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Not a new thought but it always surprises me how much groupthink applies in these situations. Airbnb announced a new design and we’ve all just collectively acce

Not a new thought but it always surprises me how much groupthink applies in these situations. Airbnb announced a new design and we’ve all just collectively accepted that it’s the future? …what? I don’t hate the trend but I am underwhelmed. Just loaded up the Airbnb site and… it’s new icons. The actual UI I’m interacting with hasn’t changed a jot, though. Google’s Material UI stuff from a few days ago felt much more interesting.

hoseyor 1y ago
I also get this weird sense that besides seemingly just having changed 4 icons, as far as I can tell, it really feels like they’re just dusting off three dimensional icons that existed back in around about the early aughts ? I’m not convinced either.
- sixQuarks 1y ago
  It’s so stupid. I get the emperor has no clothes vibe from all of this
  - MichaelZuo 1y ago
    Your just noticing? Most of the stuff on HN isn’t exactly written by super geniuses, especially for blog posts without some kind of analysis.
    - valianteffort 1y ago
      This post was more about some midwit trying to coin a phrase than a breakdown of future design patterns one could entertain. Clout chasing nonsense.
  - boxed 1y ago
    Which emperor though? Flat design or 3d design? I do agree with the article that before the iOS 7 flat design rush the barrier to entry for indie app developers was super high because it's damn hard to make the iOS <7 style look good. Flat is easy though. But with AI tools, the old style is suddenly available to lots of people again.
- Tokkemon 1y ago
  Those 3D icons were always ugly, we just didn't have the maturity to realize it at the time. :)
zombiwoof 1y ago
[flagged]
- kridsdale1 1y ago
  Don’t forget lovers, too.
pglevy 1y ago
Definitely slower loading and jankier scrolling on my phone.
tsunamifury 1y ago
Because it’s nonsense from a “performative” wannabe design team.
vijayabaskar56 1y ago
yeah , I too like the new Material UI , the suttle physics effors are awasome.
throw310822 1y ago
Aha, yes, it's a grand total of five icons (that I've managed to see so far) mixed in with a lot of flat icons. And they look ugly AF, it looks like a blast from the early 2000.
- rchaud 1y ago
  It does look like Office 97 clipart, or something from those 5000-piece icon CDs from the '90s.
wooque 1y ago
Yeah new icons are ugly and looks like they are ripped from Sims 1. It's just designers trying to justify their existence in the company.
- kelseydh 1y ago
  The icons look out of place next to the red search button with flat design. If they are going with a style they need to fully commit to it!
karaterobot 1y ago
> Airbnb announced a new design and we’ve all just collectively accepted that it’s the future? Don't overindex on one guy with a newsletter. My read on this article was this is someone trying to be the guy who called the next trend. He cites no evidence supporting the claim that it's the next trend, he's just trying to be the guy who puts a name to it so that he's an influencer if it does. He also mentions how he's been designing icons in this style for decades, which should make a skeptical person wonder whether there might be some wishful thinking going on here. What I can tell you for sure is that, as a professional designer, I have not received any memos mandating the use of this style of icons. I'll let you know when I do.
Nullabillity 1y ago
> Just loaded up the Airbnb site and… it’s new icons. The actual UI I’m interacting with hasn’t changed a jot, though. Don't undersell it. It also manages to run like ass on a desktop with a modern gaming GPU, and takes 5 years to load on a gigabit connection. And got my location wrong. And decided to machine-translate everything away from my native language.
h4ck_th3_pl4n3t 1y ago
Sshhht corporate hasn't understood yet that designers are in a collective loop because otherwise they would do nothing most of the time. Changing icons, making some buttons bigger and smaller again, introducing and removing some gradients, that's what keeps us busy because at most companies the products already have a design system when we started.
fluidcruft 1y ago
Well, personally it just looks like ancient NeXTstep/clones to me... I'm having flashbacks of that icon of a hand reaching out from a bullet hole whatever that was? Anyway, I checked the Airbnb website and it really seems out-of-place on Android. Gives crappy iOS port vibes.
myaccountonhn 1y ago
Gnome used to have very detailed 3d icons that looked great and were a bit outside the norm at the time when everyone were doing flat icons. They moved away from it though because they were too expensive and hard for single developers to make, so third party icons stuck out like a sore thumb.

hoseyor 1y ago

I also get this weird sense that besides seemingly just having changed 4 icons, as far as I can tell, it really feels like they’re just dusting off three dimensional icons that existed back in around about the early aughts ? I’m not convinced either.

sixQuarks 1y ago
It’s so stupid. I get the emperor has no clothes vibe from all of this
- MichaelZuo 1y ago
  Your just noticing? Most of the stuff on HN isn’t exactly written by super geniuses, especially for blog posts without some kind of analysis.
  - valianteffort 1y ago
    This post was more about some midwit trying to coin a phrase than a breakdown of future design patterns one could entertain. Clout chasing nonsense.
- boxed 1y ago
  Which emperor though? Flat design or 3d design? I do agree with the article that before the iOS 7 flat design rush the barrier to entry for indie app developers was super high because it's damn hard to make the iOS <7 style look good. Flat is easy though. But with AI tools, the old style is suddenly available to lots of people again.
Tokkemon 1y ago
Those 3D icons were always ugly, we just didn't have the maturity to realize it at the time. :)

zombiwoof 1y ago

[flagged]

kridsdale1 1y ago
Don’t forget lovers, too.

pglevy 1y ago

Definitely slower loading and jankier scrolling on my phone.

tsunamifury 1y ago

Because it’s nonsense from a “performative” wannabe design team.

vijayabaskar56 1y ago

yeah , I too like the new Material UI , the suttle physics effors are awasome.

throw310822 1y ago

Aha, yes, it's a grand total of five icons (that I've managed to see so far) mixed in with a lot of flat icons. And they look ugly AF, it looks like a blast from the early 2000.

rchaud 1y ago
It does look like Office 97 clipart, or something from those 5000-piece icon CDs from the '90s.

wooque 1y ago

Yeah new icons are ugly and looks like they are ripped from Sims 1. It's just designers trying to justify their existence in the company.

kelseydh 1y ago
The icons look out of place next to the red search button with flat design. If they are going with a style they need to fully commit to it!

karaterobot 1y ago

> Airbnb announced a new design and we’ve all just collectively accepted that it’s the future? Don't overindex on one guy with a newsletter. My read on this article was this is someone trying to be the guy who called the next trend. He cites no evidence supporting the claim that it's the next trend, he's just trying to be the guy who puts a name to it so that he's an influencer if it does. He also mentions how he's been designing icons in this style for decades, which should make a skeptical person wonder whether there might be some wishful thinking going on here. What I can tell you for sure is that, as a professional designer, I have not received any memos mandating the use of this style of icons. I'll let you know when I do.

Nullabillity 1y ago

> Just loaded up the Airbnb site and… it’s new icons. The actual UI I’m interacting with hasn’t changed a jot, though. Don't undersell it. It also manages to run like ass on a desktop with a modern gaming GPU, and takes 5 years to load on a gigabit connection. And got my location wrong. And decided to machine-translate everything away from my native language.

h4ck_th3_pl4n3t 1y ago

Sshhht corporate hasn't understood yet that designers are in a collective loop because otherwise they would do nothing most of the time. Changing icons, making some buttons bigger and smaller again, introducing and removing some gradients, that's what keeps us busy because at most companies the products already have a design system when we started.

fluidcruft 1y ago

Well, personally it just looks like ancient NeXTstep/clones to me... I'm having flashbacks of that icon of a hand reaching out from a bullet hole whatever that was? Anyway, I checked the Airbnb website and it really seems out-of-place on Android. Gives crappy iOS port vibes.

myaccountonhn 1y ago

Gnome used to have very detailed 3d icons that looked great and were a bit outside the norm at the time when everyone were doing flat icons. They moved away from it though because they were too expensive and hard for single developers to make, so third party icons stuck out like a sore thumb.