The story
The term was coined retrospectively in 2017 by designer Suze Huldt to differentiate the optimistic pre-9/11 educational design era from the learning aesthetics that came after it.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
Utopian Scholastic
Today it means: A design and visual aesthetic popular in education and edutainment media, from the late 1980s to the early 2000s, characterized by a heavy reliance on stock photo collages, layered 2D and 3D objects, and surreal visual combinations, as well as early CGI and motifs blending tech, nature, and academia. Full definition →