“uxa” in the style of the brat album cover via https://www.bratgenerator.com/

🍏 How Brat Green Got its Start

Surely by now, there is no corner of the internet that has not heard of “brat summer”. Charli XCX has always been a pop icon, but how did brat manage to go from being a club classic to being a part of presidential nominee Kamala Harris’s campaign? And what caused brat green—once an unpopular, oversaturated shade of lime green—to suddenly dominate explore pages everywhere? 🤳

Brat green (#8ACE00 👀) before the album’s release was not a particularly desirable color. It’s not a calming sage or forest green, but a weird lime-green, reminiscent of Nickelodeon award show slime. However, this choice was no mistake. ☝️

“For me it just felt like the most WRONG out of all the options we had…The most off, the most uncomfortable, the most disorientating. And that’s why I chose it…” — Charli XCX, Architectural Digest interview

The sharp lime green paired with the single word “brat” might appear deceptively simple, yet it’s this minimalist design that makes the cover so memorable and perfect for recreations.  Though it might seem like Charli just slapped a word onto a color, designer of the album cover—Brent David Freaney—explains how the process actually took five months.

The “simple” design required looking through 500 shades of green and toying with the typography to finally create a customized font: a stretched out, slightly blurry version of Arial. Such subtle details were able to give the brat album cover its bold, unapologetic personality🤘

“As easy or effortless as it may seem on its face, there is a very deeply considered world in it, that I think really legitimizes it from a design perspective.” — Brent David Freaney, New York Times Interview

🧐 So what can we learn from this?

The album cover embraces the Anti-Design movement, defying traditional principles by celebrating imperfection and unconventional elements. Yet, brat remains minimalist—an aesthetic synonymous with current modern design trends.

This contradictory blend challenges the Anti-Design movement’s critique of clean, functional design, proving that opposing styles can coexist to create something iconic. The balance between chaos and mainstream shows that we can push the boundaries of design and still captivate the internet. 💚

Sources

https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/charli-xcx-brat-green-color-trend

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/26/style/what-is-brat-green.html

https://www.widewalls.ch/magazine/anti-design-italian-movement