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This is fantastic! Very useful to get a concept into the browser and hopefully minimize clients focusing on visual design preferences too early in the process.

by spking 8y ago

jedberg 8y ago
I hadn't thought of this, but this is an excellent point! You can use this to make a functional mockup for a client/boss/whomever, and by using these they will completely ignore all styling and focus on the functionality. Heck, I'm even thinking of using it now when we launch a beta, to get the users to focus on the functionality instead of the design. My only fear is that they will want to keep the design!
- DougWebb 8y ago
  I've tried that, years ago, using a similar rough-draft kind of mockup engine. I still got comments on the styling, and comments along the lines of "this doesn't look finished enough for review".
- pc86 8y ago
  This is why I purchased Balsamiq when I was contracting, even the basic Bootstrap theme, even with bold text saying "ignore everything design related!!" I'd still get comments about button shapes, colors, complaints about shadows and graphics, etc. Even with more "theme" stuff in a Balsamiq mockup like colors and images clients were able to focus much more on content, layout, and information architecture than design.
DonHopkins 8y ago
We did that with The Sims. The programmers would sketch up stuff in Microsoft Paint as ugly as possible, to make it clear that it was just placeholder art: https://i.imgur.com/4yh7Bqt.jpg https://i.imgur.com/4yh7Bqt.jpg https://i.imgur.com/oMbtAL3.jpg https://i.imgur.com/oMbtAL3.jpg Q: Were these screenshots taken when you were working at EA/Maxis? A: Yes, these have placeholder "programmer art" that looks really shitty on purpose, so nobody mistakes them for final artwork! Q: I thought as much; also noticed the 'Live' 'Buy' and 'Build' mode placeholder text on the UI ;) It's harder to make ugly stuff in 3dsmax, so we had to make it inexplicable instead. Things tended to get weird when we were doing things like testing the 3D sprite exporter animations. I am at a loss to explain this, other than it's an experiment in post-transmogrification texture mapping... https://i.imgur.com/gmLNaBu.jpg https://i.imgur.com/gmLNaBu.jpg You could place "spores" on the ground that would grow into big Mona Lisa Mushrooms! Before that, I also used the same "programmer art" approach for some demos I made at Kaleida, when I didn't have an art department at my disposal to do my bidding, but knew just enough Photoshop and Director to be a danger to myself and others. (Some of it literally looked like shit and smelled like stinky cheese that made people scream!) https://medium.com/@donhopkins/1995-apple-world-wide-developers-conference-kaleida-labs-scriptx-demo-64271dd65570 https://medium.com/@donhopkins/1995-apple-world-wide-develop... >To make any sense of this, you should realize that it’s live improvisational performance programming art. The graphical and audio artwork are just ugly placeholder “programmer art”. The references to “great content” are laughably ironic! >I didn’t have an art department at my disposal, and I have terrible graphics design skills, but I didn’t let that stop me, because that wasn’t the point! >The art is in how it works and what it does and how I use it, not how it looks or sounds. >It was meant to inspire ScriptX developers as well as myself, and it led to me to later develop iLoci and MediaGraph.
- matt_the_bass 8y ago
  Cool story. At my company we use an aweful puke pink color for all our “non designed” graphics. This solves: 1. Clearly not the intended final design 2. Let’s us quickly see issues with our theming infrastructure.
  - DonHopkins 8y ago
    The default color of TCL/Tk 3.6 and earlier used to be "Bisque", or #FFE4C4. "Bisque is a smooth, creamy, highly seasoned soup of French origin, classically based on a strained broth (coulis) of crustaceans. It can be made from lobster, langoustine, crab, shrimp or crayfish." https://nikit.tcl-lang.org/page/bisque https://nikit.tcl-lang.org/page/bisque >"X11 bisque - also known as 'Ousterhout beige' - was for a long time the default color of Tk GUI's." https://www.tcl.tk/man/tcl/TkCmd/palette.htm https://www.tcl.tk/man/tcl/TkCmd/palette.htm >The procedure tk_bisque is provided for backward compatibility: it restores the application's colors to the light brown (“bisque”) color scheme used in Tk 3.6 and earlier versions. TCL/Tk even provides a convenient built-in procedure "tk_bisque" to reset the application's color to the Bisque color scheme, which was documented with this warning: https://nikit.tcl-lang.org/page/tk_bisque https://nikit.tcl-lang.org/page/tk_bisque >You probably don't want to use this command in a modern application. Or anything written in the last couple of decades. You should NEVER ship a TCL/Tk application without changing the default color from Bisque. But apparently some people thought it was quite beautiful! Bisque is Beautiful: Tcl/Tk at Lick Observatory: http://www.ucolick.org/~de/Tcl/Source/ http://www.ucolick.org/~de/Tcl/Source/ But actually, Bisque is located smack dab at the light end of the normal baby diarrhea gamut. https://www.unitypoint.org/blankchildrens/article.aspx?id=40567710-74c7-4ef2-a040-847be9fbd35a https://www.unitypoint.org/blankchildrens/article.aspx?id=40... >6. Orange, Yellow and Brown Baby Poop: Baby poop that is orange, yellow or brown in color is completely normal in breastfed and bottle fed babies.

This is fantastic! Very useful to get a concept into the browser and hopefully minimize clients focusing on visual design preferences too early in the process.

by spking 8y ago

This is fantastic! Very useful to get a concept into the browser and hopefully minimize clients focusing on visual design preferences too early in the process.

jedberg 8y ago

I hadn't thought of this, but this is an excellent point! You can use this to make a functional mockup for a client/boss/whomever, and by using these they will completely ignore all styling and focus on the functionality. Heck, I'm even thinking of using it now when we launch a beta, to get the users to focus on the functionality instead of the design. My only fear is that they will want to keep the design!

DougWebb 8y ago
I've tried that, years ago, using a similar rough-draft kind of mockup engine. I still got comments on the styling, and comments along the lines of "this doesn't look finished enough for review".
pc86 8y ago
This is why I purchased Balsamiq when I was contracting, even the basic Bootstrap theme, even with bold text saying "ignore everything design related!!" I'd still get comments about button shapes, colors, complaints about shadows and graphics, etc. Even with more "theme" stuff in a Balsamiq mockup like colors and images clients were able to focus much more on content, layout, and information architecture than design.

DonHopkins 8y ago

We did that with The Sims. The programmers would sketch up stuff in Microsoft Paint as ugly as possible, to make it clear that it was just placeholder art: https://i.imgur.com/4yh7Bqt.jpg https://i.imgur.com/4yh7Bqt.jpg https://i.imgur.com/oMbtAL3.jpg https://i.imgur.com/oMbtAL3.jpg Q: Were these screenshots taken when you were working at EA/Maxis? A: Yes, these have placeholder "programmer art" that looks really shitty on purpose, so nobody mistakes them for final artwork! Q: I thought as much; also noticed the 'Live' 'Buy' and 'Build' mode placeholder text on the UI ;) It's harder to make ugly stuff in 3dsmax, so we had to make it inexplicable instead. Things tended to get weird when we were doing things like testing the 3D sprite exporter animations. I am at a loss to explain this, other than it's an experiment in post-transmogrification texture mapping... https://i.imgur.com/gmLNaBu.jpg https://i.imgur.com/gmLNaBu.jpg You could place "spores" on the ground that would grow into big Mona Lisa Mushrooms! Before that, I also used the same "programmer art" approach for some demos I made at Kaleida, when I didn't have an art department at my disposal to do my bidding, but knew just enough Photoshop and Director to be a danger to myself and others. (Some of it literally looked like shit and smelled like stinky cheese that made people scream!) https://medium.com/@donhopkins/1995-apple-world-wide-developers-conference-kaleida-labs-scriptx-demo-64271dd65570 https://medium.com/@donhopkins/1995-apple-world-wide-develop... >To make any sense of this, you should realize that it’s live improvisational performance programming art. The graphical and audio artwork are just ugly placeholder “programmer art”. The references to “great content” are laughably ironic! >I didn’t have an art department at my disposal, and I have terrible graphics design skills, but I didn’t let that stop me, because that wasn’t the point! >The art is in how it works and what it does and how I use it, not how it looks or sounds. >It was meant to inspire ScriptX developers as well as myself, and it led to me to later develop iLoci and MediaGraph.

matt_the_bass 8y ago
Cool story. At my company we use an aweful puke pink color for all our “non designed” graphics. This solves: 1. Clearly not the intended final design 2. Let’s us quickly see issues with our theming infrastructure.
- DonHopkins 8y ago
  The default color of TCL/Tk 3.6 and earlier used to be "Bisque", or #FFE4C4. "Bisque is a smooth, creamy, highly seasoned soup of French origin, classically based on a strained broth (coulis) of crustaceans. It can be made from lobster, langoustine, crab, shrimp or crayfish." https://nikit.tcl-lang.org/page/bisque https://nikit.tcl-lang.org/page/bisque >"X11 bisque - also known as 'Ousterhout beige' - was for a long time the default color of Tk GUI's." https://www.tcl.tk/man/tcl/TkCmd/palette.htm https://www.tcl.tk/man/tcl/TkCmd/palette.htm >The procedure tk_bisque is provided for backward compatibility: it restores the application's colors to the light brown (“bisque”) color scheme used in Tk 3.6 and earlier versions. TCL/Tk even provides a convenient built-in procedure "tk_bisque" to reset the application's color to the Bisque color scheme, which was documented with this warning: https://nikit.tcl-lang.org/page/tk_bisque https://nikit.tcl-lang.org/page/tk_bisque >You probably don't want to use this command in a modern application. Or anything written in the last couple of decades. You should NEVER ship a TCL/Tk application without changing the default color from Bisque. But apparently some people thought it was quite beautiful! Bisque is Beautiful: Tcl/Tk at Lick Observatory: http://www.ucolick.org/~de/Tcl/Source/ http://www.ucolick.org/~de/Tcl/Source/ But actually, Bisque is located smack dab at the light end of the normal baby diarrhea gamut. https://www.unitypoint.org/blankchildrens/article.aspx?id=40567710-74c7-4ef2-a040-847be9fbd35a https://www.unitypoint.org/blankchildrens/article.aspx?id=40... >6. Orange, Yellow and Brown Baby Poop: Baby poop that is orange, yellow or brown in color is completely normal in breastfed and bottle fed babies.