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The age of average

alexmurrell.co.uk

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Re: The age of average

#161

Post by hgsgm »

Last5Digits wrote: post #135

I'm always wary of articles like this. The feeling of things becoming mediocre strongly resonates with me, but I am aware that there could be a great many different biases at play. When I was younger, entertainment media felt magical. The complexity and depth of experiences I could get from even a second-rate story was immense. I remember staying up late at night to process the last movie I watched, or feeling that r…

> is it because I've lived long enough to see the simple patterns underlying most of our desires and fantasies?

Yes. And also, ironically because as you get older novelty is less important, so new stuff is boring regardless of whether is differ or same.

In every generation kids have loved the new generation of Star Wars, despite us adults knowing that the best one was the one we say when we were kids.

Re: The age of average

#162

Post by atoav »

crazygringo wrote: post #123

What the article describes is correct, but I don't think the words "average" or "homogeneity" or "conformity" are the right terms, as they seem to carry negative connotations here. Rather, the right word is "convergence". The point is, people like certain things aesthetically. It used to be that artists and designers were still trying to figure out what looks good, and trying all the things. But now we've tried so ma…

Convergence is an interesting term, but in my eyes (as someone who both has worked as web and product designer) the reason it happens is not sales, but because looking the same as everyone else has some benefits:

- you can rely on existing/known design methodology and tools which takes less time and is cheaper to deliver results in

- it is the safe choice. The times were some manager would admit they have no idea about design and let designers do their job is a thing of the past. So they instead tell designers to do what $marketleader is doing. They use bootstrap? So do we now!

- this homogeneity has advantages as people know how certain buttons/controls look, but that middle-ground usability will not translate well to every application, because not every application is meant for that kind of middle ground usage. That is why industrial tools used 24/7 have different designs than a tool meant for people to be used once a year. The latter needs to priorize being self-explainatory above everything else, the former needs to priorize other things like productivity, covering special use cases, durability, reliability etc. If you used the UX principle of the latter on the former you end up with something that looks okay or simple to use, but is actively torture to use 24/7.

So me pet peeve with this kind of design is that some designers think it is the right hammer to squash every problem with (with the incentives laid out above), and that leads to suffering for users.

There is a reason why you and me are currently writing on this platform, and part of it is it's non-comforming design that isn't sleek or anything, but it serves the purpose better than any typical design would — because this site is not meant to be just that.

Re: The age of average

#163

Post by PaulHoule »

dclowd9901 wrote: post #150
bumby wrote: post #139

Earlier 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,…

I’d argue that convergence _is_ soulless-ness and cars present a great example of the point. The “soul” of something that is inanimate is the qualities that make it memorable or stick it in our mind with some manner of tactility. Not literal tactility but the nature of how you can visualize something so clearly it’s almost like you can touch it in your mind. I’m getting a bit spacey here but let’s get concrete: Jerem…

I think of Nader’s Unsafe at any speed which pointed out how numerous stylistic features in old cars were dangerous: for instance you could get spiked by a hood ornament, slashed by tail fins, etc.

People tend to think of cars as an old technology but cars are under intense regulatory (and commercial, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insurance_Institute_for_Highwa...) pressure on issues like safety, emissions, noise, and fuel economy. A narrowbody airliner today can be based on a 1967 design with almost-state-of-the-art engines and nowhere-near-state-of-the-art avionics and control systems but there is no room on our roads for a new car based on a 1967 design.

With all of the requirements acting on cars it is little wonder that looks go by the wayside.

Re: The age of average

#164

Post by yamtaddle »

qwertfisch wrote: post #76

Most comments lean onto the unscientific results about fashion and design, which follows fashion. But the article also displays one categorie that should be independent of fashion and solely rely on creativity: media. This chapter proves the premise with statistics about film grossing and the increasing unoriginality that influences movie plots. When I was a teenager or years 20 to 30, I went to the cinema up to a do…

> But also at home I got the feeling there were less interesting movies.

I manage maybe 30-35 new movies per year (and usually pick up a few more from that year by about two years out from its end) and I'd say a solid 80% don't suck, and about half are pretty damn good. Usually there are another ten or so that I know about and wanted to watch but never get to, and there are surely a bunch more good ones that I miss entirely. 2021 was a bit of an exception because Covid fucked with productions quite a bit and made the movie scene that year kinda weird (though there were several really good small-cast-small-crew films released that year!) but otherwise, consistently, there are roughly mid-tens of good movies released every year, not even counting local indie scene stuff.

Now, assessing it this way does require 1) looking at more than just what's heavily advertised, and 2) having pretty broad taste in genres and being willing to meet a movie where it is, and at least having the capacity to enjoy what it's trying to do assuming it pulls it off reasonably well—me, I'd say Beyond the Black Rainbow and Guardians of the Galaxy and One Cut of the Dead and Logan Lucky are all good movies, so... I'm capable of enjoying most genres and both "high" and "low" art, so the set of films that I might like is pretty large, which helps a lot.

Re: The age of average

#165

Post by ryandrake »

lvoudour wrote: post #60
fwlr wrote: post #27

The styles that the author reviews are real trends in their market (except the paintings, which seems like an intentional publicity stunt on the part of the artists rather than a genuine trend, and it harms the piece by being the introduction - gets everything off on the wrong foot), though not as all-consuming as they are made out to be. The author then identifies a commonality between these trends, that they are al…

One can make parallels to other eras, sure, but the current convergence to an "average" is unprecedented in scale and speed. Various eras had a distinctive style that everything revolved around, but at least there was variety (cultural and corporate). Nowadays I can't shake off this weird feeling of sameness emanating from every design. I can hardly distinguish brands any more, I can't tell cultures apart and that's…

Music is another example, which the article didn't go into, probably because it's not visual like his other examples. When I say [USA] '60s music, '70s music, '80s music and so on, you kind of know what I'm talking about. Sure, each decade had its outliers and variety, but you can probably immediately hear in your head the decade-stereotype sound I'm talking about. Each decade had that distinct fashion that the culture adopted and became known for. What is 2010's music? I have no idea. It's homogenized nothing. It's a shapeless average song, workshopped and focus-grouped to appeal to some nonexistent "Global ISO Standard Person." It's defining characteristic is its total absence of distinctiveness.

Re: The age of average

#166

Post by AlbertCory »

According to [1] 53% of Americans are fans of Taylor Swift. Does that mean we've "converged" on Taylor Swift as the optimal musician?

No, it means you just have to work harder to find music with actual creativity behind it.

[1] https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/majority-ameri...

Re: The age of average

#167

Post by bmicraft »

slindsey wrote: post #5

Part of the problem within this article is the choice of pictures. The first section states, “In nearly every country all people really wanted was a landscape with a few figures around, animals in the foreground, mainly blue.” They then present 9 pictures that reinforce the concept that people all around the world expect the _same_ thing. But that's simply not true. They didn't take that description and give it to ar…

To add to that, the author completely ignores the fact that the differences from one person to the next might be much more significant than averaged differences inherited from their country's culture.

Re: The age of average

#169

Post by mpsprd »

crazygringo wrote: post #123

What the article describes is correct, but I don't think the words "average" or "homogeneity" or "conformity" are the right terms, as they seem to carry negative connotations here. Rather, the right word is "convergence". The point is, people like certain things aesthetically. It used to be that artists and designers were still trying to figure out what looks good, and trying all the things. But now we've tried so ma…

The issue for me is how marketing keeps selling the opposite. The way homogeneous things are constantly sold as a unique way to express your difference (go watch any car ad or any new condo poster) creates that dystopian feel.

Its real life satire at this point.

Re: The age of average

#170

Post by bmicraft »

sparsely wrote: post #10
helloplanets wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. This article is a good example of how to not do science. Not a single counterexample is provided from another decade. Not to even talk about actually trying to prove the same point for the 50's etc, with pictures. > Before long, the designer had stumbled on the perfect research tool: AirBnB. From the comfort of her home the app gave her a window into thousands of others. She could travel the world, and view hund…

It's indeed unsurprising that if you look at the designs produced to match a specific context (AirBnB) you'll get a good amount of uniformity, as sellers converge on efficient solutions. If you looked in other contexts (high end apartments for sale in major city, cheap new builds in small towns, mass produced single family homes in another country) you might end up finding more differences.

Especially when many AirBnBs are also interested in international customers
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