I feel like the 2010s are the first decade in 100 years that doesn’t have a recognizable aesthetic or vibe.
Every decade since the Roaring Twenties had its own recognizable culture, visual aesthetic, music and so on. In the 2010s, the Internet allowed us to become cultural omnivores. It’s good that everybody had access to whatever niche subculture they enjoy but it also meant that there was no more monoculture that we all shared.
2010s was where the trend moved away from skeuomorphism and towards flat minimalist design. The timeline makes even more sense if you demarcate by US presidential terms, so 2013-2020 instead of 2010-2020. Once upon a time, it was considered good design to make whatever button your program had to actually look like a physical button that it was supposed to represent. Just compare Windows XP/Vista/7 and Windows 8. Logos also underwent this shift. Just look at how they massacred my boy.. 2010s was when “uh aktually, an entirely empty white room is the peak of aesthetics” became a thing. Marie “does this spark joy” Kondo released her book in 2011 after all. In the early 2010s, we still had flip phones and Blackberries that all had physical buttons, but those were pushed aside for “minimalist” smartphone which had few buttons. Before the 2010s, sleek minimalist design was purely an Apple thing, but throughout the 2010s, the Applefication of design spread until everything had to be flat and minimalist by the 2020s. Corporate Memphis is just the end result of this flat minimalist design and around the time when the public began to turn against it.