Forum Signature Art × Internet Ugly

The crude, ironic meme dialect of the same forums; sig art aims at the opposite, a slick and earnest technical finish.

From the research on Forum Signature Art (Sig & C4D Render Graphics)

Mix them and make something Forum Signature Art Internet Ugly

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Forum Signature Art, their arrangement from Forum Signature Art, the finish from Internet Ugly. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

What each style brings

Each part of the design comes from the style with the stronger say in it, and each style gives at least two.

Forum Signature Art (Sig & C4D Render Graphics) Internet Ugly & Meme Vernacular

Type from Internet Ugly: All caps
Condensed display
Colour from Forum Signature Art: Analogous harmony
Dark ground
Form from Forum Signature Art: Borders & frames
Non-representational
Composition from Forum Signature Art: Collage & layering
Single focal point
Surface from Internet Ugly: Glitch
Hard offset shadow

The type

Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.

Display · Internet Ugly

Together

Anton, standing in for Impact (Geoffrey Lee, Stephenson Blake, 1965), set white with a black outline

Text · Forum Signature Art

A banner image attached under every forum post as a personal stamp. It is a single Photoshop composite: a cut-out 'render' of a game, anime or film character or an athlete, set against a background smudged and stretched from the same picture, layered with semi-transparent abstract Cinema 4D renders, fractal flames and grunge or 'tech' brushes, pulled into one tint and framed by a thin border. The user's name is set small. Weekly 'Signature of the Week' contests and shared tutorials drove the craft. Its dates (2004 to 2013) are evidence dates, not firm limits.

VT323; Forum Signature Art used Tiny bitmap pixel fonts, often capitals-only, set at native size with anti-aliasing off, such as Silkscreen (Jason Kottke), a free pixel typeface made for web graphics, for usernames and taglines and Thin, widely letterspaced sans for the name and a short caption

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Forum Signature Art, with a counter-accent from Internet Ugly. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Forum Signature Art (Sig & C4D Render Graphics) Internet Ugly & Meme Vernacular

#0b1018 ground · 36%
#d7eef5 ink · 14%
#e8892b accent · 18%
#fff200 accent · 14%
#4f86a8 accent · 10%
#00a2e8 accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #0b1018;
  --ink: #d7eef5;
  --accent-1: #e8892b;
  --accent-2: #fff200;
  --accent-3: #4f86a8;
  --accent-4: #00a2e8;
  --font-display: "Anton", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "VT323", monospace;
}

Use it with care

Forum Signature Art (Sig & C4D Render Graphics): Sigs were built from ripped official art, photographs and other members' renders and brushes; the communities themselves policed 'rips'. When reviving the look, use licensed or self-made figures and resources rather than lifting characters or another maker's work.

Internet Ugly & Meme Vernacular: Most meme templates are photographs of real people, often children, or licensed stock. Success Kid is Laney Griner's son: the photo has been licensed to advertisers, and in January 2020 she sent a cease-and-desist letter to a congressman whose fundraising campaign used it without permission. Distracted Boyfriend is microstock, and its photographer says use without a proper licence is not allowed. License a template or make a new picture for commercial or political work. Check what a format means now: some characters that spread through 4chan were taken up as hate symbols (the ADL listed Pepe the Frog, Matt Furie's 2005 Boy's Club character, in 2016, while noting that most uses are not hateful). Reaction images of Black people posted by non-Black users and brands read as digital blackface (Lauren Michele Jackson, Teen Vogue, 2017), and deep-fried memes came out of Black Twitter, so credit where formats come from. When brands and campaigns borrow a format, its makers often protest or drop it (Douglas).

The two styles

2004–2013 · Global / networked, North America, Western Europe Forum Signature Art (Sig & C4D Render Graphics) A banner image attached under every forum post as a personal stamp. It is a single Photoshop composite: a cut-out 'render' of a game, anime or film character or an athlete, set against a background smudged and stretched from the same picture, layered with semi-transparent abstract Cinema 4D renders, fractal flames and grunge or 'tech' brushes, pulled into one tint and framed by a thin border. The user's name is set small. Weekly 'Signature of the Week' contests and shared tutorials drove the craft. Its dates (2004 to 2013) are evidence dates, not firm limits. 2003–present · Global / networked, North America Internet Ugly & Meme Vernacular A deliberately amateur image dialect of forums, imageboards and social feeds, named 'Internet Ugly' by Nick Douglas in 2014. Figures are drawn with a mouse in MS Paint, photos are found and crudely pasted together, and captions shout in white Impact capitals with a black outline, top and bottom, or in Comic Sans. Re-saving and 'deep-frying' wear the pixels down. The joke's setup and punchline are the layout, and every template is made for a crowd to copy; some are clean stock photos that only the labels make a meme.