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The Comeback of Fun in Visual Design

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101–110 of 193 posts

Re: The Comeback of Fun in Visual Design

#101
There's a lot of middle ground between excessively flat and excessively skeuomorphic. I don't want cartoon pictures and faux-wood textures on everything. I just want things to look clickable..

Material design almost gets it right. A bit more visual distinction between interactable and non-interactable elements and I'd be happy.

Re: The Comeback of Fun in Visual Design

#102
post #69
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…

The real problem isn't necessarily flat vs skeuomorphism - it's the representations that are not really representative to everyone. Try "Click that icon with the floppy disk to save." with a new user.

> it's the representations that are not really representative to everyone.

That's true of virtually every graphical representation in a computer application. Save icon? How about folders? Where I'm from, folders (the physical item) never took off. Even today, we use a sort of slimmed-down binder for small collections of documents. For millions of people, myself included, the folders in Windows 95 and Windows 98 were the first ones we ever saw. That never prevented anyone from learning how to use them, or figuring out what the "Open..." button does.

So yeah, "Click the folder button to open" never worked, for the same reason -- no one had ever seen a folder. But the button was visually distinctive enough that you could say "click the yellow button in the toolbar, it's way up there on the left".

Very few icons are really globally unambiguous (and I still think designers in the early/mid-'90s really had the right idea when they just put the frickin' text next to, or below the damn icon). But making all icons look basically the same makes an already difficult situation even worse.

Re: The Comeback of Fun in Visual Design

#104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone know what happened to Kai Krause? Last I heard he was working on Something Interesting, and then silence.

He lives in Germany in the 1000 year old castle he bought in 1999 from the money he made from his ownership in the companies HSC, MetaTools and MetaCreations. The castle was not in the best state back then and was restored by Kai. Here is an aerial photo of the castle from 2009[1]. I lies on the Middle Rhine, a very beautiful area. [1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/ff/Burg_Rhe...

oh man, I didn't even know it was possible to just buy a castle. That's crazy cool

Re: The Comeback of Fun in Visual Design

#105
post #67

"Pendulum swings" are going to shake off everyone else at different rates and we're going to be stuck with an eclectic mix of designs. This already plagues Windows (Ribbon, legacy settings) and Android (square, squircle, circle, triangle icons). I don't think people are able to distinguish between what's new and old anymore. Aesthetics will finally be free from corporate trend setting and maybe we'll feel comfortable…

you forgot teardrop on android, which i use coz it's so hilariously bad but someone wanted it in so it got in.

aka google PM syndrome

Re: The Comeback of Fun in Visual Design

#106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% with you. I absolutely hate the material design, it's the least intuitive way to use a computer. Paired with touch-first interfaces it's one of the worst thing to happen to computers.

Not saying material design is great, but it's a great step up from Holo UI and anything before that in Android. I just dislike that it became so ubiquitous now and it's a train wreck on desktop

Personally I went through the opposite process. I was a huge fan of Android up to and including KitKat, and I thought Holo was great. My enthusiasm for the entire platform disappeared as soon as Lollipop came out with the dreadful new Material UI. Even with themes I just hated using it on every level and eventually switched to an iPhone.

Re: The Comeback of Fun in Visual Design

#107
I’m not such a fan of all this Jony Ive bashing. It seems unfair to ascribe the whole minimal/flat design movement to him. I remember reading that in university he designed a pen with a part that was for ‘fiddling’ with in meetings, completely non functional other than to satisfy people so I somehow doubt he is the minimalist Puritan he is painted as in so many articles like this.

Re: The Comeback of Fun in Visual Design

#108
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They went too far on that one. Do designers consider how expensive the gpu rendering is for skeumomorphism or neuromorphism?

What? It is? Forgive my ignorance, but isn't it just bitmap rendering? E.g. rending a flat icon should take approx the same GPU toll as a skeumorphic icon

Flat design lets you make smaller 9 slices I guess. Smaller textures take up less ram but even that's a stretch.

Re: The Comeback of Fun in Visual Design

#109
post #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 "f…

> you could suddenly use any typeface you wanted because displays were all retina

You're thinking only of Apple land, right? Most displays in the world are still 1366x768 and 1920x1080, and huge fonts and widgets everywhere is exactly what I'm not going to miss about this era.

Re: The Comeback of Fun in Visual Design

#110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone know what happened to Kai Krause? Last I heard he was working on Something Interesting, and then silence.

He lives in Germany in the 1000 year old castle he bought in 1999 from the money he made from his ownership in the companies HSC, MetaTools and MetaCreations. The castle was not in the best state back then and was restored by Kai. Here is an aerial photo of the castle from 2009[1]. I lies on the Middle Rhine, a very beautiful area. [1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/ff/Burg_Rhe...

Someone took the “10 European castles that cost less than San Francisco condominiums” article seriously. That’s awesome!
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