At age 50 now, I'd prefer a Gen X mode where the font size is 125% and the text is high contrast.
Yeah. Part of the same simple/spare design fashion is small grey fonts.
Light mode, Dark mode, and Gen-Z mode?
141–150 of 350 posts
Re: Light mode, Dark mode, and Gen-Z mode?
#142The "Gen-Z" look feels wrong. But if you step back a little bit, all the "flat design" trends of 2011 also felt wrong in the exact same way. "You mean that after all the advances in computer graphics we're going to just go back to text on top of a rectangle like Windows 3.1?" A lot of people forget this since flat design is just how everything is done nowadays.
It's not the same as in Windows 3.1 at all. We now have shadows, gradients, far better colors and a lot of smooth animations [0]. The basics are the same, but if you compare the designs side by side, you'll find more differences than similarities. I feel that there was a transition period were you really needed to show of the new capabilities and colors that your computers can do now. But with current trends, this wo…
Shadows are an essential design element of Windows 3.1, they are just used differently. In flat design a button is a flat piece of paper that may cast a shadow below it because it floats above the layer below it. In Windows 3.1 [1] a button is instead a 3d object that casts a shadow on itself, but because it's "glued" to the UI it doesn't cast a shadow below it.
I agree that they are very different though. Windows 2.11 is a flat design [2], Windows 3 - XP are a design philosophy of physical metaphors.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_3.1x#/media/File:Windo...
2: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Windows_2.x#/media/D...
Re: Light mode, Dark mode, and Gen-Z mode?
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
Experiences. One big one is that most Millennials were hit by 2008, while Gen Z wasn't, but at the time we believed what we were told that 2008 was an aberration and things would get back to normal. We were also raised in the "go to college and you'll be set for life" era, so we were given expectations that were then ripped away by rapid change. Gen Z didn't believe anything they were told to begin with, because whil…
Older Gen Z graduated into the pandemic, like millenials with '08
Yup, but unlike us, they had '08 before them to look at and go 'hmmmm.... I've seen this before'. (I was a '10 graduate).
We (Millennials) mostly believed what we were told, due to both not having experienced a shock like that before + having more limited information access. Gen Z has enough contrary evidence and ability to share things that they just took a Fast Pass for the cynicism line. And good for them, honestly.
Re: Light mode, Dark mode, and Gen-Z mode?
#144I hit partiful.com and found this after scrolling a bit: The Recyclable Camera Includes development, a prepaid mailer, & free shipping. Photos are sent straight to your phone, where you can upload them to your Partiful party page. Go ahead, make some memories (The specs: Premium Kodak 400 ISO 35mm film with 27 exposures.) Really? Everything old is young again!
lol, that's almost literally kodak business model from 1920's :-D
It really is the roaring 20s all over again!
Re: Light mode, Dark mode, and Gen-Z mode?
#145Design trends come and go. Minimalism is has probably already peaked, and typically when a trend peaks the next trend intentionally runs against it. The "gen-z" look reminds me of the early web when people thought that and were really exciting html elements. Those were noisy pages, but they had the feeling of an enthusiastic hobbyist scrapbook, and that was part of the appeal. "I could make something cool like that."…
> Design trends come and go.
True. Buy my training is in military, process control, and nuclear. In those context, I've never heard a project manager say "make it look like a game". Whereas in business apps, I have heard that many times.
Re: Light mode, Dark mode, and Gen-Z mode?
#146If we have to call it "Gen-Z" mode to get back some personality in software and interface design I'm all for it. I grew up with theme options on websites and software and desperately want it back. Windows Classic, Winamp, message boards with multiple theme options.
I'm so tired of every interface being just floating text on a white background with excessive whitespace. A border differentiating parts of an interface seems to terrify modern designers.
Re: Light mode, Dark mode, and Gen-Z mode?
#147At one point the entire web was fun and quirky, then myspace came along and everyone stopped making their own webpages opting instead to customize their profile in crazy ways, then facebook came along and only allowed rigid government like structure. Tumblr was a beacon of hope for a time, but then wild creativity moved to sanctioned playgrounds like minecraft, or to the personal web pages of highly skilled artists.
> then myspace came along and everyone stopped making their own webpages opting instead to customize their profile ... that's a weird re-writing of history. The vast majority of people on MySpace never made their own webpages, and MySpace wasn't the first "customize my profile hosted on someone's site", as LiveJournal, Xanga, and others came before it.
not the first but definitely the largest, probably by two orders of magnitude
Re: Light mode, Dark mode, and Gen-Z mode?
#148I remember the time when I first used and I jumped like a little kid. Fast forward a few years when I started designing for web as a career, and I was sad to see that nobody used in production. It turned out to be a toy. Heart broken. But I grew to love the minimalism design. Recently I started Youtubing and make designing thumbnails, minimal doesn't work. The demography 18 to 35 year old prefer something that quickl…
> [..] in production. It turned out to be a toy.
Screens were tiny low res, mice had no wheels and people where not used to scrolling. I don't think was originally intended as a toy, even though it was mostly used like one.
Re: Light mode, Dark mode, and Gen-Z mode?
#149> I'm a 33 year old straight male Completely off topic, but why do I need to know your sexuality? Seriously, can we stop doing this? It does not matter.
> I'm a 33 year old straight male and you could sum up my design sense as pretty "basic." Err— sorry, "cheugy."
It's a joke. Straight men are stereotypically less sensitive to fashion trends than women or gay men. He's using his age, gender, and orientation to make light of how baffling he finds the design preferences (and language) of other groups.
Re: Light mode, Dark mode, and Gen-Z mode?
#150Design trends come and go. Minimalism is has probably already peaked, and typically when a trend peaks the next trend intentionally runs against it. The "gen-z" look reminds me of the early web when people thought that and were really exciting html elements. Those were noisy pages, but they had the feeling of an enthusiastic hobbyist scrapbook, and that was part of the appeal. "I could make something cool like that."…
I really appreciate the design of Cruelty Squad (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1388770/Cruelty_Squad/), it's deliberately garish and ugly but it's also very endearing.