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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
by burlesona 5y ago
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 <blink> and <marquee> 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." That "artsy teenager's notebook" aesthetic is like the 90s web reborn in high def, this time with 40mb of javascript along for the ride.
- SamBam 5y agoAgree. 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.
- z3c0 5y agoI started out a little curmudgeonly about the style, but was won over by Persona 5: https://www.atlus.com/persona5/home.html 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.
- Mezzie 5y agoPersona 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.
- function_seven 5y agoAnd 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.
- Shorel 5y agoIt looks like a well-designed comic book.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- lowwave 5y agoyeah and get myspace back as well.
- karaterobot 5y agoI 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.
- __s 5y agoYeah, I recently made a portfolio site for a friend. Very minimalist: https://christinelopez.ca https://christinelopez.ca It's hand written. This was also an early web thing: no npm build pipeline. I feel a little bad not making the modal view fallback to image-is-a-link when JS is disabled (I also would've opted for no google fonts, but it ultimately isn't my site) Meanwhile another friend built a similar site: https://kaeillustrates.art https://kaeillustrates.art which may have more of that Gen-Z aesthetic (albeit we're millennials, so it doesn't go overboard) & is built on tailwind/react Hopefully minimalist-as-fashion design will go away & minimalist sites can return to being small memory/dependency footprint
- CobaltFire 5y agoI actually really that that site design! One note: can you tag that NSFW or somesuch? Even artistic nudity can be unwelcome and get people in trouble.
- wrycoder 5y agoSurprisingly, his site seemed to load faster for me.
- __s 5y agoThat's the thing. Computers have become so fast & bandwidth so wide that the bottleneck is primarily latency
- nyanpasu64 5y agohttps://heckscaper.com/plugins/ https://heckscaper.com/plugins/ and https://heckscaper.com/aminals/deuteronomy/ 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.
- bearbearbear 5y ago
- Zak 5y agoMy first thought when I saw the example designs was Geocities; my second was Myspace. Beyond design trends and generational preferences, the purpose of the app in question matters. A video speed dating app should probably have a more fun atmosphere than Hacker News, Wikipedia, or the Wifi settings panel.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- dylan604 5y agoIt also has the appearance of people using nothing but MS Paint as an image editor. Slap dash quickity fast. No need to wait for 10 minutes for PS to launch, this task will be completed before that.
- derefr 5y agoYou’re talking about “weirdcore”: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XpgddVUidq0 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XpgddVUidq0
- dylan604 5y agoI 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.
- derefr 5y agoIMHO, at least the abruptness of the cuts (trimming off all silence between clips) is intentional, part-and-parcel of the aesthetic being demonstrated. Weirdcore is abrupt. I don't know about the rest — might just be the video's author's style — but I have a feeling the high speaking speed is there because they're mostly reading a definition off of this article (https://aesthetics.fandom.com/wiki/Weirdcore https://aesthetics.fandom.com/wiki/Weirdcore), with no content editing to compress for time, but still a need to make the video feel like it's not "dragging on" for viewers who are impatiently waiting for visual examples. (The proper thing to do here would have been to do the content-editing of the script, of course.)
- dylan604 5y agoIf only it were this video
- formerly_proven 5y agoIt takes literal ages to edit videos in this style so while the end result may resemble h.264 encoded ADHD, the process does not.
- dylan604 5y agoLiteral 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.
- endymi0n 5y agoSpot on. This is just the anti-trend to minimalism, which again was the anti-trend to what I grew up with: https://www.cameronsworld.net/ https://www.cameronsworld.net/ (which was the anti-trend to the original, booooooring beginnings of hypertext) 'All grown-ups were once children... but only few of them remember it.' — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
- dntrkv 5y agoI think y’all are conflating two completely different things. There are “fun” sites where proper UX, information hierarchy, and general good design patterns take a backseat to some wild design (band websites for example). Then there are sites that focus on productivity which should have all the elements of good design. Craigslist is from the 90s, yet it doesn’t have sparkles and random shit scattered across the page. Everyone is reminiscing about the wild designs of the past. How many of those sites you visited were actual productivity focused sites vs now? You can’t compare Geocities to Jira…
- gotaquestion 5y agoBauhaus and Midcentury Modern have incredible staying power. There hasn't been this kind of movement yet in web design. I think it is because we still don't know how we use it yet.
- Finnucane 5y agoWe got Modernism because Beaux Arts and Art Deco were too much fun, and then the Germans were like, Nein! No more fun! Only grids!
- gotaquestion 5y agoHaha! But which would you rather clean: a living room done in Beaux Arts style, or one done in modernist style? Assuming you cannot afford a housekeeping staff, that is. :)
- Finnucane 5y agoMy own living room is done in 'jumble of whatever' style, so there's that.
- marcosdumay 5y agoIt comes and goes. It doesn't really stay.
- jamil7 5y ago> 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.
- api 5y agoEvery good idea gets unmoored from its original purpose and driven to absurdity. Look at agile, lean startup, etc.
- fmajid 5y agoI think hiding controls is driven by the limitations of phone screens, and mobile-first thinking leads to substandard desktop or tablet experiences.
- Sohcahtoa82 5y ago> mobile-first thinking leads to substandard desktop or tablet experiences. This IMO is what made Win8 so bad.
- l30n4da5 5y ago> The "gen-z" look reminds me of the early web when people thought that <blink> and <marquee> were really exciting html elements. Literally the thing that went through my mind when reading the article: "the 90s/early 00s design is coming back!" Time to start replacing the cursor with unicorns barfing rainbows (or nyan-cats, whatever you prefer!) and adding on-click confetti explosions to our web pages again. What an exciting time to be alive!
- fleddr 5y agoI'd add that design trends and taste are also regional. Minimalism isn't appreciated in some Asian countries. Their print, ads and web pages use every single inch/pixel to saturate it with the maximum amount of content, be they text or visuals. It even translates to physical products, as an example a laundry machine with 500 buttons and lots of blinking lights.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- jqcoffey 5y agoI for one, as a mid-life gen-x-er, can't wait to welcome our new gen-z design overlords if it means that we bring some visual variety back to computing.
- intrasight 5y ago> Design trends come and go. True. Buy my training is in military, process control, and nuclear. In those context, I've never heard a project manager say "make it look like a game". Whereas in business apps, I have heard that many times.
- hef19898 5y agoAnd that is a good thing, some applications, explicitly not apps, have to be made to work and function properly. Not to look good or fancy. Just wait until someone proposes to build a blinky-clicky UI on top of the serious stuff to make it easier for users. No joke, I have that problem at work right now...
- rhinoceraptor 5y agoI really appreciate the design of Cruelty Squad (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1388770/Cruelty_Squad/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1388770/Cruelty_Squad/), it's deliberately garish and ugly but it's also very endearing.
- munificent 5y ago> typically when a trend peaks the next trend intentionally runs against it. Humans naturally crave both novelty and familiarity and the tensions between those desires mean that aesthetics will always evolve and oscillate.