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Why do we round corners?

uxdesign.cc

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Re: Why do we round corners?

#71

Post by JKCalhoun »

8note wrote: post #48
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sharp corners are easy to produce, requiring less tooling, and so look cheap. An artifact of modernity, surely? Historically, tight, neat corners required large amounts of skill and the right tools to create, whereas there were many approaches to rounding-off an arbitrary corner or edge.

Since the advent of the milling machine, but it's been around for a long time down. I guess really it's from the age of the saw or file. Making sharp corners isn't particularly hard to do

Hard to maintain though.

You can generally make a rounded edge/corner rounder, much harder to re-plane a whole surface to restore the edge.

Re: Why do we round corners?

#72

Post by JKCalhoun »

mdoms wrote: post #68

In 3 years someone will post an almost identical article with a bunch of wishy washy points about why sharp edges are easier to look at and easier to read. None of this is meaningful, it's just fashion. Tide comes in, tide goes out.

Still waiting for brushed metal to come back.

Tide goes out, tide stays out?

Re: Why do we round corners?

#73

Post by Brajeshwar »

I have some sweet memories of rounded corners in HTML/CSS from my early days in Development. Rounded corners were nice, subtle, and pleases the eye but it was hard before CSS supported it.

The idea was to use Photoshop to round the corners and "slice" those elements and used them as background images in CSS. In Photoshop, one has to know the trick to "feather" (I hope I'm using the right term) the corners for a smoothly rounded corner, else you get pixelated ones.

This happens pretty often and is a monotonous boring task after a while for the team. My team and I created a 9-Splicer tool in Flash, wrapped in a Windows Program (forgotten the name of the paid tool). Now any front-end developer could use different styles of rounded corners from the varieties of rounded corner graphics that the designer creates in her spare time.

Re: Why do we round corners?

#74

Post by _8j50 »

None of these is the main reason. Sharp corners feel artificial, round corners feel natural. You might find objects with a sharp edge but it is very abnormal for a geometric object like a square wood or a three sided broken rock to have all the corners be sharp, at least one is chipped or worn out. They are also more comfortable to touch and interact with when round. This is why car stereo buttons aren't usually sharp cornered as well.

Re: Why do we round corners?

#75

Post by analog31 »

travisgriggs wrote: post #46

A few months ago, I built matching houseframe beds for my 2 year old grandtwins ( https://www.woodshopdiaries.com/diy-kids-house-bed/ ). The best piece of advice I got from my dad before I started on this (for me) ambitious project was in question form: "Are you going round over all the edges? A 1/2 inch round leaves a bruise on a little one. An unfinished edge leaves a cut." He's been right. They're psycho 2 year ol…

Another thing about rounded edges and corners is that they're less prone to breakage. I know this from both homemade furniture, stringed musical instruments, and the homemade speakers that I use for amplifying my instruments. A softened edge will take a knock without chipping.

Glass optics (lenses, mirrors, etc.) will usually specify "protective bevel on all edges," and the fab shops know exactly what to do. The beveled edge is resistant to chipping.

Re: Why do we round corners?

#76

Post by spicybright »

Brajeshwar wrote: post #73

I have some sweet memories of rounded corners in HTML/CSS from my early days in Development. Rounded corners were nice, subtle, and pleases the eye but it was hard before CSS supported it. The idea was to use Photoshop to round the corners and "slice" those elements and used them as background images in CSS. In Photoshop, one has to know the trick to "feather" (I hope I'm using the right term) the corners for a smoot…

Oh man, that dug up some memories :) Anyone remember doing this?

    -webkit-border-radius: 5px;    
    -moz-border-radius:5px;
    -khtml-border-radius:5px;
    border-radius: 5px;

Re: Why do we round corners?

#77

Post by _carbyau_ »

taf2 wrote: post #40

Funny last week we removed all the rounded corners. We set a border css variable so all the border rules became border-radius: var(--border-size); We figured this way every 6 months or so we could switch between squares and rounded edges... This may provide little design pops to give a fresh feeling to users... we'll see so far it feels very fresh to me.

Automate rounding by month number and then forget about it. Watch as the new year brings in the freshness!

Re: Why do we round corners?

#78

Post by bobbylarrybobby »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #65
perilunar wrote: post #32

How can you write an article on rounded corners without mentioning Steve Jobs and Bill Atkinson? https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Round_Rects_Are_...

I was expecting the same. I don't agree with a lot of what Jobs did, but he was absolutely right about rounded rectangles. > Bill's technique used the fact the sum of a sequence of odd numbers is always the next perfect square (For example, 1 + 3 = 4, 1 + 3 + 5 = 9, 1 + 3 + 5 + 7 = 16, etc). So he could figure out when to bump the dependent coordinate value by iterating in a loop until a threshold was exceeded. This…

Were square roots really so slow that integer addition in a loop was faster??

Re: Why do we round corners?

#79

Post by the2and7 »

bobbylarrybobby wrote: post #78
JKCalhoun wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was expecting the same. I don't agree with a lot of what Jobs did, but he was absolutely right about rounded rectangles. > Bill's technique used the fact the sum of a sequence of odd numbers is always the next perfect square (For example, 1 + 3 = 4, 1 + 3 + 5 = 9, 1 + 3 + 5 + 7 = 16, etc). So he could figure out when to bump the dependent coordinate value by iterating in a loop until a threshold was exceeded. This…

Were square roots really so slow that integer addition in a loop was faster??

68000 processor on the Mac didn't support floating point operations.
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