at: https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-3/mswv3_08.htm. Accessed on: May 17, 2025.

MARX, Karl. Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. 1859. Available at: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface.htm. Accessed on: May 17, 2025.

MARX, Karl; ENGELS, Friedrich. The Communist Manifesto. London: Penguin Classics, 2002.

ENGELS, Friedrich. Letter to Franz Mehring, 1893. Available at: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1893/letters/93_07_14.htm. Accessed on: May 17, 2025.