Nobody prefers soggy pizza. It’s disappointing, it’s unnatural, it accosts you with that dog-with-peanut-butter-in-its-mouth sensation. A good slice must be structurally sound and able to hold its own cheese. Otherwise it’s a betrayal. When the texture collapses, the experience collapses with it.

Texture creates contrast and elevates something far beyond the sum of its parts. It’s true of pizza and it’s true in design.

Today we’ll be crunching on something we call deep-fried design. It’s the practice of using paper textures and grit in graphic design to add dimension, visual interest, and of course—delicious texture.

Some say the earliest focus on texture in design comes from Constructivism, the art movement founded in 1915 by Vladimir Tatlin and Alexander Rodchenko. The inspiration wasn’t born from a horrible experience at their local pizza parlor, but instead centered on a desire to make art and design reflect the modern, industrial world. They rejected decoration for its own sake, embracing an austere, utilitarian style built around social purpose. While we won’t dive too deep into post‑World War I politics, Constructivism played a key role in promoting social and political change during a turbulent time in Russia.

A central concept in Constructivism was faktura, a term referring to the texture of painted surfaces. Constructivists insisted that surfaces reveal how they were made in order to expose process, materiality, and structure. Where movements before featured ornamentation and pretty flourishes, Constructivism treated art and design like engineering. In today’s digital realm, faktura is a vector’s worst nightmare: flat and sterile unless you manually add grit, texture, and visual noise.  

Fast forward to Seattle in the ’90s—the grunge era, when Nirvana ruled the airwaves and oversized flannels were peak fashion. Like Constructivism, grunge was about reflecting creators’ urban environment. It leveraged counter-culture to reject the status quo and often celebrated worn-out imperfection. Smudges, grime, and all. This style was particularly influential in the music scene, which led to mainstream artists adopting this style in their own music videos. This style spilled over into zine culture, where young creators crafted DIY collages and stitched them together into small-run publications, often tackling social issues like feminism. Bikini Kill stands as a prime example of how grunge greatness could translate between music and zines, proving the appeal of raw, lived-in textures.

Since the dissolution of the USSR and Kurt Cobain’s untimely death, we’ve seen the concept of faktura pop up in digital design. Times have changed, but the need for depth and tactile intrigue remains. Photoshop was the first to offer noise and texture effects. As the online world has gobbled up our time and attention, we see people craving even more textural and physical mediums. These days, companies like True Grit Texture Supply and Retro Supply Co have risen to the top with texture packs featuring styles from different time periods. Our good pals at Hoodzpah Design also offer tasty textures and Photoshop actions that are worth checking out. And in the art world, we’re seeing photographers like Anna Koblish adding a bit of grit to their work, plus collage-style music videos are SO BACK.

The Saint Friend team loves texture in both pizza and design. It’s a great way for tech brands to differentiate through tactility, especially in a sea of flat, polished sameness. When everything starts to look the same, a little extra crunch goes a long way.

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References
https://stereogum.com/2218486/tobi-vail-unearths-first-bikini-kill-zine-dont-be-afraid-to-share-your-ideas/news
https://artincontext.org/grunge-art/
https://www.rem.routledge.com/articles/faktura
https://www.theartstory.org/movement/constructivism/
https://www.britannica.com/art/Suprematism
https://scholarworks.uni.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1115&context=universitas

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