You know the worst part about flat design? Fucking “hamburger menu”. Fuck that shit.
The second worst part? “Text? Lol get real, old man!” Menus that don’t have text so I have to guess what the fucking icons mean on every different app/site.
Ditto on the no text part. That is an accessibility failure that’s way too widespread.
Sometimes I’m afraid to even push a button: does this delete my thing, or does it do some other irreversible change? Will I be able to tell what it did? Maybe it does something completely different, or maybe I’m lucky and it does in fact perform the action I’m looking for and which in my mind is a no-brainer to include?And it’s infected interpersonal communication too - people peppering their messages with emojis, even professional communications. It not only looks goofy, but is either redundant (when people just add the emoji together with the word it’s meant to represent - such a bizarre practice) or, worse, ambiguous when the pictogram replaces the word and the recipient(s) can’t make out what it depicts.
The most fun is when it’s a mix - the message contains some emojis with accompanying translation, some without.
2030s design:
Disappointing lack of chrome spray colour
Me, in my ivory tower: Man, bandages as an art style really seems to be trendy amongst the wastelanders. I wonder why?
This comment actually made that choice click in my head, I’d never asked why that was before and kinda assumed it was to help protect the internals of a machine you couldn’t fix from the environment but really it’s more likely to be so you always have some bandages on hand (however sanitary)
oh, I figured it was just the ideal binding material for broken parts (e.g. limbs, rifle butts) whilst providing comfort and stretch/tightness control.
I don’t share the hate for flat design.
It’s cleaner than the others, simpler and less distracting. Easier on the eyes, too. It takes itself seriously and does so successfully imo (nice try, aero). It feels professional in a way all the previous eras don’t - they seem almost child-like by comparison.Modern design cultivates recognizable interactions by following conventions and common design language instead of goofy icons and high contrast colors. To me, modern software interfaces look like tools; the further you go back in time, the more they look like toys.
Old designs can be charming if executed well and in the right context. But I’m glad most things don’t look like they did 30 years ago.
I’m guessing many people associate older designs with the era they belonged to and the internet culture at the time. Perhaps rosy memories of younger days. Contrasting that with the overbearing corporate atmosphere of today and a general sense of a lack of authenticity in digital spaces everywhere, it’s not unreasonable to see flat design as sterile and soulless. But to me it just looks sleek and efficient.
I used to spend hours trying to customize UIs to my liking, nowadays pretty much everything just looks good out of the box.The one major gripe I have is with the tendency of modern designs to hide interactions behind deeply nested menu hopping. That one feels like an over-correction from the excessively cluttered menus of the past.
That and the fact that there’s way too many “settings” sections and you can never figure out which one has the thing you’re looking for.P S. The picture did flat design dirty by putting it on white background - we’re living in the era of dark mode!
Judging by the comments I think I must be alone in loathing the Frutiger Aero style of design, both now and at the time. So self-conscious, so fake-looking, so plasticky.
Much prefer the clean lines and flat colours of nowadays (although that’s not to say there aren’t issues - eg Google’s stupid icon design policies in the last few years)
Far and away the 90s and it’s not even close. We had the internet but it wasn’t stalking us. We had cell phones but your parents couldn’t drop a tracker app on it to see if you were actually at Doug’s house. Gas was cheap. Airports were better, flying was better, fewer people, god I miss the 90s.
I think they’re talking about the designs, not the whole decade.
Boy did I miss that by a mile.
Yeah but you’re right.
You’re still right. You forgot just deciding to rent a place out downtown with your girlfriend on a whim. How life is supposed to be.
Flat design is clinical depression in graphical form, a reflection of the contemporary existential/mental health crisis. It’s a societal cry for help, basically.
I’m biased towards Y2K from the nostalgia, since those were the prime years of my childhood right before my teenage years kicked in.
But, I love the design of that time because of how obsessed with futurism everything was. It took the future chic look of the mid-late '60s and revamped it, taking that hype for the future- with the Space Race- bringing it back, and updating it for the Information Age.
It felt like we, as a society, had so much optimism for the world that was to come. So, if anything, I think that’s what I’m mostly nostalgic for. I was so excited to grow up in that world. Damn.
It felt like we, as a society, had so much optimism for the world that was to come. So, if anything, I think that’s what I’m mostly nostalgic for. I was so excited to grow up in that world. Damn.
As with anything regarding the past, there’s a lot of rose-tinted glasses going on. Be careful what you wish for
I would also argue we lived in a pre-9/11 world.
It us shocking how much the world changed in response for the sake of security and safety, and I know it’s a controversial take but the terrorists succeed in changing the world to their image.
Before: wow, this new thing is literally 4 times faster with a fuckload of features.
After : wow, this new thing allows 800 companies, fifty countries and 2 superpowers to spy on me at the same time and has 4 times the bloatware!
And all the alternatives do the same thing!
