Acid vs Metalheart
アシッド / メタルハート
Acid comes from Counterculture and Metalheart from UI Expression. Both are read here as style. They are reached for with some of the same intent, which is where they get confused.
Acid
Slams fluorescent color and distortion together at high pressure, shaking the eye with aggression.
Metalheart
Early 3D software gave this fin-de-millénaire style its chrome, liquid metal, aggressive bevels and lens flare. Dressed in techno and science-fiction imagery, it ruled rave flyers and games magazines around Y2K.
| Acid | Metalheart | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 1990s–2020s | 1995–2004 |
| Family | Counterculture | UI Expression |
| Kind | Style | Style |
| Cues | Fluorescent color / Distortion / High contrast / Rough 3D | Liquid-metal chrome / Aggressive bevels / Lens flares / Techno and sci-fi typography |
| Best used for | Maximum impact for music and street culture · Deliberately breaking the reigning taste | Club and rave announcements rebuilt with the texture of that era's 3D · Showing off technology through excess instead of refinement |
| Type | Collide ultra-bold, hairline and deformed letters | Extrude the letters, bevel them deep, and bake in mirror reflections |
| Composition | Off-center, pressure out to the edges | One large object at center, the ground filled with grids and beams |
| Material | Lime, pink, blue, coarse noise | Chrome, liquid metal, lens flare, reflections carrying surrounding color |
| Caution | Constant stimulus exhausts. Lower chroma and motion on information surfaces. | Polishing it clean in current software removes the rawness that came from the crude renderers of the time, and it becomes something else. |