Why did we become so boring?

L'Anse High School graduation announcement

I've been puttering away at home scanning and inventorying archival material from the museum because it's too cold to work in the building when the furnace is dead. It must be an effect of aging because I'm noticing the cold more this winter than I did back in 2012-2013 when there was also no gas heat in the building. Back then I managed fine with just an electric space heater in the office.

Closed

Open. There's multiple pages including a class roll under that top sheet. 

In any case, I've been hauling stacks of material home, working through it, and then hauling it back. I'm slowly figuring out what all was in a 40-quart Sterlite bin that ostensibly was packed with miscellaneous school-related ephemera.

Naturally, like everything else I've gotten into in the past six years, ostensible and reality are not synonymous. It is mostly school stuff -- graduation announcements, programs from school plays and concerts, school newspapers -- although there is some odd stuff mixed in, like a yearbook from a local church and a set of aviation navigation tools (e.g., a specialized protractor).

What 1932 looks like when open. And, yes, I cringed when I saw that year written on the front in ink. Made absolutely no sense when the year is clearly shown in that triangle at the top. 

There's also the usual issue of confusing labels, like a gallon ziplock bag labeled "L'Anse" when it's actually full of things from Baraga High School, and vice versa.

Some of the material is interesting, some pretty dull, and the process overall is fairly tedious. It's the type of task I'd hate if it was paid job but when I'm doing it as a volunteer with no set schedule, no deadlines, and the ability to get up and walk away any time it starts to feel too boring, I can't complain. At least my home office is warm.

Another one with multiple pages, hence the leather lace binding. 

One thing does have me wondering, though. When did we as a society decide to become so damn boring? From the earliest graduation announcements I've found up until the late 1930's, there's a lot of variety. The announcements are different shapes, different colors. Some are elaborate with multiple folds, some are simple but not bland. Why did we go from using announcements like the ones shown above to every one being happy with something as bland and lifeless as the example below?

Jostens has been around since 1897 as a supplier of school memorabilia -- rings, pins, announcements, yearbook printing. Their logo is embossed on the back of some the announcements I've been scanning. Did they make the decision to turn boring, or was it a case of their more creative competitors going out of business so they felt free to slack off on design work? It's a mystery.

(Actually, I can see it as being a logical business decision. The niftier announcements with multiple pages and lacing to hold them together were definitely more labor intensive, and even a simple one sheet like the 1922 announcement with its two folds involves a special shape for the paper. The boring ones use a standard size paper so can be run off quickly and are easily machine folded. Still, the older announcements were definitely a lot more interesting than the ones graduating seniors send out these days.)