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The Comeback of Fun in Visual Design

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Re: The Comeback of Fun in Visual Design

#91
post #16

Apple: We now have an all new redesign for macOS 11... Designers: Apple's done it again, Time to adopt neomorphism in our apps and the web, like we did with flat design and skeuomorphism. Me: About this battery...[0] [0] https://www.macrumors.com/2020/06/23/macos-big-sur-battery-h...

The battery icon sucks, but you’re missing the forest for the trees.

Re: The Comeback of Fun in Visual Design

#93
post #10

I don't really care about "fun", but I just can't find the words to explain how happy I am that there's a chance we might put all this flat madness behind us. I'm looking forward to: * Not having this conversation with my mom (who, at 60+, is remarkably adept with computers but hey, we all run into trouble sometimes) over the phone anymore: Me: Okay mom, now press the "Edit" button Mom: Which one's the edit button? M…

I agree with all your points. However, Big Sur is going to be very, very, very bad accessibility-wise.

The entire interface is washed out. There's little to no distinction between selected items. Translucency breaks readability of text. And so on and so forth.

Some examples:

- https://twitter.com/krzyzanowskim/status/1275469783488696323

- https://twitter.com/lunasorcery/status/1275237073625198592

- https://twitter.com/Freerunnering/status/1275832747895009283

Re: The Comeback of Fun in Visual Design

#94

I think Apple went overboard with minimalism, flatness, and lack of texture. Walking some of that back is good. Recent Apple designs lack sufficient visual cues to differentiate functions. Some things ought to pop in some way to draw attention. But "fun"? No thank you. All that cutesy crap they used to have was distracting. There was no consistency at all. Yellow lined paper as the notebook background? Winking emoji?…

> I think Apple went overboard with minimalism, flatness, and lack of texture.

Never as much as Android in my opinion. Android went beyond flatness to complete abstractness, all in the name of "minimalism". The square/circle/triangle design decision was the most baffling example.

Re: The Comeback of Fun in Visual Design

#95

Of course this author's happy--they're a designer . Meanwhile, everyone else has to absorb the burden of the "pendulum" ceaselessly swinging, retraining their brains yet again to absorb new visual memories and habits. There seems to be no such concept as "good enough."

> There seems to be no such concept as "good enough."

I don’t think that concept has had any meaning since the Industrial Revolution. Capitalism is built upon the belief that nothing is ever good enough.

You will never see “good enough” in consumer goods in a capitalistic society.

Re: The Comeback of Fun in Visual Design

#96
post #10

I don't really care about "fun", but I just can't find the words to explain how happy I am that there's a chance we might put all this flat madness behind us. I'm looking forward to: * Not having this conversation with my mom (who, at 60+, is remarkably adept with computers but hey, we all run into trouble sometimes) over the phone anymore: Me: Okay mom, now press the "Edit" button Mom: Which one's the edit button? M…

I admit to the same feeling. I like akeuomorphism .. but as with most, we probably got carried away a bit. What I liked about the flat design era (not flat design itself) was the typography - you could suddenly use any typeface you wanted because displays were all retina! What I want is some kind of wabesabe design ethic that have the richness of texture and flavour (which is part of what the OP is referring to as "fun" I suppose). The digital world has been getting incredibly dull and monotonic these past several years.

Re: The Comeback of Fun in Visual Design

#97

Of course this author's happy--they're a designer . Meanwhile, everyone else has to absorb the burden of the "pendulum" ceaselessly swinging, retraining their brains yet again to absorb new visual memories and habits. There seems to be no such concept as "good enough."

Programming is currently hating on OOP, in love with strong typing, and somewhere on the way from loving microservices to disowning ever to have spoken in their favor. Ten years ago, it was the opposite. So this particular quirk of thinking in groups doesn't seem to be confined to the design domain. Nor do "swings of pendulum" preclude the pendulum also having some forward momentum in sum. Think of it as a skier's wa…

Yes. This.

Things change. Deal with it.

And yet, things don’t have to change at an indigestible rate. Windows, for example, is changing so fast lately, that directions for use change on a semi-annual basis, and self-consistency is almost entirely gone. They never release a finished product, and It creates highly unnecessary cognitive burden.

Re: The Comeback of Fun in Visual Design

#98

Of course this author's happy--they're a designer . Meanwhile, everyone else has to absorb the burden of the "pendulum" ceaselessly swinging, retraining their brains yet again to absorb new visual memories and habits. There seems to be no such concept as "good enough."

Programming is currently hating on OOP, in love with strong typing, and somewhere on the way from loving microservices to disowning ever to have spoken in their favor. Ten years ago, it was the opposite. So this particular quirk of thinking in groups doesn't seem to be confined to the design domain. Nor do "swings of pendulum" preclude the pendulum also having some forward momentum in sum. Think of it as a skier's wa…

I totally agree. I call it "throw the baby out with the bathwater" syndrome. Usually some technology has a particular problem, probably not huge, but as that technology becomes dominant, its warts start to grate on more people.

So someone comes up with a new technology and says "Look! It fixes all the problems of Technology A!" And people who are new enough to the field who pretty much only have experience with Technology A think it's great, because this new thing fixes A's problems.

Meanwhile, though, Technology B has its own host of problems, and oftentimes those kinds of problems are the ones Technology A was originally created to fix! And so the pendulum swings until you get enough years behind you on Technology B where it's problems become apparent enough, so someone comes up with Technology C, which is basically Technology A with more modern trappings.

Whenever you make a technology switch, be very cognizant about what you're losing as well as what you're gaining.

Re: The Comeback of Fun in Visual Design

#99
Hooray! I am so happy to see this. Like the author, I’ve been hoping for skeuomorphic design to return ever since it went out of vogue. I honestly didn’t expect it to happen. I thought Apple would go even farther away from it, eventually removing the beautiful shadow around each window.

With Apple’s flat design, you can’t even tell that buttons are buttons. They just look like labels.

Re: The Comeback of Fun in Visual Design

#100

Of course this author's happy--they're a designer . Meanwhile, everyone else has to absorb the burden of the "pendulum" ceaselessly swinging, retraining their brains yet again to absorb new visual memories and habits. There seems to be no such concept as "good enough."

I'm a designer, and this may be a cynical take on this but all I see is Apple shifting to skeumorphic design just so that they can go back to flat in 5-10 years and go "Look at how timeless our previous designs were!"
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