Postmodernism
A revolt against the rules of modernism: colour, irony, pattern and historical quotation.
The Italian group Memphis, gathered around Ettore Sottsass in 1981, made furniture in laminate and bold colours that broke with everything modernism had stood for.
Design became a way of communicating. An object might well be more an idea than a tool.
Patterned laminate, bold colours
Forms that look like figures or toys
Quotations from older styles
Objects that provoke or joke