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Light mode, Dark mode, and Gen-Z mode?

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Re: Light mode, Dark mode, and Gen-Z mode?

#51

Post by lowwave »

SamBam wrote: post #23
burlesona wrote: post #21

Design 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."…

Agree. I feel like I've heard so many comments recently that the web looks so boring, and people miss the old fun of the early web. And people who miss the web of the 90s and early Oughts are by definition not Gen Z... I'm excited for a bit of bang and pop and messiness and individuality to come back. With it, I hope for return of websites. You can't display individuality on an endless scrolling feed of social media.

yeah and get myspace back as well.

Re: Light mode, Dark mode, and Gen-Z mode?

#52

Post by karaterobot »

SamBam wrote: post #23
burlesona wrote: post #21

Design 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."…

Agree. I feel like I've heard so many comments recently that the web looks so boring, and people miss the old fun of the early web. And people who miss the web of the 90s and early Oughts are by definition not Gen Z... I'm excited for a bit of bang and pop and messiness and individuality to come back. With it, I hope for return of websites. You can't display individuality on an endless scrolling feed of social media.

I haven't heard nearly as many people wanting a return to maximalist 90s web design. People miss the time when a website wasn't a 3 megabyte download, and didn't pop up a newsletter signup form. They don't (as often) miss the web pages with 100 animated gifs on them, an over the top tiled background, blinking text, and so on.

Many more people want the minimalism of a page that gets out of the way and shows you the content you came for, which was (if you like) 90s web design minimalism. That's the motivation all this gopher revival/gemini protocol stuff is about, at least from a design perspective.

I'm just trying to say there were different strains of "90s web design" which are not compatible with each other.

Re: Light mode, Dark mode, and Gen-Z mode?

#53

Post by doix »

hammock wrote: post #11

I first noticed this "Gen-Z" mode trend when I played Mario Kart on Wii. Compared to N64 or SNES, the screen was so busy. I honestly had a hard time keeping track of where my player was and where the "track" was compared to all the colorful fast-moving background cruft. I'm not a gamer so maybe I'm just not used to it. Fortnite seems like another example of how "Gen-Z" and headachy a digital environment can be. For s…

Competitive gamers agree with you and have been trying to increase visual clarity for a long time. I remember finding out about picmip back in quake3 and never looking back [0]. In AoE2 there was a mod called 'pussywood' that made the trees smaller so you could see things. People then also started putting borders around tiles and cutting buildings so they didn't block what was behind them [1]. In SC2 some weird settings made invisible units more visible, I think you set everything ultra-low apart from shadows or something. There are hundreds of other examples, if you watch any competitive gamer stream, their game will look different to the default experience you'd get if you installed the game yourself (unless it's a tournament stream, they'll turn all the settings up to max for that 'gen-z' factor).

The problem nowadays is that companies are incentivized to reduce visual clarity by selling super flashy rainbow skins(doesn't apply to Mario Kart, applies to Fortnite).

[0] https://twitter.com/cabbagebrains/status/1246155602625064961

[1] https://imgur.com/hqRkLh2

Re: Light mode, Dark mode, and Gen-Z mode?

#54

Post by function_seven »

Mezzie wrote: post #39
z3c0 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I started out a little curmudgeonly about the style, but was won over by Persona 5: https://www.atlus.com/persona5/home.html It's messy, chaotic, and feels like something from the late 90's/early 00's, where you'd often see custom web pages using formatted images as elements of the page. But I love it. I can't quite make sense of it, as I adhere pretty strongly to brutalism/minimalism when designing my own content.

Persona 5 did really well with balancing their line work and colors. The colors are very bold and in your face, but so is some of the strategically placed line work, so you can still visually differentiate everything.

And there’s still a design language underpinning the site. It’s chaotic and loud and whatever, but the elements are consistent.

It’s not random. Still has a theme and a palette. I like it as well.

Re: Light mode, Dark mode, and Gen-Z mode?

#55

Post by formerly_proven »

dylan604 wrote: post #44
derefr wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re talking about “weirdcore”: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XpgddVUidq0

I blame Ritalin for this type of video, either someone took too much or needs to up their dosage. Visual graphix aside, it's just exhausting to listen to. Dude, take a breath, or at least allow your viewers to take one. Had to double check I didn't leave my YT player in faster than normal playback speed.

It takes literal ages to edit videos in this style so while the end result may resemble h.264 encoded ADHD, the process does not.

Re: Light mode, Dark mode, and Gen-Z mode?

#56

Post by Mezzie »

AJRF wrote: post #7

I find this weird but i've always sort of resented generations (Boomer, GenX, etc) that aren't mine (Millenial) but Gen Z is the first one i've really liked. I find the general Gen Z humour to be very funny. I love their mercurial embrace of trends and tearing down of sacred cows. The way they approach work/life balance, call out stupid cultural norms. Their attitude and acceptance of people not like themselves. By t…

I'm firmly a Millennial but I relate a lot more to Gen Z because our childhoods/formative experiences had a lot more in common. (For example, I got online when I was 4 and was allowed free rein, very similar to a lot of Gen Z/"iPad kids", but that's a pretty rare experience in my age group [33]). Our worldviews are more aligned as well: Things that people thought were insane when I said them 10-20 years ago are now mainstream. I feel like I have backup for the first time in my life.

I adore Gen Z.

Re: Light mode, Dark mode, and Gen-Z mode?

#57

Post by jamil7 »

burlesona wrote: post #21

Design 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."…

> Minimalism is has probably already peaked

I hope so, I thought that the original intent of it was anchored in a functional way of designing UIs. Now it seems to have been taken to absurd levels where important controls are hidden behind modals, dropdown, hover states, popovers etc. instead of just being visible and available when you want to use them. I really don't understand this but have given up pushing back on it.

Re: Light mode, Dark mode, and Gen-Z mode?

#58

Post by dylan604 »

formerly_proven wrote: post #55
dylan604 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I blame Ritalin for this type of video, either someone took too much or needs to up their dosage. Visual graphix aside, it's just exhausting to listen to. Dude, take a breath, or at least allow your viewers to take one. Had to double check I didn't leave my YT player in faster than normal playback speed.

It takes literal ages to edit videos in this style so while the end result may resemble h.264 encoded ADHD, the process does not.

Literal ages is such a random gen-z way of describing this!

I'm literally a video editor/motion graphics person, so no, this doesn't take "literal ages" to edit.

Re: Light mode, Dark mode, and Gen-Z mode?

#59

Post by nyanpasu64 »

SamBam wrote: post #23
burlesona wrote: post #21

Design 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."…

Agree. I feel like I've heard so many comments recently that the web looks so boring, and people miss the old fun of the early web. And people who miss the web of the 90s and early Oughts are by definition not Gen Z... I'm excited for a bit of bang and pop and messiness and individuality to come back. With it, I hope for return of websites. You can't display individuality on an endless scrolling feed of social media.

https://heckscaper.com/plugins/ and https://heckscaper.com/aminals/deuteronomy/ (warning: semi-NSFW) is a powerful aesthetic of loud colorful idiosyncratic individuality, which makes any of the websites or software I've tried building pale in comparison.
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