In 1998, Swedish designers Anders F. Rönnblom and Andreas Lindholm released the emBox/Brainreactor CD: a disc of fonts and 3D typefaces made for artists to experiment with. They ran their own experiments, gathered contributions from other artists, and published the results as a book. Metalheart.
At its core, Metalheart is abstract. The assets exist to push design software to its limits, nothing else. Andreas puts it plainly:
Brainreactor fonts are something else. Not always readable, very rarely made by hand, and far from perfect. Some people like them, some people don't.
Given what computers can do now, I'm surprised the trend hasn't come back.
"Illustrations, compositions, graphic effects or art?" The graphics resist definition, and that's the point. Metalheart is community, optimism and vision. A movement in its own right. A whole scene became connected and energized by it.
The compositions here are my own explorations. I never got my hands on an emBox CD, so my assets came off the web or got built from scratch. Software: JWildfire and Chaotica for backgrounds and textures, Blender for 3D, Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign for layout. Images, overlays, textures and fonts pulled from across the internet.
The style resonated for a few reasons. I was born in the early 2000s, right as this trend peaked. I'm nostalgic for the era when software was expressive and customizable.
Designers took visual risks then, and the results were diverse, weird, alive.
Simplified UX and designing for accessibility are good. Access to the web is a right, not a privilege. The visual flattening is the problem: every company now shares one design language and zero personality. Minimalism as monoculture.
I've always found the most fulfillment in personal work, chasing graphics that break from the norm by process or outcome. But my art only exists because other people shared theirs. The design community hands out assets and tutorials for free. No paywalls, no gatekeeping. I found Metalheart because archivists and artists did the work before me. I'm grateful for that.
The layers, overlays and textures are the draw. In the age of digital minimalism, every logo, site and print piece looks machine-made under one standard: simplified, dull, plain. Standardize design for corporations instead of using the web to connect people, and art suffers for it. Metalheart is the rejection. Complexity and visual nuance, on purpose.
Metalheart is art for art's sake.
None of this has a motive. No return expected, nothing owed. I'm not printing it to get anything back. I made it because it was worth making, and I want it seen.
Sources
- Metalheart — Anders F. Rönnblom, Andreas Lindholm (archive.org)
- Metalheart — CARI (Consumer Aesthetics Research Institute)