4 ms·

The USSR doesn't exist anymore, and this slur on Russians is a little disingenuous, they did, for example manage to get the first man and first woman into space

by dr42 14y ago

The USSR doesn't exist anymore, and this slur on Russians is a little disingenuous, they did, for example manage to get the first man and first woman into space before anyone else. Talented engineers don't only work at startups, most of the really interesting work isn't done by little companies, they just don't have the budgets to do much more than mashups of existing technology, it's big corps with deep pockets that do the really hard core CS.

DavidAdams 14y ago
Saying that something has a "Soviet" design aesthetic isn't a slur against Russia or Russians. Maybe it's an unfair characterization, but goods from the USSR era have a reputation for being utilitarian, and even "severe" in their design. In contrast with many contemporary consumer products, for example, which often stress form over function.
- dr42 14y ago
  that's just one point of view, there were also a lot of very cool Soviet era designs, like the Lomo camera, for example.
  - marshray 14y ago
    Sounds interesting. Link? The Soviet aesthetic can sometimes look retro-cool but you have to admit it's not much of a hit with Western consumers.
    - 286c8cb04bda 14y ago
      > Link? Go here: http://www.ussrphoto.com/Wiki/default.asp?ParentID=1 http://www.ussrphoto.com/Wiki/default.asp?ParentID=1 Check out the GOMZ/LOMO sections.
    - alrs 14y ago
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Kalashnikov http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Kalashnikov http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris
      - roel_v 14y ago
        The ak47 is ugly, but very functional, the exact point made above. Tetris is a concept, not an implementation, it can be made to look good or to look ugly, but that doesn't matter. Yes the Russians invented a bunch of stuff, that's not under discussion - the point was that socialism didn't put much of an emphasis on producing stuff that had an esthetically pleasing effect on people, to put it mildly. (to add to the examples I gave in another post - the Trabant. Come on, that thing is (compared to its contemporaries in the West) fugly.
  - gchpaco 14y ago
    The most successful Soviet camera designs were to one degree or another rip offs of stuff Zeiss was doing before the war; the LTM cameras in the FED and I think ZORKI series, the folder I have that is near on a dead copy with the opposite handedness of the current Zeiss folder in 1930 (speculation is that someone copied the blueprints upside down), the various Kievs. Almost all of these are very close, visually, to what Zeiss was doing before the war, which would make a lot of sense given what the Soviets did with Zeiss (viz. basically relocating everything they could and calling it "Kiev"; this operation is now known as Arsenal, I think, and did and still does do some high quality work). I suspect the reason why Soviet ergonomics doesn't come up more often in these discussions is because people who own Soviet cameras are usually so delighted to find one that e.g. had the flocking painted on the inside or has the right gears in or generally works that they will put up with the generally Brutalist visual styling. Which is not to say that they're not perfectly servicable cameras; other than being mirror-reversed that folder I have is one of the most sophisticated of its type ever made, with a coupled rangefinder, a coated (!) Tessar-type lens and different masks in case you were mad enough to want more than 8 shots to a roll of 120. But what design aesthetics are present are almost the same as 1930s Zeiss cameras with perhaps some corners cut for manufacturing.
  - roel_v 14y ago
    An anecdote does not data make. In general, 'Soviet' or 'communist' design is ugly, why do we need to sugar-coat it? Not just consumer electronics, but cars, architecture, ... For example 1990's East Berlin - come on, that place looked well ghetto (and it was, but it looked the part, too). Besides, it's not like the lomo is a beauty to look at, either. It gets its cult status from being niche and having a low barrier to entry, not from its good looks.
minimax 14y ago
> most of the really interesting work isn't done by little companies What a ridiculous thing to say. Remember Google when it was small? Two guys came up with better web search algorithms than all their deep-pocketed competition. Look at what Arista and Gnodal are doing in the LAN switching space. Hell, look at basically all of Cisco's new technology offerings for the past 10 years. They're all based on technology Cisco acquired via acquisitions of small companies. In aerospace look at Scaled Composites and SpaceX. New technology comes from small companies, not big ones.
- mjwalshe 14y ago
  AT&T cough Transistors cough BT and AT&T Ethernet cough
- epo 14y ago
  > New technology comes from small companies, not big ones. What a ridiculous thing to say, Some new technologies, of necessity, require deep pockets. E.g. pharmaceuticals, pretty much anything to do with semiconductors, aerospace, automotive engineering. Small companies are like teams within a large company, sometimes they get lucky and get bought out. Far more often, they don't.
rdtsc 14y ago
A Soviet design aesthetic, in my opinion (and I lived in and used products from that time), is a pathological design aesthetic in a planned economy where there is no functioning feedback loop from the consumer to the designer. It leads to un-appealing design, that consumers don't like. Products are bought simply because there is not alternative (say as a consumer, you really hate the spoons and forks they have at the store, but they only make one model, so you buy what they have or you don't have anything to eat with). Designers sort of work and train a vacuum. Products (and thus design decisions) never compete and never pass consumer acceptance and feedback. For example, I remember really funky looking cassette tape players, they were ugly and broke a lot. I remember TVs that looked crappy compared to the Western models. It isn't that they didn't work, they did, but their looks and the overall aesthetic was ugly. Cars (all 5 types of them) were ugly compared to Western cars. I suppose a designer got a job at one of the state owned factories. That factory was told to produce x number of widgets. The designer got to work, showed the prototype to some people in the bureaucratic chain of command, and then x widgets were made and put on the shelves. That designer probably never got to hear how much their work sucked. They just got another order and so it went on and on.

by dr42 14y ago

DavidAdams 14y ago

Saying that something has a "Soviet" design aesthetic isn't a slur against Russia or Russians. Maybe it's an unfair characterization, but goods from the USSR era have a reputation for being utilitarian, and even "severe" in their design. In contrast with many contemporary consumer products, for example, which often stress form over function.

dr42 14y ago
that's just one point of view, there were also a lot of very cool Soviet era designs, like the Lomo camera, for example.
- marshray 14y ago
  Sounds interesting. Link? The Soviet aesthetic can sometimes look retro-cool but you have to admit it's not much of a hit with Western consumers.
  - 286c8cb04bda 14y ago
    > Link? Go here: http://www.ussrphoto.com/Wiki/default.asp?ParentID=1 http://www.ussrphoto.com/Wiki/default.asp?ParentID=1 Check out the GOMZ/LOMO sections.
  - alrs 14y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Kalashnikov http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Kalashnikov http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris
    - roel_v 14y ago
      The ak47 is ugly, but very functional, the exact point made above. Tetris is a concept, not an implementation, it can be made to look good or to look ugly, but that doesn't matter. Yes the Russians invented a bunch of stuff, that's not under discussion - the point was that socialism didn't put much of an emphasis on producing stuff that had an esthetically pleasing effect on people, to put it mildly. (to add to the examples I gave in another post - the Trabant. Come on, that thing is (compared to its contemporaries in the West) fugly.
- gchpaco 14y ago
  The most successful Soviet camera designs were to one degree or another rip offs of stuff Zeiss was doing before the war; the LTM cameras in the FED and I think ZORKI series, the folder I have that is near on a dead copy with the opposite handedness of the current Zeiss folder in 1930 (speculation is that someone copied the blueprints upside down), the various Kievs. Almost all of these are very close, visually, to what Zeiss was doing before the war, which would make a lot of sense given what the Soviets did with Zeiss (viz. basically relocating everything they could and calling it "Kiev"; this operation is now known as Arsenal, I think, and did and still does do some high quality work). I suspect the reason why Soviet ergonomics doesn't come up more often in these discussions is because people who own Soviet cameras are usually so delighted to find one that e.g. had the flocking painted on the inside or has the right gears in or generally works that they will put up with the generally Brutalist visual styling. Which is not to say that they're not perfectly servicable cameras; other than being mirror-reversed that folder I have is one of the most sophisticated of its type ever made, with a coupled rangefinder, a coated (!) Tessar-type lens and different masks in case you were mad enough to want more than 8 shots to a roll of 120. But what design aesthetics are present are almost the same as 1930s Zeiss cameras with perhaps some corners cut for manufacturing.
- roel_v 14y ago
  An anecdote does not data make. In general, 'Soviet' or 'communist' design is ugly, why do we need to sugar-coat it? Not just consumer electronics, but cars, architecture, ... For example 1990's East Berlin - come on, that place looked well ghetto (and it was, but it looked the part, too). Besides, it's not like the lomo is a beauty to look at, either. It gets its cult status from being niche and having a low barrier to entry, not from its good looks.

minimax 14y ago

> most of the really interesting work isn't done by little companies What a ridiculous thing to say. Remember Google when it was small? Two guys came up with better web search algorithms than all their deep-pocketed competition. Look at what Arista and Gnodal are doing in the LAN switching space. Hell, look at basically all of Cisco's new technology offerings for the past 10 years. They're all based on technology Cisco acquired via acquisitions of small companies. In aerospace look at Scaled Composites and SpaceX. New technology comes from small companies, not big ones.

mjwalshe 14y ago
AT&T cough Transistors cough BT and AT&T Ethernet cough
epo 14y ago
> New technology comes from small companies, not big ones. What a ridiculous thing to say, Some new technologies, of necessity, require deep pockets. E.g. pharmaceuticals, pretty much anything to do with semiconductors, aerospace, automotive engineering. Small companies are like teams within a large company, sometimes they get lucky and get bought out. Far more often, they don't.

rdtsc 14y ago

A Soviet design aesthetic, in my opinion (and I lived in and used products from that time), is a pathological design aesthetic in a planned economy where there is no functioning feedback loop from the consumer to the designer. It leads to un-appealing design, that consumers don't like. Products are bought simply because there is not alternative (say as a consumer, you really hate the spoons and forks they have at the store, but they only make one model, so you buy what they have or you don't have anything to eat with). Designers sort of work and train a vacuum. Products (and thus design decisions) never compete and never pass consumer acceptance and feedback. For example, I remember really funky looking cassette tape players, they were ugly and broke a lot. I remember TVs that looked crappy compared to the Western models. It isn't that they didn't work, they did, but their looks and the overall aesthetic was ugly. Cars (all 5 types of them) were ugly compared to Western cars. I suppose a designer got a job at one of the state owned factories. That factory was told to produce x number of widgets. The designer got to work, showed the prototype to some people in the bureaucratic chain of command, and then x widgets were made and put on the shelves. That designer probably never got to hear how much their work sucked. They just got another order and so it went on and on.