3 ms·

I have a personal opinion about modern "design" that isn't shared by most designers or coders. You're welcome to disagree and vote me down but I just want to sa

I have a personal opinion about modern "design" that isn't shared by most designers or coders. You're welcome to disagree and vote me down but I just want to say this is just my opinion and I prefer to hear your disagreement in the form of a civil reply rather then an anonymous down-vote. First my opinion of modern design is that it is trivially easy. Modern design nowadays is simply about deciding how to layout text, colored polygons and pictures on a page. The next layer of complexity is temporal and around how the page transforms via interaction with it but this is also easy. This is largely because of the trends towards simplicity and minimalism which are very different from the complicated and ornate design styles of the past. I mean take a look at HN or even the google main page. Both are excellent designs. Clear, clean and informative and straightforward. But, also, those designs are extremely trivial. There's not much detail and there's not much work involved in creating these sites. It's simply a matter of moving certain premade primitives into the correct position. I mean take a look at the spacex website: https://www.spacex.com/ https://www.spacex.com/. Looks good right? But it's also just not much work. It's basically a slide show of background images with a link to the relevant page. It can get more complex then this when you design something like jira or gmail but ultimately even those UIs though more complex doesn't even near the complexity of programming. That's why I'm not surprised about people like the OP who are better at "design" then coding. Yeah it makes sense because design is waay easier then coding. On the other side of the equation I've seen powerful engineers say they can't "design" and I'm literally in disbelief. Are you saying you can't imagine something like the simplistic spaceX slideshow? I don't believe it. I think a lot of engineers are just under confident about their design skills and a lot of designers are over-confident about their own skills. At the same time I feel for the OP because front end technology has literally become over complicated over the past 2 decades. It's a mishmash of over-complexity welded together into legacy tech to make it hard for designers to be able to implement their designs. It doesn't have to be this way but that's an entirely different story.

paul7986 3y ago
Good design has always been easy and pertains to everything we touch/interact with..roads...websites..apps..showers..bathtubs..etc. Basically you design stuff the way it's expected ..you don't design road and road patterns that much differently or you will cause confusion and accidents. Same goes for web or app design..use and stick to design patterns everyone is familiar with. Design overall is easy I think if stick with all that in mind as well work hard to keep it so simple (k.I.s.s. Keep it simple stupid). If it's a new product and or experience you are designing you still use design patterns people are familiar with.
- Freire_Herval 3y ago
  Oh that's just part of it. The other part of design is the look and feel, or how attractive something is. It's a big part of it. Nowadays people find minimalist designs more attractive so it's not just UX, but even the aesthetics have been cut down to pure simplistic geometry. So to make things look good "aesthetically in terms of modern design" now requires very little talent.
atleastoptimal 3y ago
I've always thought this was the elephant in the room about design. Like yeah, you make the important text big, you put it at the top, you make a rectangle and you fiddle with the position of the rectangle, ooh those are nice looking colors, ok now maybe some borders and a drop down taskbar, etc.. Really it's not difficult at all. It's just a bunch of almost instinct based decisions that requires no specific skills, application of difficult principles beyond some very obvious, almost tautological truths (things people use more often should be more visible/accessible, the eye should not be strained/forced to move too much, etc.)
Jack000 3y ago
Actually I don't think most programmers are capable of designing something like spacex.com - every image on the site fits the minimalist theme (and there are hundreds). The photos are always dark in the appropriate areas so the text is readable, and they're dynamically cropped/resized with good positioning for all breakpoints. - the front page appears to be simple, but if you click through the site there are actually a ton of dynamic illustrations and charts like this: https://www.spacex.com/human-spaceflight/ https://www.spacex.com/human-spaceflight/ The key thing is that the aesthetic is executed consistently and with restraint. This video is a bit old now but it's as true now as it's ever been: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUXnJraKM3k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUXnJraKM3k Minimalism is the most difficult aesthetic to pull off, because it's easy for the end result to look unfinished, cheap or lazy. I think the problem is not that coders can't be designers, but that coders generally don't really care about design, and I say that as a coder. If you gave the spacex project to the average coder, you'll probably end up with something like sap.com or fortinet.com Web design has converged a lot in the last 20 years because people don't want to learn a new UI for every website they visit. This makes good web design harder, because now if you want to create something memorable and distinctive, you'll need to do it in spite of the navigation and functional parts looking identical to every other site.
- Freire_Herval 3y ago
  As a coder with zero design training I can design the SpaceX site and hit every point you mentioned. Every point you mentioned is trivial to meet imo.
  - Jack000 3y ago
    the point is that you have to want to in the first place. This is kind of like looking at “the flame” or some other modern art and saying “yeah that’s easy, I could have done that.” It’s missing the point entirely.
    - Freire_Herval 3y ago
      No it's not. It's the other way around. People are looking at something and not realizing how trivial it is. It's a sham. It's like the mother who secretly had her kid paint random shit then she started secretly selling the blobs of paint as modern art and showing that the entire industry was just empty snobbery. True story. Personally, I've looked at the divide and stepped over it and did it. My "designs" are on par with someone with "design" training. In fact my skills are often superior as i can produce graphics beyond what they use in flat design.

paul7986 3y ago

Good design has always been easy and pertains to everything we touch/interact with..roads...websites..apps..showers..bathtubs..etc. Basically you design stuff the way it's expected ..you don't design road and road patterns that much differently or you will cause confusion and accidents. Same goes for web or app design..use and stick to design patterns everyone is familiar with. Design overall is easy I think if stick with all that in mind as well work hard to keep it so simple (k.I.s.s. Keep it simple stupid). If it's a new product and or experience you are designing you still use design patterns people are familiar with.

Freire_Herval 3y ago
Oh that's just part of it. The other part of design is the look and feel, or how attractive something is. It's a big part of it. Nowadays people find minimalist designs more attractive so it's not just UX, but even the aesthetics have been cut down to pure simplistic geometry. So to make things look good "aesthetically in terms of modern design" now requires very little talent.

atleastoptimal 3y ago

I've always thought this was the elephant in the room about design. Like yeah, you make the important text big, you put it at the top, you make a rectangle and you fiddle with the position of the rectangle, ooh those are nice looking colors, ok now maybe some borders and a drop down taskbar, etc.. Really it's not difficult at all. It's just a bunch of almost instinct based decisions that requires no specific skills, application of difficult principles beyond some very obvious, almost tautological truths (things people use more often should be more visible/accessible, the eye should not be strained/forced to move too much, etc.)

Jack000 3y ago

Actually I don't think most programmers are capable of designing something like spacex.com - every image on the site fits the minimalist theme (and there are hundreds). The photos are always dark in the appropriate areas so the text is readable, and they're dynamically cropped/resized with good positioning for all breakpoints. - the front page appears to be simple, but if you click through the site there are actually a ton of dynamic illustrations and charts like this: https://www.spacex.com/human-spaceflight/ https://www.spacex.com/human-spaceflight/ The key thing is that the aesthetic is executed consistently and with restraint. This video is a bit old now but it's as true now as it's ever been: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUXnJraKM3k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUXnJraKM3k Minimalism is the most difficult aesthetic to pull off, because it's easy for the end result to look unfinished, cheap or lazy. I think the problem is not that coders can't be designers, but that coders generally don't really care about design, and I say that as a coder. If you gave the spacex project to the average coder, you'll probably end up with something like sap.com or fortinet.com Web design has converged a lot in the last 20 years because people don't want to learn a new UI for every website they visit. This makes good web design harder, because now if you want to create something memorable and distinctive, you'll need to do it in spite of the navigation and functional parts looking identical to every other site.

Freire_Herval 3y ago
As a coder with zero design training I can design the SpaceX site and hit every point you mentioned. Every point you mentioned is trivial to meet imo.
- Jack000 3y ago
  the point is that you have to want to in the first place. This is kind of like looking at “the flame” or some other modern art and saying “yeah that’s easy, I could have done that.” It’s missing the point entirely.
  - Freire_Herval 3y ago
    No it's not. It's the other way around. People are looking at something and not realizing how trivial it is. It's a sham. It's like the mother who secretly had her kid paint random shit then she started secretly selling the blobs of paint as modern art and showing that the entire industry was just empty snobbery. True story. Personally, I've looked at the divide and stepped over it and did it. My "designs" are on par with someone with "design" training. In fact my skills are often superior as i can produce graphics beyond what they use in flat design.