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You can disagree with the design you prefer, but there are design fundamentals that are non-negotiable. The minimal "spartan" design of Sourcehut probably work
by leerob 6y ago
You can disagree with the design you prefer, but there are design fundamentals that are non-negotiable.
The minimal "spartan" design of Sourcehut probably works great for their audience. The same design approach would not work for Stripe.
- bsaul 6y agosourcehut isn't minimalist, it's plainly disfunctional. The homepage is basically a book you have to read from top to bottom, without any content structure your eyes can hook up to to correctly extract important information. Hacker news is what i'd call minimalist, but your eyes can immediately identify the various content blocs and functions.
- ivanfon 6y ago> The homepage is basically a book you have to read from top to bottom, without any content structure your eyes can hook up to to correctly extract important information. Are you talking about this page? https://sourcehut.org/ https://sourcehut.org/ It seems like the opposite to me, each feature has a big heading that you can quickly read to get an overview of all the features, with smaller, more detailed descriptions below.
- geori 6y agoThe information hierarchy is unclear because they did not use best practices in design. As the other commenters said, you have to read it like a book. A better site would have larger, bold headings with darker text than the body text. There would be more padding between the sections. There would be a jumbotron at the top that identifies the top 1-3 reasons for me to use this site, so I can understand in 5 seconds if I want this service and don't have to spend 3 minutes reading the entire text.
- jckzlg 6y agoThere's some pretty low-hanging fruit on sourcehut's landing page (like vertical spacing) but it really does take 5 seconds to learn why to use sourcehut. It's right at the top with a bold header that says "welcome to sourcehut" and a literal bullet list of reasons.
- bsaul 6y agoi had to read your comment to understand that banner wasn't the user registration banner. Because of the huge input fields on the right, and the same gray background, i had the feeling this whole section was popin in for user registration. This is an example of a total misunderstanding of one of the most basic graphical design principle : you don't group together information that is not related.
- arcturus17 6y agoThe lack of any vertical rhythm or spacing, at least in mobile, is atrocious.
- msla 6y ago> You can disagree with the design you prefer, but there are design fundamentals that are non-negotiable. And what those fundamentals are changes with the fashions of the era. For example, frames were once good design, and proper. Image maps were once good design, and proper. Both of those things are forgotten now.
- ratww 6y agoFrames and image maps were technical implementation details, not design choices. It was possible to do both bad and good design with them.
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 6y agoDon't forget cultures. The designers, it seems, haven't told all countries what they should and shouldn't like.
- msla 6y ago> but there are design fundamentals that are non-negotiable. Only within a given culture, and only within a given span of time. Unless designers think that some cultures are wrong, of course.