Why Is Corpcore Suddenly Such a Thing?

Flip through “Apple T-Shirts: A Yearbook of History at Apple Computer,” and you won’t find any particularly inspired designs. Published in 1997, the book documents decades of Apple tees produced to commemorate internal teams, projects, and events. Some shirts have a sense of humor (“Quality does not take a vacation. But I will next year…maybe!” says one made for a team that worked overtime in ’86), but for the most part, the designs are rudimentary. Even so, they’re going for hundreds of dollars on cool-kid resale sites like Depop and Grailed. Even buying the aforementioned book—just to look at these designs—can run as much as $850 for a first-edition copy.

It’s not just vintage paraphernalia that’s taking off; newly minted merch is in demand, too. This spring, thousands of product builders descended on Moscone Center in San Francisco for Figma’s annual conference, Config. The venue featured giant inflatables, an interactive risograph station, and a 10-foot-tall synthesizer—but one of the most popular attractions by far, with lines snaking around the conference hall, was the pop-up store where we debuted our Season 4 collection.

Figma’s Brand Studio team spent 8 months working with Garrett Elizabeth Office (G.E.O.) to bring the collection to life. “Figma fans are really passionate about any merch we release,” says Gustavo Delgado, a Brand Designer at Figma. “It’s a testament to how much Figma means to people.” Config keynote speaker and design pioneer Jeff Staple compared it to a drop from Supreme, the beloved streetwear brand whose limited collections inspire prodigious lines.

Whether it’s a coveted Power Mac G4 Cube T-shirt or a current Figma style, software is trending. One might call it “corpcore”: a sensibility that both revels in the iconic software logos of yore while celebrating the tech companies that touch a nerve today. People are increasingly repping apps on tote bags, hats, and water bottles in the same way they might wear a band T-shirt or sports jersey. So, what explains this shift in culture? When did corporate swag become streetwear?

Stewart Scott-Curran, Co-Founder and Creative Director at Design Business Company, argues that when it comes to vintage swag, the appeal is about nostalgia for the early web and wanting to own an artifact from another time. “A lot of folks of a certain age who are now in tech grew up with Microsoft as one of the first things they interacted with,” says Stewart, who has designed swag for companies like Google, Meta, and GitHub. “I think there is genuine affection and a kind of reverence for the Apples of the world or the early days of Microsoft,” he says.

These sartorial artifacts harken back to a time when technology felt like an insurgent force, when genius young coders in company-issued tees took on the suits and broke open the world. In the introduction of “Apple T-Shirts,” author Gordon Thygeson compares T-shirts to bumper stickers. “Whether a wearer is trying to advertise a personal philosophy or identify himself with a successful group, they make a statement to the world,” he writes. “An Apple T-shirt is no different than a bumper sticker for achievement (‘My child was student of the month at school’).” Someone who cops a vintage Apple tee, then, buys into that sense of achievement—but from an ironic distance because, of course, that moment has long passed.

There’s irony at play when it comes to contemporary corpcore, too—plus, a dose of the absurd. In 2023, Cash App tapped designer Marshall Columbia to create a line of club-kid statement pieces to be modeled by Julia Fox. Outside of tech, the streetwear brand Overtime dropped a line of limited-edition Dunkin’ Donuts merch, and a South Korean clothing company has bought the rights to sell polo shirts and tactical track suits with Lockheed Martin branding.

The challenge of designing merch for any company, says Stewart, is walking the tightrope between earnest and ironic. In this sense, he’s inspired by streetwear brands like Supreme, which works on both high-brow (i.e., Louis Vuitton) and low-brow (i.e., SpongeBob SquarePants) collabs, leaving room for ambiguity and interpretation. “It’s a bit of both, and that’s where the interest and dissonance come from,” he says.

The biggest difference when it comes to today’s merch, however, is craft and quality. Gone are the days of branded ballpoint pens, novelty stress balls, and white-label Patagonia vests. Looking at this new generation of Silicon Valley swag—whether it’s the GitHub X Cotopaxi hip pack, the Perplexity embroidered sweatshirt, or the Notion monogram onesie—you see companies aiming to create beautiful, thoughtfully constructed SKUs for users who have an authentic affinity for the brand and are proud to represent them. “There’s an inherent irony to wearing corporate gear, but our job is to apply taste to the vernacular, so it’s not just retro or staid,” says Garrett Morin, one of the co-founders of G.E.O., who helped design Figma’s Season 4 collection.

Gustavo traces an arc from the early days of internal swag, to the awkward, logo-driven adolescence of corpcore, to where we are now. “More companies are starting to dial in what makes them unique,” he says. “When you can express the core messaging and vision, that really resonates with users.” When those users wear company swag, they’re not just aligning with a logo; they’re in allegiance with a set of values. He explains, “The appeal of trying to be ironic, that’s had its peak. We’re moving toward wearing what you want as a true expression of who you are, how you see yourself, and what you strive to be.”

Jordan Scott, Community Experiences Manager at Figma, knew she was on to something when she joined in 2023. “That was the first year we had a store at Config,” she says. “When I first brought up the idea, people were like, ‘No one wants to buy our stuff.’ But people were standing in line for two hours to get in, and that wasn’t even a new collection.” Even free Config swag sells on eBay, she points out—not to mention the limited-edition trading jacket worn on Figma’s listing day at the New York Stock Exchange, which fetched $550.

For Figma’s Season 4 collection, G.E.O. drew inspiration from ’90s desktop computing. It features a cast of anthropomorphized office supplies that recall Microsoft’s chatty assistant, Clippy, and illustrations that draw on open-source clip art libraries. The trick was to be tongue-in-cheek, but not corny. “Instead of taking these images and putting them on a shirt, which would be the historically corporate approach, we’re reframing them with a contemporary line quality, with humor,” says Garrett.

At the start, they explored a broad range of directions, designing a soccer kit inspired by teamwork and collaboration, and using “auto layout” as inspiration for automotive racing styles. They toyed with a ’60s New Age aesthetic, tied to Figma’s “share with anyone” feature. Other ideas were more for laughs: a shirt with a teddy bear on it that said “software,” or a Monster energy drink logo transposed into an F for Figma. In the end, they decided to focus less on meta-commentary, and more on craft.

“Ultimately, we wanted the collection to be something that we would wear, and that the community would be proud to wear,” says Elizabeth Dilk, co-founder of G.E.O. “Figma is a tech company, but more than that, it’s a creative community. The team was game for the more playful stuff, but everything had to have a purpose and a clear reasoning behind it.”

Elizabeth, Garrett, and the Brand Studio team kept their core audience of designers and builders in mind as they refined the designs. They also worked closely with production partners—walking factory floors, comparing cotton weaves and custom silk screens, dialing in the exact blend of ink to ensure that the puff printing on the lettering came out just right. What resulted is a collection of well-considered objects that are in on the joke, but lovable on their own terms.

In 1935, Walter Benjamin argued in “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” that the advent of industrial mass production put art in everyone’s hands—but, in doing so, robbed each work of what he called its “aura.” By this, he meant its singular quality, its creative spark. Walter Benjamin couldn’t have anticipated the scale of mechanical reproduction we contend with today. Maybe that’s left us all starved for aura—both in the way Benjamin meant it, and in the TikTok sense of scoring “aura points.” We don’t want throwaway T-shirts. We want style, authenticity, charisma, cool.

In the past, corpcore existed only for pragmatic reasons—to capture a conference or a product launch. Now, it’s about telegraphing who we are and what we care about. “For an audience that’s very plugged in, and probably works in the tech community, corpcore signals, ‘Hey, I’m on the mission,’” says Stewart. “‘I’m on board.’”