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The age of average
351–360 of 493 posts
Re: The age of average
#352Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've tried making this same point when it comes to auto designs (at least in the competitive, cost-sensitive ones). A lot of mid-sized cars look the same because the design constraints generally converge on the same handful of principles. They've converged not in the aesthetic sense as much as the engineering sense: because they work at a relatively low cost. (I'm speaking mainly about things like aerodynamics here,…
Even if they had to ultra-optimize the aerodynamics so all the cars look like the same bar of soap (they don't have to), they could still at least paint the damn soap a different color. But, no. All you see coming out of the factory are white, silver, gray, black, the occasional red and the occasional blue. What's driving this? That's what the article is about. Is it actually pull from customers, or is it push from t…
There's a very boring, practical thing that most of those colors have in common. White, silver, and gray make your typical road dirt less visible. Black also accomplishes this pretty well in climates where they don't need to salt the roads.
Blue and red are common favorite colors, so it's not surprising you get a little of those. Brown and tan used to be very common up until the late 80's or so; I'm not sure why that went away but that's the only one that seems surprisingly absent.
Re: The age of average
#353Earlier quoted context omitted.
They're only the same if you're taking an extremely reductive approach to them... And at that point you could also say that "99.99999%%" of Smartphones are the same, wherever they're iPhones, Androids or windows from a dacades ago. They're all rectangular devices with a large screen and touch input after all.
They are physically the exact same size and shape . That isn't reductive at all.
And phones aren't?
And for the record, keyboards have massive size difference, in all dimensions. Keyboards actually have a way bigger variance then you'd find in phones.
Some are just a few mm high, others go as high as 5cm. There are 60% keyboards. Ergonomic keyboards. Keyboards that're basically just a small nipple with which you're doing input by gesture.
the keys and actuation themselves are another topic with Rubberdome on cheap and trashy keyboards, mechanical with springs and other techniques, even some optical - though they're pretty gimmicky.
There are stylized key caps off all kinds, including some really cringe material like ahego keys from a few years ago. And actually quite pretty one's with mountains, clouds and areas stylized under resin [1]
Some are so small you can only use them with your thumbs
[1] random example https://www.etsy.com/de/listing/1289117693/mountain-creeks-s...
Re: The age of average
#354Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've tried making this same point when it comes to auto designs (at least in the competitive, cost-sensitive ones). A lot of mid-sized cars look the same because the design constraints generally converge on the same handful of principles. They've converged not in the aesthetic sense as much as the engineering sense: because they work at a relatively low cost. (I'm speaking mainly about things like aerodynamics here,…
Even if they had to ultra-optimize the aerodynamics so all the cars look like the same bar of soap (they don't have to), they could still at least paint the damn soap a different color. But, no. All you see coming out of the factory are white, silver, gray, black, the occasional red and the occasional blue. What's driving this? That's what the article is about. Is it actually pull from customers, or is it push from t…
I sold cars for a decade. I love red cars. Atleast at the brands I worked for, dealers specd out their own vehicles including colors and interiors. We ordered a lot of black white greys because they are the easiest to sell.
If someone likes a car in general, almost anyone will accept either black or white or grey, even if you would like red (rare).
If you like a car, and all they have is red, while you dislike red (very common), you don't buy it.
Dealerships have been around for 100 years and make millions of dollars for their owners. They're not operated by stupid people.
Re: The age of average
#355Earlier quoted context omitted.
It could be a trap if you value diversity or it could be a good thing if you value supra-national uniformity across continents, where people act the same way, think and build the same way, want the same cars and want the same visual traits in women.
I like weird shit a lot more than the next guy, and I think you're being pointlessly melodramatic about it. Convergent evolution of tastes is not the same as fascism.
It's much worse. It's global submission to the machine, which is not even a political project. What is easy, convenient, efficient, from a machine perspective, therefore is aspirational, desirable, wholesome from a human perspective. This is what's happening.
We are all becoming widgets, that is to say, mere participants in bureaucracies, cogs in mechanized processes. Compare the existential dread people experienced in the 1800s when the factory mode of production reduced people to skinner pigeons, how it alienated labor. Now, we've completed submitted to this alienation, in fact, even celebrate it. For example, think some Tesla promotional with a robotized factory floor and a single worker with some doodad pressing buttons. A truly dystopian sight, yet, there we are, using it as advertisement.
Re: The age of average
#356Earlier quoted context omitted.
5 over 1 is the result of regulations of various kinds converging resulting in economic pressures dictating that building format. Also unless land is just atrociously expensive, the marginal cost of adding floors doesn't go down. In fact it really goes up at some point. I've still never actually worked out how sewage works in supertall buildings.
My biggest gripe with 5 over 1's is the interior and the pricing. They're all cheap drywall with no insulation, quartz counter tops with an island and stainless steel appliances, and vinyl, wood grain flooring. They then claim that because they hit all of the "luxury" points, they are "luxury" apartments and can charge an extra $750 more than other apartments. In the end, all new apartments are like this, and beside…
Kind of weird that you are calling out drywall here, what other building material makes sense for interior walls? And when you say no insulation do you mean in the interior for sound proofing? Exterior walls certainly have and require adequate insulation to be to code.
Re: The age of average
#357Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even if they had to ultra-optimize the aerodynamics so all the cars look like the same bar of soap (they don't have to), they could still at least paint the damn soap a different color. But, no. All you see coming out of the factory are white, silver, gray, black, the occasional red and the occasional blue. What's driving this? That's what the article is about. Is it actually pull from customers, or is it push from t…
I believe a lot of it has to do with resale value. People want to be able to trade in their car for maximum value, and picking the color with the widest appeal helps with that. This seems to have created a feedback loop where car manufacturers ship more of the "boring" colors because that's what customers are buying. This also applies to things like computers: A cursory search on ebay shows that a silver iMac general…
Odd colors actually have the best resale value on the used market. A yellow Porsche is very hard to sell new. Very few are made and sold in yellow because dealers don't spec them that way. 10 years later, if you try to sell a black Porsche, you have 72 others competing with you. If you try to sell a yellow Porsche, the buyer will fly from across the US to buy it from you.
Re: The age of average
#358The coworking space where I work took the exact opposite approach. For each new location they hire an artist and let him go wild on the decoration, they have an in-house team of architects to make it happen. It makes for interesting social dynamics since people with similar taste tend to gather at the same place, and the variety also encourage people to move location to see something different. But it has another more pragmatic benefit for the coworking company; the locations will not go out of style at the same time and so they don’t have to renovate all locations simultaneously.
You can see some examples of their interior designs here: https://silversquare.eu/en/coworking-locations/brussels
Re: The age of average
#359It's hard to disagree with the fact that brand identities are being stripped back of personality (aka all look the same). I wonder if there's a cause related to our social context:
- It could be that this is the moment in history with the most visible amount of brands out there. It's inevitable that two designers land on a very similar solution without knowing about each other's work
- It could be intentional: we live in the era of information noise. Brands are happy to strip back their personality and identity so that the message (their ads) can take the spotlight
- Visuals are being dumbed down to increase usability: consumers are tired of making sense of strident brands, so they appreciate keeping it simple
... or maybe I'm just inventing things.
Re: The age of average
#360Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's an old thought that red/yellow sports cars are more likely to get tickets because they are more noticeable. No idea if that's just lore or if data bears it out.
They generally have higher insurance rates although I'm not clear on what's driving the model.
People repeat this for decades... Apparently never noticing that they have never ever been asked for the color of their car when getting an insurance quote.