Beyond the trend: the ancient aesthetics of modern innovation
why stone statue look endures in visual communication
Welcome back to ‘beyond the trend’! I’ve always been intrigued with why behind vibe shifts and trends. More specifically, I’m fascinated by the psychology of the zeitgeist we’re living in and how it shapes the way art and design show up in the world. In this series, I want to unpack the behaviours underneath the trends, what they look like, why they’re emerging now, and how I personally see them evolving next.
As promised in my recent “What’s Trending in Visual Communication” newsletter , I wanted to dive into the topic of visual culture’s and design obsession with antiquity. Innovation presented through the visual language of eras that existed long before electricity.
Instead of sleek chrome, gradients and sci-fi minimalism, we’re seeing technology presented through the visual language of pre-modern, ancient rather than futuristic. It’s less about depicting the future and more about borrowing the iconography of legacy and permanence.
When I first started gathering references from the recent branding campaigns it felt like an aesthetic choice or a trend. But the more I thought about it, the more I was curious about the psychology behind it all, especially because a lot of those decisions were made for branding solutions - something that advertises and sells the product. So I decided as always to look to the past and see if we (or rather our parents and grandparents) seen anything like that before ...
A (very) brief history of antiquity in visual communication
1940s-1960s: mid-century antiquity in advertising
At some point in the mid-1940s, nearly every major cosmetics brand had borrowed the aesthetic from classical antiquity. This included Greek patterns in packaging, compacts featured goddess profiles, powder boxes referenced Botticelli’s Birth of Venus.
This was one of the most innovative periods in cosmetics history. New formulas and new possibilities. It feels like the antiquity in marketing was legitimising the innovation. Reassuring customers that even though the formulas were new, untested, they’d never encountered before, the idea of beauty was proven and permanent.
It worked because after the War cosmetics companies were selling the promise of permanence and hope. Classical beauty is eternal by definition. You’re buying the idea that beauty can survive anything.
1970s: Apple’s Newton logo
Some of you might have seen this as it has become an urban legend within the art-direction world. The very first Apple logo was a depiction of Isaac Newton sitting under apple tree reading, with apple about to fall onto his head, a symbol of discovery. This elaborate engraving-style illustration was created by Ronald Wayne as a response to how “terrifying” those bulky, mysterious, expensive machines were to an average person. If you were going to convince people that a personal computer could fit in their homes, you needed to make it feel less like science fiction and more like... science we trust. If Newton could have a breakthrough under a tree, maybe this strange new technology was another breakthrough.
The logo lasted less than a year, it was obviously too complex to reproduce at small scale. If you’re selling the future, you can’t dress it up like the past - no matter how prestigious that past might be. But what I find interesting is Wayne’s instinct here: when technology is brand new and people don’t trust it yet, borrowing from historical achievement does work. But in Apple’s case the problem was the execution, Newton was too literal.
The 1990s: digital art in marble
In the mid-1990s, a Russian artist named Olga Tobreluts was digitally reconstructing classical sculptures - gods, heroes - marble bodies frozen in ancient poses and then “dressing” them in contemporary designer labels like Versace or Lacoste.
The art critic Bruce Sterling called her “Helen of Troy equipped with a video camera and a computer.”
Tobreluts was part of the New Academicians, a post-Soviet movement that rejected modernism and reached instead for classical antiquity. Digital technology in the 1990s felt ephemeral. How do you prove something created digitally is permanent and worth keeping? So it feels like Tobreluts anchored the contemporary campaigns in stone.
Her Models series won major European prizes. Photorealistic renderings of ancient sculptures branded with labels that would be out of style in few years. I really love the contradiction.
Post-Soviet Russia had just watched its ideologies collapse. For decades, Soviet art had turned the human body into propaganda - heroic and idealised. Visual language of classical sculptures offered a different kind of authority, if it lasted 2,000 years in stone, maybe it could legitimise these fragile pixels…
Why this is happening now
The visual language of antiquity has become the language of authenticity in a moment when authenticity feels impossible to verify... Ever-evolving innovation of generative AI feels fragile until it proves it can survive and evolve, but we don’t have 2,000 years to wait, so designers lean towards the visual inspiration from what did survive the test of time.
But there’s another ancient period worth looking at, one that might explain the current moment even better than classical antiquity. The observations made in this video essay gave me something to think about...
Historically, the Middle Ages were defined by fragmentation. Knowledge was unevenly distributed and authority was unclear. Craft, mysticism and experimentation all coexisted without a unified system. It took centuries for shared standards and literacy to emerge. Seen through that lens, our current relationship with new technology feels less like “we’ve arrived somewhere” and more like we’re at the very beginning of something we don’t yet understand.
Fragmentation means everyone’s working with their own models and their own understanding of what’s possible. The visual language applied to innovation matches what the moment feels like: uncertain and still being figured out.
Antiquity branding is a very clever psychology, trying to convey permanence while everything else is still forming. It feels comforting to see the technology that is too vast for us to grasp, packaged in visuals we’ve always romanticised.
Signals across culture in 2026
Creating visual contrast in marketing campaigns is almost always effective. Our brains love puzzles and the juxtaposition of two incompatible things makes us stop and look.
On top of that, when we see a modern campaign that portrays an ancient era, it gives us an opportunity to visualise a world we’re so far removed from. The world that we romanticise. The past becomes a canvas for whatever we want it to mean - permanence, celebration of craft, human achievement and beauty that required effort.
One of my favourite examples this year was this Shopify campaign - “The Renaissance Edition showcases 150+ updates to Shopify, set in a mashup of generative paintings with elements of modern commerce.” The contradiction here is layered and yet it makes perfect sense for this moment in time. The Renaissance was brilliant but chaotic. And it’s probably more honest than positioning AI innovation as certain, or figured out.
When I was forecasting Canva’s 2026 Design Trends, Texture Check emerged as one of the clearest signals early on and within that broader trend, weathered, aged by time stone textures stood out.
This kind of visual treatment is everywhere right now. The visual evidence of material reality. The timing isn’t coincidental. Texture Check as a trend gained momentum precisely as mainstream AI image generation exploded.
Even typography is doing this. Sociotype’s recent typeface families - Ceno and Meso -are named after geological eras spanning hundreds of millions of years. The promotional materials lean into this heavily, one of the most digitally native disciplines - choosing to package itself in imagery from eras that predate humanity entirely.
Researching this reminded me how deeply visual culture connects to our collective emotions, the anxieties and uncertainties that live just beneath the surface.
As marketers and designers, I think what we can learn here is when your audience feels uncertain about what’s coming next, they reach and respond to what’s proven to last. And if you can recognise that pattern, if you can spot the moment when innovation gets wrapped up in emotions - you’ll know when to anchor your work in something that feels human, meeting your audience exactly where they are.
If you’re still here, I’m eternally grateful for your attention. I most definitely do not take it for granted. Thank you.
Have a great weekend, M x
Wrapping new tech in old aesthetics to make it feel 'legitimate' — is fascinating. I see the same thing in the creator economy: everyone packages new tactics in old authority markers.
Such a fun read!! Loved this!! The classical Greek visual element isn’t going anywhere - we just keep coming back to what feels timeless. Makes total sense when you frame it the way you did ✨