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The Comeback of Fun in Visual Design

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Re: The Comeback of Fun in Visual Design

#131

Post by baddox »

buboard wrote: post #50
karaterobot wrote: post #26

People sometimes forget that the move to flat design was not entirely arbitrary and driven by fashion, it was driven by shifting technology and usage. Sure, fashion played a role, but in this case the main driver was the need to support devices of different resolutions. Scalability implies vectors, which implies shapes, fills, and strokes rather than bitmap assets. As a designer who made "skeuomorphic" interfaces bef…

The web already had solved that problem, even with bootstrap version 2. Surely apple provides primitives such as border-radius and gradients, which are enough to create an eye-catching button?

The level of skeuomorphic design never really hit the web the same as it was on iOS before version 7. Remember the pool table green felt and wood trim of Game Center? That sort of thing is probably extremely expensive to design and maintain for the wide range of screens offered by Apple products.

Re: The Comeback of Fun in Visual Design

#132

Post by lotsofpulp »

dmitriid wrote: post #93
alxlaz wrote: 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.co…

One would think hundreds of thousands of dollars per year would buy people with a few critical thinking skills. The second example is unforgivable.

Re: The Comeback of Fun in Visual Design

#133

Post by _tw9j »

jayd16 wrote: post #108
quenix wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I wasn't talking about icons alone in my second statement. :/

The design trend require soft shadows to be rendered on many elements in layers which I exaggeratedly pointed out. I apologise.

Re: The Comeback of Fun in Visual Design

#134

Post by baddox »

nathanaldensr wrote: post #2

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."

It doesn’t seem that outrageous. Clothing fashion changes, and while there is some tongue in cheek complaining about it, I think our brains are quite okay “retraining.” Same with musical trends changing. Surely we don’t just say “that’s great for working musicians, but it sucks for everyone else who has to get accustomed to new music.”

Re: The Comeback of Fun in Visual Design

#135

Post by adrianmonk »

asjo wrote: post #125
alxlaz wrote: 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…

> Amiga's 1024x768 screen What Amiga did you have?

Amiga 1200 with AGA chipset, maybe?

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_1200 :

> 800×600i, 1024×768i (not officially supported)

Re: The Comeback of Fun in Visual Design

#136

Post by baddox »

shaan7 wrote: post #53
paulcole wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What if we could give complete control of visuals to user? This would be a terrible idea. People complain (in the comments on this very page) that Apple’s professional designers do a terrible job. You think my uncle is going to do better?

> You think my uncle is going to do better? Yes he will, because he has to only care about what he needs, and he is the best judge of that.

Why do you suppose he is the best judge of that? Surely that’s not the case for other professions that offer products or services, like medicine, airplane piloting, etc.

Re: The Comeback of Fun in Visual Design

#137

Post by weinzierl »

majewsky wrote: post #112
ImprobableTruth wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

They can be bought and sold like any other realty. Some are owned by the state (esp. those used as public museums) and not up for sale, though.

They can be bought and sold but they come with a lot of obligations. Every modification has to be approved and the specifications are often very detailed. All in all I think a castle is a bit like a yacht - many people can afford one, not so many have the financial means to maintain one. Doesn't mean that owning and living in a castle isn't really cool, just that there is more to it than most people would expect.

Re: The Comeback of Fun in Visual Design

#138

Post by ksec »

"Pendulum swings" , "Changes". Are these really the right word to use?

Apple has always had some from of Skeuomorphic in their design since its early days. It was what Steve wanted it to be. Apple felt that flatness were wrong right after iOS 7 was released. An every year since then they have been "walking back" those "changes".

Everything Ive changed all reverted back to Steve Jobs' era. Scott Forstall wouldn't have left. Their Head of UI wouldn't have left. Apple Store changed in design and layout, ( You could argued whether those are from Angela or Jony ) some of them are reverted back. Apple's Keyboard to literally no key travel, reverted back to 1mm but still very shallow to the old 1.5mm. A large part of Apple has spend a half a decade fixing their wrong directional changes.

I really miss Steve Jobs.

Re: The Comeback of Fun in Visual Design

#139

Post by alxlaz »

asjo wrote: post #125
alxlaz wrote: 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…

> Amiga's 1024x768 screen What Amiga did you have?

You could technically get 1024x768 (with really bad flickering) on anything with an AGA. Check out e.g. https://aminet.net/package/driver/moni/WBHacksAGA or https://aminet.net/package/driver/moni/HighGFX40_6 . The only high-res Amiga I saw at the time was an Amiga 4000 (it wasn't mine, but I had pretty much unlimited access to one at $parental_unit's workplace, where they had some fancy multimedia lab that generally went unused), but I expect the Amiga 1200 could do it, too. The flickering was pretty terrible but I was a kid and I had good eyes :).

HighGFX was actually popular (and useful) enough that it caused a bunch of "flickerfixer" hardware to sprout in the mid/late 90s but I've never used/seen one.

Re: The Comeback of Fun in Visual Design

#140

Post by adrianmonk »

nathanaldensr wrote: post #2

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."

The people making these decisions think customers respond better if the UI gets a "visual refresh" from time to time, and they're probably right.

It's human nature to judge by superficial attributes. If you have a perfectly good UI but it never changes, it gives people the feeling that your software is stagnant and out of date.

It's inconvenient for the user, but it catches the user's attention and makes them think about the software. Essentially it boosts brand awareness. It's the same reason that they change the design on a box of granola bars and write "new look, same great taste!" on it.

It also costs engineering / designer labor. And there's a danger of replacing the old design with a newer one that doesn't work as well. The people making these decisions probably know that but think it's worth the cost anyway.

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