Stop That: Minimalist Posters

“Stop That” is a recurring series I just invented. Previous entries include “Hands Off the Icons,” a Dwell column in which I begged the furniture manufacturers of the world to stop painting Eames green and Le Corbusier pink (latest outrage = Xtreames, which offers to pimp your Lounge with olive leather and stripes to benefit the armed forces). And my Twitter war against Architect Barbie, which all the good intentions in the world can’t save from being a bad idea.

This week, minimalist posters, a design blog meme whose time is over. As I tweeted last week, on a day which brought me both minimalist Philosophy posters and minimalist Game of Thrones posters, “It’s official: there’s nothing you can’t make a minimalist poster for, and soon there will be nothing without one.” What was, the first time I saw it applied to Mad Men, a charming exercise in reducing archetypes to their essence, has now become an attention-getting tic. After Mad Men (at least on my Dashboard) came Albert Exergian’s more ambitious series on TV shows. And Marvel superheros. And fairy tales.