aboutsummaryrefslogtreecommitdiff
path: root/build/death-of-personality/index.html
blob: 68684542ed6a346c75987f8f47582483b7b8f816 (plain)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
<!doctype html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
	<meta charset="utf-8">
	<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
	<link rel="icon" href="data:,">
	<title>The Death of Personality</title>
	<link href="/atom.xml" type="application/atom+xml" rel="alternate" title="Atom feed for blog posts" />
	<link href="/rss.xml" type="application/rss+xml" rel="alternate" title="RSS feed for blog posts" />
<style>*{box-sizing:border-box;}body{font-family:sans-serif;line-height:1.33;margin:0 auto;max-width:650px;padding:1rem;}img{max-width:100%;}pre{border:1px solid;overflow:auto;padding:5px;}table{text-align:left;width:100%;}.footnotes{font-size:90%;}</style>
</head>

<nav>
	<a href="#menu">Menu &darr;</a>
</nav>

<main>
<h1 id="the-death-of-personality">The Death of Personality</h1>

<p>2017-11-01</p>

<p>On September 18, 2013 truly original product design (everything from icon and app design to UI and experience interactions) began it&#8217;s fast decline into the abyss with the release of Apple&#8217;s iOS 7 update. It was called revolutionary. It was seen as a &#8216;new age&#8217; of design. I think it was a big mistake.</p>

<p><img src="/public/images/flat-design-tombstone_cfkyrq_c_scale,w_700.webp" alt="Flat design tombstone" /></p>

<h3 id="stepping-backwards">Stepping backwards</h3>

<p>Let me start off by saying I understand where they were trying to take mobile app design as a whole. &#8220;Less is more&#8221;, &#8220;cleaner UI to let the content be the focus&#8221;, &#8220;more touch based interactions&#8221;. The problem is that they cranked the dial too far in the other direction.</p>

<p>Because of this, a large movement was created based around the idea that skeuomorphic design is garbage, flat design is the future. And everyone drank the kool-aid without a single objection.
I&#8217;m using this ironically.</p>

<h3 id="icons-with-no-identity">Icons with no identity</h3>

<p>Do you remember Instagram&#8217;s original app icon and UI? Do you remember how everyone initially praised it? Show those old designs to the same designers who loved it only a few years ago, and they will now laugh at how &#8220;bad&#8221; it is.</p>

<p>Unfortunately the same can be said for Apple&#8217;s system icons across both iOS and macOS.</p>

<p>I believe Apple took the concept of a &#8216;consistent&#8217; design system across their iconography too literally. All the system icons should compliment one another, but they shouldn&#8217;t lose their own individual look and feel.</p>

<h3 id="lackluster-ui">Lackluster UI</h3>

<p>The once inspiring and hierarchically consistent interface of both iOS and macOS was also quickly swatted away. In it&#8217;s place we as users saw the removal of depth, initial visual cues as to what was interactive and what was static, and sadly even the overall color was muted.</p>

<h3 id="impact-on-the-web">Impact on the web</h3>

<p>This may not have been a bad thing if it was self-contained to Apple itself. The problem is that Apple has such a huge influence on the design industry - although that is starting to diminish, due to disasters like the iPhone X - that everyone starts to mimic and copy their style. This includes designers of sites and progressive web apps.</p>

<p>With the evolution of websites morphing into progressive web apps, designers have felt the need to start implementing this bland style for their design systems.</p>

<p>What we got in return:</p>

<ul>
<li>washed out colors</li>
<li>zero gradients for depth</li>
<li>the removal of all drop shadows (in meaningful ways that is)</li>
<li>the same generic Helvetica-based typefaces</li>
<li>the absence of hover states on interactive elements</li>
<li>a lack of any proper information density</li>
<li>an overkill of whitespace</li>
<li>one dimensional buttons (you know, the thing you want the user to interact with)</li>
<li>a complete disregard for original design not based off every other popular product</li>
</ul>

<h3 id="breaking-free-of-the-modern-era">Breaking free of the &#8216;modern era&#8217;</h3>

<p>Thankfully, there are still a few good designers who continue to create original and inspiring work not based solely on current trends.</p>

<p>Flexibits recently launched a new contact app for macOS called Cardhop. While the UI still shifts a little too far to the &#8216;flat trend&#8217; for my liking, they thankfully hired the very talented David Lanham to design the beautiful application icon.</p>

<p>This is where visual design shines. Icon designs like Cardhop&#8217;s are what allow individual applications to stand out in the dock or mobile home-screen among all the others. So how is that not UX design?</p>

<p>The current trendy thought process from designers that &#8220;visual design doesn&#8217;t involve UX design&#8221; is garbage. Neither are mutually exclusive and I think anyone who believes so is being incredibly short-sighted.</p>

<p>If you&#8217;re a designer, please stop riding trends and make your work visually beautiful. That doesn&#8217;t mean you need to sacrifice usability or function, but just put more love and confidence into your profession. Companies like Apple and Google don&#8217;t control how everyone else&#8217;s apps and sites should look, and based on their current design decisions - they shouldn&#8217;t.</p>
<footer role="contentinfo">
    <h2>Menu Navigation</h2>
    <ul id="menu">
        <li><a href="/">Home</a></li>
        <li><a href="/projects">Projects</a></li>
        <li><a href="/uses">Uses</a></li>
        <li><a href="/wiki">Wiki</a></li>
        <li><a href="/resume">Resume</a></li>
        <li><a href="/colophon">Colophon</a></li>
        <li><a href="/now">Now</a></li>
        <li><a href="/donate">Donate</a></li>
        <li><a href="/atom.xml">RSS</a></li>
        <li><a href="#top">&uarr; Top of the page</a></li>
    </ul>
    <small>
        Built with <a href="https://git.sr.ht/~bt/barf">barf</a>. <br>
        Maintained with ♥ for the web. <br>
        Proud supporter of <a href="https://usefathom.com/ref/DKHJVX">Fathom</a> &amp; <a href="https://nextdns.io/?from=74d3p3h8">NextDNS</a>. <br>
        The content for this site is <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/">CC-BY-SA</a>.<br> The <a href="https://git.sr.ht/~bt/bt.ht">code for this site</a> is <a href="https://git.sr.ht/~bt/bt.ht/tree/master/item/LICENSE">MIT</a>.
    </small>
</footer>