This page has great content, but some Javascript or CSS stupidity that prevents text selection. Anyone have a good fix to reenable that?
I use the text selection highlight as I read just to keep my place when scrolling around to look at the images.
Browser makers need to come up with a "Disable user-hostile features" toggle that gets rid of this and form related BS like the inability to paste passwords.
My "dystopian future prediction" is it's about to get a whole lot worse.
Browser makers can stop JS shenanigans, but they are also integrating web assembly: the perfect tool for creating user-hostile, proprietary, unblockable features.
Sites will deploy stupid things like "a browser inside a browser". Soon OCR/"analog holes" will be the only way around them.
I do the same thing, using text selection to keep my place when scrolling. Feels very gross having to resort to extensions to restore what should be basic browser functionality. (e.g. Don't Fuck With Paste[0] for sites that try to prevent you pasting passwords)
> Browser makers need to come up with a "Disable user-hostile features" toggle that gets rid of this and form related BS like the inability to paste passwords.
It exist in most browsers and is typically called something allng the lines "disable Javascript" :-)
There is a certain quality of the graphic design, colors, typography, and layout of the "vintage" planning & marketing materials shown here that I just can't put my finger on why I like it so much. Perhaps a certain richness from the inks that were available and the type of tools used to produce it.
Whatever it is, it feels authentic and hopeful. I love the sense of optimism that the graphics (and history shared in this article) invokes. Great stuff.
A mixture of change of materials (some of those are clearly paintings done in acrylic that have been photographed then used for colour plates), and change in style - at the moment we're in a backlash against the use of multiple colours, as well as any kind of clashing. This would absolutely be laughed out of the office today: https://www.airporthistory.org/uploads/1/2/1/4/121407428/cdg... - because green and purple are high-contrast colours.
Though I know nothing about the materials used, it looks to me like the aesthetic of Chesley Bonestell's space exploration images, and also of '2001' - as can be seen in the "Envisioning 2001: Stanley Kubrick’s Space Odyssey" exhibition, currently at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, NYC.
There's something with the non-realistic hand drawing, that puts emphasis on some very specific points. You can't get a similar result with computer aided realistic images.
There is also that the designer seems to really empathize with the message. It's hard to find material nowadays that even has a message, the designer empathizing with it is really rare.
When I buy picture books for children, I will not buy anything that was obviously made on a computer. They look so bland and lifeless. (I don't care how it was actually made, it's about the look of the result.)
It's made by humans. With formal, classic training in plastic arts. By hand. Without Adobe tech. Using only pen, ink, charcoal, and paint
Sometimes looking at 1920-30s High Modernist design, it suggests that "new dawn" in human affairs, the sort of confidence people used to have in science triumphing over superstition ;)
As a child of the 80s, I can definitely say that life in past decades was "brighter" then than it is now, although it's for reasons unrelated to graphic design. What it basically comes down to is, we used to dream and fantasize about possible futures and our contributions to it in a way that was nurtured by society. There was a general feeling that we had grown beyond the profit motive, or at least, that prosperity was increasing faster than effort.
Basic etiquette was better. Well-read people like Carl Sagan were listened to. People could have a modicum of respect in their communities as simple professionals like teachers/architects/doctors/lawyers/etc. Children were allowed to be children. We had movies like The Goonies, which illustrated the ills of society (like unrestrained real estate development) and provided a counterculture message of hope.
I'm in danger of straying into the rise of fear-based dystopia post-2000 so I'll leave it at that. I think that we can get back to the optimism of past decades, but it requires looking past the superficial and understanding that real prosperity is more about opportunity and a feeling that we're all equal and helping to build a better world together.
Whereas in the 80s the fear of civilization-wide extermination through nuclear war was widely present, in films and even pop songs. Y2K was the rare occasion where the sensationalism got the problem fixed, so nobody believes it was ever a risk. Like CFCs.
No, the 90s was a quiet time for everyone west of Yugoslavia and north of the Mediterranean. The "end of history" between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the fall of the World Trade Center.
I sometimes think we don't do futurism any more because we spent so much effort looking forward to the future of 2000, and there's no big date to look forward to quite like it.
There was a small midwestern airport I used to fly in and out of.
They had the "new" terminal, all of 3 gates. And then the baggage pickup area.
In between those areas was the "old terminal" it was this absolutely pristine 1960s ish airport waiting area that was hexagon shaped with this gorgeous black flooring also in a hexagon shape, a big brass compass in the middle, and everything in that area radiated out from that compas, the seats were lined up along the lines of the hexagon. Service desks, bar, etc. It had big tall windows (a few stories tall) so you could see out onto the runways.
Sadly it eventually was torn down when they renovated the entire structure for a new more modern boxy... thing.
i accidentally clicked on the image and it said download is not allowed. So I went to web tools and downloaded the image anyway. I don't even want that image but I hate that feature.
Worse yet, if you just disable scripts entirely the page renders beautifully and you can click on the images to expand them and actually read the tiny text.
This is a really good question. It's a complicated issue and depends on some definitions.
If we didn't build any and decided we wanted massive air travel now? Yep.
If we are only talking about travel between class B airports (basically any major city: LAX, DEN, ORD...)? Not really? DEN for instance was rebuilt in a new location around 1995.
What about literally all airports? Yes, but not really because of this era. We built tons of airports all over the country during WWII and the early cold war for military purposes. The FAA gave out tons of money to municipalities to build airports in places we'd never have them today, see KSMO[1]. Between this and funding from the federal government to subsidize routes serving far flung communities, we're seeing a lot of air travel that wouldn't exist otherwise. This isn't necessarily a bad thing though as it allows these smaller communities to remain connected and support larger businesses. If this situation didn't exist it would put yet more pressure on massive landlocked urban centers to support everyone converging on them and make them the only locales that could support major businesses.
What a fascinating article. It is interesting to see how people in the 60s and 70s imagined the future of flying: fast supersonic planes flying between continents. We have gone in a completely different direction with "slow" and cheap air travel.
PS: Only on H.N would you find a majority of comments referring to the website CSS/JS and technical glitches when the content is of such quality.
Ah! What could have been. Failure of developing (quiet) super-sonic and hyper-sonic civilian aircraft is one of the great shortcomings of our age. The Boom (shockwave) has given way to The Zoom (video teleconferencing)
An interesting point of the "future architecture" speculations is that they never anticipated algorithmically-aided parametric designs in the manner of Zaha Hadid ;)
It's a good tagline but The Zoom still involves the first 5-10 minutes of technical issues interspersed with drop off and, in my opinion, doesn't displace the value of interaction IRL. Rather, I think it makes conference (formerly audio) calling way better.
I'm very hopeful that The Boom (aerospace company) is successful as someone who travels a good deal for work.
39 comments
[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 90.8 ms ] threadI use the text selection highlight as I read just to keep my place when scrolling around to look at the images.
Browser makers need to come up with a "Disable user-hostile features" toggle that gets rid of this and form related BS like the inability to paste passwords.
document.body.onselectstart = function() {return true;};
Browser makers can stop JS shenanigans, but they are also integrating web assembly: the perfect tool for creating user-hostile, proprietary, unblockable features.
Sites will deploy stupid things like "a browser inside a browser". Soon OCR/"analog holes" will be the only way around them.
[0]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/don-t-fuck-wi...
It exist in most browsers and is typically called something allng the lines "disable Javascript" :-)
Whatever it is, it feels authentic and hopeful. I love the sense of optimism that the graphics (and history shared in this article) invokes. Great stuff.
With the exception of the planes that all seem to be careening out of control...
There is also that the designer seems to really empathize with the message. It's hard to find material nowadays that even has a message, the designer empathizing with it is really rare.
Sometimes looking at 1920-30s High Modernist design, it suggests that "new dawn" in human affairs, the sort of confidence people used to have in science triumphing over superstition ;)
Basic etiquette was better. Well-read people like Carl Sagan were listened to. People could have a modicum of respect in their communities as simple professionals like teachers/architects/doctors/lawyers/etc. Children were allowed to be children. We had movies like The Goonies, which illustrated the ills of society (like unrestrained real estate development) and provided a counterculture message of hope.
I'm in danger of straying into the rise of fear-based dystopia post-2000 so I'll leave it at that. I think that we can get back to the optimism of past decades, but it requires looking past the superficial and understanding that real prosperity is more about opportunity and a feeling that we're all equal and helping to build a better world together.
That rise happened in the 90s, if not earlier. Remember the sensationalism about people getting killed because of Y2K bugs?
No, the 90s was a quiet time for everyone west of Yugoslavia and north of the Mediterranean. The "end of history" between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the fall of the World Trade Center.
I sometimes think we don't do futurism any more because we spent so much effort looking forward to the future of 2000, and there's no big date to look forward to quite like it.
They had the "new" terminal, all of 3 gates. And then the baggage pickup area.
In between those areas was the "old terminal" it was this absolutely pristine 1960s ish airport waiting area that was hexagon shaped with this gorgeous black flooring also in a hexagon shape, a big brass compass in the middle, and everything in that area radiated out from that compas, the seats were lined up along the lines of the hexagon. Service desks, bar, etc. It had big tall windows (a few stories tall) so you could see out onto the runways.
Sadly it eventually was torn down when they renovated the entire structure for a new more modern boxy... thing.
If we didn't build any and decided we wanted massive air travel now? Yep.
If we are only talking about travel between class B airports (basically any major city: LAX, DEN, ORD...)? Not really? DEN for instance was rebuilt in a new location around 1995.
What about literally all airports? Yes, but not really because of this era. We built tons of airports all over the country during WWII and the early cold war for military purposes. The FAA gave out tons of money to municipalities to build airports in places we'd never have them today, see KSMO[1]. Between this and funding from the federal government to subsidize routes serving far flung communities, we're seeing a lot of air travel that wouldn't exist otherwise. This isn't necessarily a bad thing though as it allows these smaller communities to remain connected and support larger businesses. If this situation didn't exist it would put yet more pressure on massive landlocked urban centers to support everyone converging on them and make them the only locales that could support major businesses.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Monica_Airport#Future
So I suppose if a similar number of people with too much money in NY and London, it could happen again.
PS: Only on H.N would you find a majority of comments referring to the website CSS/JS and technical glitches when the content is of such quality.
An interesting point of the "future architecture" speculations is that they never anticipated algorithmically-aided parametric designs in the manner of Zaha Hadid ;)
https://www.dezeen.com/2019/09/26/zaha-hadid-architects-star...
I'm very hopeful that The Boom (aerospace company) is successful as someone who travels a good deal for work.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_HQ2#Requirements