I agree, I am not much younger than OP, but I think the GenZ version he posted is much more engaging. His default one is definitely lacking soul. But I dont think you have to give up Minimalism to gain that soul.
You are aware that form can help with function, right?
HN's clean interface means you focus on the articles, and one would hope (though not in your case it seems) take it atleast a little seriously/professionally in how you interact.
A speed dating app like filteroff? It's more casual, you should be at ease, it shouldn't remind you of MS teams.
I find this weird but i've always sort of resented generations (Boomer, GenX, etc) that aren't mine (Millenial) but Gen Z is the first one i've really liked. I find the general Gen Z humour to be very funny. I love their mercurial embrace of trends and tearing down of sacred cows. The way they approach work/life balance, call out stupid cultural norms. Their attitude and acceptance of people not like themselves.
By the way I know this resentment is stupid and unfounded in any reality - its just a feeling I have.
I know this is all generalisation and not everyone born between two arbitrary years are like this - but the general vibe I get from their generation is that the kids are going to be alright.
What are the actual differences between millenials and gen z? I would argue both are characterized by the fact that there is no single fit-all characteristic. There is no common pop-culture to define a generation any more.
Experiences. One big one is that most Millennials were hit by 2008, while Gen Z wasn't, but at the time we believed what we were told that 2008 was an aberration and things would get back to normal. We were also raised in the "go to college and you'll be set for life" era, so we were given expectations that were then ripped away by rapid change.
Gen Z didn't believe anything they were told to begin with, because while Millennials grew up in the 90s and early 00s and got some optimism in our culture, America has been a polarized, rapidly-changing nation for pretty much all of Gen Z's time.
The tl;dr I'd say is: "Millennials had our expectations dashed, and Gen Z didn't build up the expectations to begin with."
(Note that I'm not commenting on whether this rapid change is good/bad/malicious/whatever. Just that how we've planned for and lived our lives has changed a lot in the last 15 years.)
Yup, but unlike us, they had '08 before them to look at and go 'hmmmm.... I've seen this before'. (I was a '10 graduate).
We (Millennials) mostly believed what we were told, due to both not having experienced a shock like that before + having more limited information access. Gen Z has enough contrary evidence and ability to share things that they just took a Fast Pass for the cynicism line. And good for them, honestly.
I'm firmly a Millennial but I relate a lot more to Gen Z because our childhoods/formative experiences had a lot more in common. (For example, I got online when I was 4 and was allowed free rein, very similar to a lot of Gen Z/"iPad kids", but that's a pretty rare experience in my age group [33]). Our worldviews are more aligned as well: Things that people thought were insane when I said them 10-20 years ago are now mainstream. I feel like I have backup for the first time in my life.
At one point the entire web was fun and quirky, then myspace came along and everyone stopped making their own webpages opting instead to customize their profile in crazy ways, then facebook came along and only allowed rigid government like structure. Tumblr was a beacon of hope for a time, but then wild creativity moved to sanctioned playgrounds like minecraft, or to the personal web pages of highly skilled artists.
> then myspace came along and everyone stopped making their own webpages opting instead to customize their profile
... that's a weird re-writing of history. The vast majority of people on MySpace never made their own webpages, and MySpace wasn't the first "customize my profile hosted on someone's site", as LiveJournal, Xanga, and others came before it.
MySpace was massively larger than LiveJournal. In 2006, MySpace literally became the most visited website in the US, as per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myspace (and I also recall it being mentioned quite a bit at the time).
For another comparison: NewsCorp acquired MySpace in 2005 for $580 million. Six Apart acquired LiveJournal in 2005 for just a few million, and sold it to SUP in 2007 for somewhere around $25 million if I recall correctly.
Disclosure: former Six Apart employee, although several years after the sale of LJ to SUP.
I'm guessing this time was when you were ages 15-25 or thereabouts?
I used to be with ‘it’, but then they changed what ‘it’ was. Now what I’m with isn’t ‘it’ anymore and what’s ‘it’ seems weird and scary.
Dammit, you got me. I was thinking of that age range exactly, and I'm always a sucker for a simpsons quote.
Though it is undeniable that "web masters" in the mid to late 90s were more willing to try wacky things, even on corporate or political types of sites. There weren't frameworks to keep things reigned in, and it was rarely a full time job, so the fact that it worked at all was enough for most people.
Not everyone knows how to, or even wants to create their own website. These platforms also make it easy to share and network across members. It was really only a matter of time.
> facebook came along and only allowed rigid government like structure.
And suddenly, I could comfortably read content again. For me, it was an amazing time, no more eye-hurting colors and fonts, but finally just nicely formatted text. Content was nice, ordered, and chronological. For me, MySpace and similar sites back then were like someone linking foone (sp?) twitter threads. I want the content, but I hate the presentation.
I remember most of me and my friends breathing a collective sigh of relief at how clean Facebook was when it came out, compared to the chaos that was MySpace
I'm late 40s and would prefer the Gen-Z mode in a dating app. Give me clean and utilitarian on a note taking app or something where I'm creating. Give me something fun (but usable) for something that should be fun.
Yes, it's more playful and maximalist. I'm honestly happy these days when I see something that doesn't look the internet equivalent of midcentury modern / Scandinavian interior design.
I first noticed this "Gen-Z" mode trend when I played Mario Kart on Wii. Compared to N64 or SNES, the screen was so busy. I honestly had a hard time keeping track of where my player was and where the "track" was compared to all the colorful fast-moving background cruft.
I'm not a gamer so maybe I'm just not used to it. Fortnite seems like another example of how "Gen-Z" and headachy a digital environment can be.
For sure people will downvote me for not being a gamer who gets it, or for being an old fuddy-duddy. Wanted to provide the perspective though.
Are you sure the N64 and SNES Mario Karts weren't just less busy due to hardware constraints? N64 had limited polygon count compared with modern gaming systems.
Also, the Wii came out in what, 2006? It's definitely a millennial gaming system.
Mario Kart on Wii was released in 2008, when the oldest of Gen-Z would have been 11 years old. I'm pretty sure that's too young to be setting design trends.
It is the perfect age to be stamping pliant young brains into the shape they'll retain for the remainder of their lives. They associate informational assault with happy and busy and expect the association to be a part of the world.
Competitive gamers agree with you and have been trying to increase visual clarity for a long time. I remember finding out about picmip back in quake3 and never looking back [0]. In AoE2 there was a mod called 'pussywood' that made the trees smaller so you could see things. People then also started putting borders around tiles and cutting buildings so they didn't block what was behind them [1]. In SC2 some weird settings made invisible units more visible, I think you set everything ultra-low apart from shadows or something. There are hundreds of other examples, if you watch any competitive gamer stream, their game will look different to the default experience you'd get if you installed the game yourself (unless it's a tournament stream, they'll turn all the settings up to max for that 'gen-z' factor).
The problem nowadays is that companies are incentivized to reduce visual clarity by selling super flashy rainbow skins(doesn't apply to Mario Kart, applies to Fortnite).
Visual clarity vastly depends on the game and what sort of playstyle it's going for. For competitive shooters, it matters a lot more to be able to visually detect enemies slightly visible behind corners, eg. Valorant with red outlines on characters. However, regarding Fortnite, having a flashy animated rainbow skin actively makes it easier for other players to spot you, so if they were really incentivized to sell flashy skins they'd make it so you could choose a skin that other players see and a separate skin you see.
I have the same feeling sometimes. With some games it's really easy to understand the world and figure out what's going on. With others I feel like I'm spinning due to how blurry everything is or that I'm starting into the sun due to the intense brightness.
As for user interfaces, video games are excellent case studies. My favorite example is the Ace Combat series. It shows how a functional interface themed after aircraft screens can be easier to manage than futuristic interfaces. At the same time, the futuristic interfaces manage to show a lot of geographical information in 3D instead of 2D maps.
It's always impressed me how much story telling is done through these interfaces. Before every mission, there is a briefing video where an officer explains context to the player and other pilots in the squadron. It's stylized as an officer literally booting up military software, authenticating with it and using it to present data.
Design trends come and go. Minimalism is has probably already peaked, and typically when a trend peaks the next trend intentionally runs against it.
The "gen-z" look reminds me of the early web when people thought that <blink> and <marquee> were really exciting html elements. Those were noisy pages, but they had the feeling of an enthusiastic hobbyist scrapbook, and that was part of the appeal. "I could make something cool like that." That "artsy teenager's notebook" aesthetic is like the 90s web reborn in high def, this time with 40mb of javascript along for the ride.
Agree. I feel like I've heard so many comments recently that the web looks so boring, and people miss the old fun of the early web. And people who miss the web of the 90s and early Oughts are by definition not Gen Z...
I'm excited for a bit of bang and pop and messiness and individuality to come back.
With it, I hope for return of websites. You can't display individuality on an endless scrolling feed of social media.
It's messy, chaotic, and feels like something from the late 90's/early 00's, where you'd often see custom web pages using formatted images as elements of the page. But I love it. I can't quite make sense of it, as I adhere pretty strongly to brutalism/minimalism when designing my own content.
Persona 5 did really well with balancing their line work and colors. The colors are very bold and in your face, but so is some of the strategically placed line work, so you can still visually differentiate everything.
I haven't heard nearly as many people wanting a return to maximalist 90s web design. People miss the time when a website wasn't a 3 megabyte download, and didn't pop up a newsletter signup form. They don't (as often) miss the web pages with 100 animated gifs on them, an over the top tiled background, blinking text, and so on.
Many more people want the minimalism of a page that gets out of the way and shows you the content you came for, which was (if you like) 90s web design minimalism. That's the motivation all this gopher revival/gemini protocol stuff is about, at least from a design perspective.
I'm just trying to say there were different strains of "90s web design" which are not compatible with each other.
It's hand written. This was also an early web thing: no npm build pipeline. I feel a little bad not making the modal view fallback to image-is-a-link when JS is disabled (I also would've opted for no google fonts, but it ultimately isn't my site)
Meanwhile another friend built a similar site: https://kaeillustrates.art which may have more of that Gen-Z aesthetic (albeit we're millennials, so it doesn't go overboard) & is built on tailwind/react
Hopefully minimalist-as-fashion design will go away & minimalist sites can return to being small memory/dependency footprint
> People miss the time when a website wasn't a 3 megabyte download, and didn't pop up a newsletter signup form. They don't (as often) miss the web pages with 100 animated gifs on them, an over the top tiled background, blinking text, and so on.
This is really colored by who you're paying attention to.
are you really saying that website you linked is a gen z design? looks like something out of 2004, looks horrible... or maybe it's not loading well on my phone. but that's not....
The website I linked is a list of members of a webring, because such a survey presents more examples than a single page can. The creators of the pages in the webring are predominantly gen z. The argument it is supporting is about which people want which strains of 90s web design to come back. If you look at a few pages in the webring you will see which strains these young people, at least, want. That's what I'm saying. Whether you consider it horrible is immaterial.
So that site is interesting to me because it comes across as retro more than anything else.
It's almost like a charicature of 90s web design rather than actual 90's web design.
To be clear, I'm not saying they have bad taste. What I'm saying is that there's always design subcommunities who want retro this or edgy that, and they're kinda ridiculed or marveled at or admired for their distinction, or whatever, and then the majority of users look for something else for daily life.
It's a kind of design sampling bias or something. The huge swaths of genz who don't care or who like the minimalist stuff, or who say that webring is too much are off on TikTok or some other platform not bothering.
It's certainly self-aware pastiche, not the 90s original, for sure. But I guess what I'm saying is that the idea that "the majority of users" want XYZ or are even looking for design styles actively isn't actually something substantiated by data in any of these claims, and there's enough interesting counterpoints that none of us should be confident our preferences are shared by the masses. Design sampling bias and mindless imitation certainly brought us a lot of the cookie cutter whitespace affairs we see also.
That's just rationality intertwined with nostalgia.
I mean, I do acknowledge how messy 90s websites were. Overly bloated with GIFs and annoying MIDIs playing on the background. But they were full of personality. And it was also a time where getting into "the internet" was an exciting thing by itself.
Only us, people who are "computer literate", complain about a 3mb download or 10mb javascript blob. Most people don't care as long as their phone or computer are able to do the job.
People care about things being slow, but our industry has done a fantastic job of covering up the fact that it constantly makes everything slower by convincing people they just need newer devices. It is sickening.
My first thought when I saw the example designs was Geocities; my second was Myspace.
Beyond design trends and generational preferences, the purpose of the app in question matters. A video speed dating app should probably have a more fun atmosphere than Hacker News, Wikipedia, or the Wifi settings panel.
It also has the appearance of people using nothing but MS Paint as an image editor. Slap dash quickity fast. No need to wait for 10 minutes for PS to launch, this task will be completed before that.
I blame Ritalin for this type of video, either someone took too much or needs to up their dosage.
Visual graphix aside, it's just exhausting to listen to. Dude, take a breath, or at least allow your viewers to take one. Had to double check I didn't leave my YT player in faster than normal playback speed.
IMHO, at least the abruptness of the cuts (trimming off all silence between clips) is intentional, part-and-parcel of the aesthetic being demonstrated. Weirdcore is abrupt.
I don't know about the rest — might just be the video's author's style — but I have a feeling the high speaking speed is there because they're mostly reading a definition off of this article (https://aesthetics.fandom.com/wiki/Weirdcore), with no content editing to compress for time, but still a need to make the video feel like it's not "dragging on" for viewers who are impatiently waiting for visual examples. (The proper thing to do here would have been to do the content-editing of the script, of course.)
They also had to pick a one-second slice of a "thematically-related" music track to set each of the ~100ish readings to. That would take a fair amount of time during editing, no?
Those are called sound f/x. They are quite common and are litterally just 1 second sounds to be dropped into a timeline. There are libraries upon libraries of them available. They used to come on vinyl and had to be recorded in to something useable. Then they came on CDs and could just be ripped. Now, they float around as YT videos or other websites royalty free.
This would be common knowledge amongst people that have spent any time in an edit bay as a client or as an editor. It's one of those things that those that know just sit back and smile while those that don't are in awe.
While I may not be a 10x dev, I'm at least an 8.5x editor. Experience goes a long way as well. Knowing when/where to use certain technique, how/why something takes longer, etc all add up to make an edit session go faster.
> I blame Ritalin for this type of video, either someone took too much or needs to up their dosage.
Maybe I’m overly sensitive, but I’m really tired of ADHD ableist jokes like this one. With the controversy and struggles of medication for ADHD, implying that the only functional ADHD brain is a medicated one just frankly sucks.
Yes, I would suggest in this specific instance you are.
>but I’m really tired of ADHD ableist jokes like this one
Not once did I mention ADHD which is a medically recognized condition. However, the use of Ritalin in today's society is not limited to those that are prescribed Ritalin as a treatment for ADHD. There are many many people that use it recreationaly. Being around people using it as an upper gives me the impression that I'm stuck in molasses with their hyper-everything. It's exhausting.
> Not once did I mention ADHD which is a medically recognized condition.
"Needs to up their dosage" would imply someone who medically requires Ritalin to treat something, which could only be ADHD. Take that part out and the joke is otherwise fine/about what you're saying.
Perhaps. I will stipulate that for those with no knowledge of recreational drug use, this could be an interpretation.
However, anyone familiar with recreational drug use knows there's a common phrase of "know your dosage" right along "know your dealer". Yes, it's borrowed from else where, but it's still a thing. Do I need to eat half a bar, or take 2? I might suggest Wolf Of Wall Street as an example of knowing one's dosage.
That phrase is about knowing the maximum dosage beyond which the side-effects render the trip unpleasant; along with the threshold dosage below which you don't get any effects.
Taking "too little" Ritalin recreationally — i.e. not meeting the threshold dose — doesn't result in ADHD-like symptoms.
Unless, y'know, you have ADHD. In which case it's not "recreational usage", you're just self-medicating.
Dear lordy, you must be having an agenda here. Other people are injecting ADHD into this conversation.
People taking Ritalin when not prescribed to them by a doctor do not care about ADHD-like symptoms. They are using it purely as an upper. "To help them concentrate" or whatever they tell themselves. It's less "trashy" than meth, easier to find than coke. The affects are also different than these other drugs.
Sure, feel free to go around the internet and accuse people of something, then make fun of them for being defensive when they explain how it's not what you thought. Especially after preceding your entire post with "I might be overly sensitive"
I don't even know how to respond to you. Saying "Little defensive there, huh" constitutes "mak[ing] fun of"? I'm not sure who's actually the sensitive one here.
Besides, pointing out ableism isn't an accusation. In fact, I don't accuse you of anything personally, I bemoan the joke. In the face of this, you retreat to a scenario where you are besieged every day by recreational Ritalin users in order defend your ego from maybe admitting your joke wasn't actually funny (or accurate).
no, i implied you're grandstanding about something insignificant because your compassion for humanity is superficial and conditioned on your ability to be noticed showing it off. if it was genuine you wouldn't have busted their balls for saying something that wasn't even mean, just crass in the way most of us are in real life.
I blame some late Gen-Xer who got stuck in a basement and got too obcessed with gaining likes on the internet they just morphed into this one-weird-trick pony with their clipart coming exclusively from 90's Magazines that come with a CD kinda thing
A lot of the comments are saying this looks like a 1990's website. I think it's kinda true, but there's also something extremely modern about it. Much more raw than the partiful design. I really like these graphics and would be very interested to see a website rendition of this aesthetic
I think y’all are conflating two completely different things.
There are “fun” sites where proper UX, information hierarchy, and general good design patterns take a backseat to some wild design (band websites for example).
Then there are sites that focus on productivity which should have all the elements of good design. Craigslist is from the 90s, yet it doesn’t have sparkles and random shit scattered across the page.
Everyone is reminiscing about the wild designs of the past. How many of those sites you visited were actual productivity focused sites vs now? You can’t compare Geocities to Jira…
Bauhaus and Midcentury Modern have incredible staying power. There hasn't been this kind of movement yet in web design. I think it is because we still don't know how we use it yet.
Haha! But which would you rather clean: a living room done in Beaux Arts style, or one done in modernist style? Assuming you cannot afford a housekeeping staff, that is. :)
I hope so, I thought that the original intent of it was anchored in a functional way of designing UIs. Now it seems to have been taken to absurd levels where important controls are hidden behind modals, dropdown, hover states, popovers etc. instead of just being visible and available when you want to use them. I really don't understand this but have given up pushing back on it.
> The "gen-z" look reminds me of the early web when people thought that <blink> and <marquee> were really exciting html elements.
Literally the thing that went through my mind when reading the article: "the 90s/early 00s design is coming back!"
Time to start replacing the cursor with unicorns barfing rainbows (or nyan-cats, whatever you prefer!) and adding on-click confetti explosions to our web pages again.
I'd add that design trends and taste are also regional.
Minimalism isn't appreciated in some Asian countries. Their print, ads and web pages use every single inch/pixel to saturate it with the maximum amount of content, be they text or visuals. It even translates to physical products, as an example a laundry machine with 500 buttons and lots of blinking lights.
I for one, as a mid-life gen-x-er, can't wait to welcome our new gen-z design overlords if it means that we bring some visual variety back to computing.
True. Buy my training is in military, process control, and nuclear. In those context, I've never heard a project manager say "make it look like a game". Whereas in business apps, I have heard that many times.
And that is a good thing, some applications, explicitly not apps, have to be made to work and function properly. Not to look good or fancy.
Just wait until someone proposes to build a blinky-clicky UI on top of the serious stuff to make it easier for users. No joke, I have that problem at work right now...
This hits the nail on the head and I never even realized it. I am a religious minimalist when it comes to design, I have no idea why but progress from the 90's sites just seemed to keep removing things so it felt like a natural progression.
I can see why the change from minimal to 'busy' would be the inverse when starting from a minimalist POV like the younger generations. Great article.
I remember the time when I first used <marquee> and I jumped like a little kid. Fast forward a few years when I started designing for web as a career, and I was sad to see that nobody used <marquee> in production. It turned out to be a toy.
Heart broken.
But I grew to love the minimalism design.
Recently I started Youtubing and make designing thumbnails, minimal doesn't work. The demography 18 to 35 year old prefer something that quickly grabs their attention.
Amused to see the trend seeping into UI/UX as well.
> [..] <marquee> in production. It turned out to be a toy.
Screens were tiny low res, mice had no wheels and people where not used to scrolling. I don't think <marquee> was originally intended as a toy, even though it was mostly used like one.
Just in general its nice to have an interface that highlights the right features and makes it clear what is a button, what is text and the sort of interactions I will have before I click on it. All the research on UIs done in the 70s and 80s seems to have been abandoned in the pursuit of a new look that is less easy to understand.
The amount of time wasted in Windows constantly changing the interface skin (especially the new taskbar that has lost a lot functionality in Windows 11) instead of fixing core issues in the OS or expanding elsewhere is a concerning cost of human time. I suspect many people buy "pretty" rather than functional but its kind of annoying the amount as an industry we waste on trends that achieve nothing other than a make over.
I don’t think they’re stupid but somehow my dad, who could always program my grandpa’s VCR and put together high end AV setups in his youth can’t set up his own entertainment center equipment anymore.
I struggle with phone UIs but that feels like mostly because I can’t be bothered to guess at the “intuitive” ways I can touch a screen that do different things across apps. For instance, some of my video apps are double tap to fill screen, others are outward pinch (is there a word for that?), or a press of certain buttons, or they just don’t do it.
That has nothing to do with this webpage's article.
Though, if you must know: The US has clearly said there are bio labs in Ukraine, and that they've built some and funded others.
The United States, through BTRP, has invested
approximately $200 million in Ukraine since
2005, supporting 46 Ukrainian laboratories,
health facilities, and diagnostic sites. [1]
And from the US Embassy in Ukraine:
BTRP has upgraded many laboratories for the
Ministry of Health and the State Food Safety
and Consumer Protection Service of Ukraine,
reaching Biosafety Level 2. In 2019, BTRP
constructed two laboratories for the latter,
one in Kyiv and one in Odesa. [2]
The 2005 agreement between the US DOD and Ministry of Health of Ukraine, signed in Kiev, is here. [3]
I thought it was "Zennial", but then again for the longest time I also thought the "millennials" were "Gen-Y" and that Billy Joel actually started the fire, so wtf do I even know anymore about what generations are called
Yeah, I wonder if these trends the author is picking up on (i.e. "Millennial Boring on Purpose" and "Millennial Minimalism" vs the Gen-Z "Excitement" and sparkles) is more of an actual age thing vs. a generational thing?
I'm still in my 30s, and I prefer the Millennial Minimalism now, but I didn't always. And I find myself bumping up the font size to 125% once in a while - and I expect to be doing it more and more as the years progress.
Yea, from what I remember of the leading edge Gen Y/ trailing Gen X culture in early 00s it was similarly fucken crazy and eclectic.
Cat photos with cut out style animation playing guitars. The whole electroclash thing. Just watch the music video for The Knife’s heartbeats.
I associate the sterile corpo chic with 2015 onwards because in my young adult days (2011-2014) we were wearing Aztec print stuff, ripped 501 jeans and iridescent shell jackets with fresh prince colour vomit snap backs, bright plastic sunglasses and abusing psychedelic amphetamines like it was 1988
Same, and I agree fully. I saw the websites that came out when flash/shockwave was new and they were DECKED OUT and that sh*t went sour way too fast. I went from crazy designs to "millennial minimalist" as soon as I turned 30+.
The author is close to an epiphany, but I feel doesn't quite reach it.
Yes, the last few years has seen iOS design trends to learn towards sterile apps where there is little uniqueness across apps.
This is good for novice users, the consistency makes it easier to onboard into a new app. The downside however is that many apps feel the same and have little differentiation.
The solution is to invest in UX and design to find ways to give your app a personality while keeping with the visual affordances users have learned. The solution is most certainly not to add sparkles and off angle text boxes.
The "Gen-Z" look feels wrong. But if you step back a little bit, all the "flat design" trends of 2011 also felt wrong in the exact same way. "You mean that after all the advances in computer graphics we're going to just go back to text on top of a rectangle like Windows 3.1?" A lot of people forget this since flat design is just how everything is done nowadays.
It's not the same as in Windows 3.1 at all. We now have shadows, gradients, far better colors and a lot of smooth animations [0]. The basics are the same, but if you compare the designs side by side, you'll find more differences than similarities.
I feel that there was a transition period were you really needed to show of the new capabilities and colors that your computers can do now. But with current trends, this won't impress anyone anymore and just look cheap, so people got back to subtle, timeless designs.
[0] I'm assuming a well-done design - you can of course overdo it.
Shadows are an essential design element of Windows 3.1, they are just used differently. In flat design a button is a flat piece of paper that may cast a shadow below it because it floats above the layer below it. In Windows 3.1 [1] a button is instead a 3d object that casts a shadow on itself, but because it's "glued" to the UI it doesn't cast a shadow below it.
I agree that they are very different though. Windows 2.11 is a flat design [2], Windows 3 - XP are a design philosophy of physical metaphors.
I think that subtle and timeless have veered into rigid and stultifying. Of course master designers are able to twist it and make it fresh but there aren't enough of them on earth for every project to have one.
For me internet video speed dating is a concept that's fun, spontaneous, maybe corny. None of that is expressed in the filteroff design which looks more like an accountant's blog. It's a "filter on" look.
It looks like a defensive design intended to avoid criticism, but does that inspire users to go out on a limb and try a new form of dating?
Perhaps a different minimalist design (or changes to the copy text) could do the job, but this seems like exactly the type of app where a maximalist, colorful, tongue in cheek kind of design could have worked.
windows 3.1 used contour depth perception. That is one of our fastest perceptual algorithms, truly a gift from nature. 2022 throws that in the trashcan.
"we're going to just go back to text on top of a rectangle like Windows 3.1?" A lot of people forget this since flat design is just how everything is done nowadays."
That's contradictory. "Flat" design is just text on a rectangle (at best); Windows 3.1 actually indicated what was a control and what its state was.
I remember reading an article comparing Google maps with Waze and it criticized the UI of Google maps to be “traditional” and considered the Waze UI to be superior. I guess it was written by gen-z.
At the time I was shocked - since when did the google UI become the traditional? They really had no clue how long it took us to get things look right.
> I'm a 33 year old straight male and you could sum up my design sense as pretty "basic." Err— sorry, "cheugy."
It's a joke. Straight men are stereotypically less sensitive to fashion trends than women or gay men. He's using his age, gender, and orientation to make light of how baffling he finds the design preferences (and language) of other groups.
Random offtopic feedback, please add speed friending mode; I'm not interested in dating but would love to meet new people and chat via video. I really like the app idea and the landing page too, nicely done!
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 231 ms ] threadHN's clean interface means you focus on the articles, and one would hope (though not in your case it seems) take it atleast a little seriously/professionally in how you interact.
A speed dating app like filteroff? It's more casual, you should be at ease, it shouldn't remind you of MS teams.
By the way I know this resentment is stupid and unfounded in any reality - its just a feeling I have.
I know this is all generalisation and not everyone born between two arbitrary years are like this - but the general vibe I get from their generation is that the kids are going to be alright.
Gen Z didn't believe anything they were told to begin with, because while Millennials grew up in the 90s and early 00s and got some optimism in our culture, America has been a polarized, rapidly-changing nation for pretty much all of Gen Z's time.
The tl;dr I'd say is: "Millennials had our expectations dashed, and Gen Z didn't build up the expectations to begin with."
(Note that I'm not commenting on whether this rapid change is good/bad/malicious/whatever. Just that how we've planned for and lived our lives has changed a lot in the last 15 years.)
We (Millennials) mostly believed what we were told, due to both not having experienced a shock like that before + having more limited information access. Gen Z has enough contrary evidence and ability to share things that they just took a Fast Pass for the cynicism line. And good for them, honestly.
I adore Gen Z.
... that's a weird re-writing of history. The vast majority of people on MySpace never made their own webpages, and MySpace wasn't the first "customize my profile hosted on someone's site", as LiveJournal, Xanga, and others came before it.
For another comparison: NewsCorp acquired MySpace in 2005 for $580 million. Six Apart acquired LiveJournal in 2005 for just a few million, and sold it to SUP in 2007 for somewhere around $25 million if I recall correctly.
Disclosure: former Six Apart employee, although several years after the sale of LJ to SUP.
I'm guessing this time was when you were ages 15-25 or thereabouts?
I used to be with ‘it’, but then they changed what ‘it’ was. Now what I’m with isn’t ‘it’ anymore and what’s ‘it’ seems weird and scary.
I used to be with ‘it’, but then they changed what ‘it’ was. Now what I’m with isn’t ‘it’ anymore and what’s ‘it’ seems weird and scary.
Dammit, you got me. I was thinking of that age range exactly, and I'm always a sucker for a simpsons quote.
Though it is undeniable that "web masters" in the mid to late 90s were more willing to try wacky things, even on corporate or political types of sites. There weren't frameworks to keep things reigned in, and it was rarely a full time job, so the fact that it worked at all was enough for most people.
And suddenly, I could comfortably read content again. For me, it was an amazing time, no more eye-hurting colors and fonts, but finally just nicely formatted text. Content was nice, ordered, and chronological. For me, MySpace and similar sites back then were like someone linking foone (sp?) twitter threads. I want the content, but I hate the presentation.
I'm not a gamer so maybe I'm just not used to it. Fortnite seems like another example of how "Gen-Z" and headachy a digital environment can be.
For sure people will downvote me for not being a gamer who gets it, or for being an old fuddy-duddy. Wanted to provide the perspective though.
Also, the Wii came out in what, 2006? It's definitely a millennial gaming system.
In fact I can't think of another product that's more quintessentially millennial than the Wii.
Antidepressants come to mind
The problem nowadays is that companies are incentivized to reduce visual clarity by selling super flashy rainbow skins(doesn't apply to Mario Kart, applies to Fortnite).
[0] https://twitter.com/cabbagebrains/status/1246155602625064961
[1] https://imgur.com/hqRkLh2
As for user interfaces, video games are excellent case studies. My favorite example is the Ace Combat series. It shows how a functional interface themed after aircraft screens can be easier to manage than futuristic interfaces. At the same time, the futuristic interfaces manage to show a lot of geographical information in 3D instead of 2D maps.
It's always impressed me how much story telling is done through these interfaces. Before every mission, there is a briefing video where an officer explains context to the player and other pilots in the squadron. It's stylized as an officer literally booting up military software, authenticating with it and using it to present data.
https://youtu.be/dHsBpf9As-0
https://youtu.be/ctun9SEza4Y
I can't seem to find a single video of the menus themselves, apparently everyone cuts out the parts where they're navigating the menus.
The "gen-z" look reminds me of the early web when people thought that <blink> and <marquee> were really exciting html elements. Those were noisy pages, but they had the feeling of an enthusiastic hobbyist scrapbook, and that was part of the appeal. "I could make something cool like that." That "artsy teenager's notebook" aesthetic is like the 90s web reborn in high def, this time with 40mb of javascript along for the ride.
I'm excited for a bit of bang and pop and messiness and individuality to come back.
With it, I hope for return of websites. You can't display individuality on an endless scrolling feed of social media.
It's messy, chaotic, and feels like something from the late 90's/early 00's, where you'd often see custom web pages using formatted images as elements of the page. But I love it. I can't quite make sense of it, as I adhere pretty strongly to brutalism/minimalism when designing my own content.
It’s not random. Still has a theme and a palette. I like it as well.
Many more people want the minimalism of a page that gets out of the way and shows you the content you came for, which was (if you like) 90s web design minimalism. That's the motivation all this gopher revival/gemini protocol stuff is about, at least from a design perspective.
I'm just trying to say there were different strains of "90s web design" which are not compatible with each other.
It's hand written. This was also an early web thing: no npm build pipeline. I feel a little bad not making the modal view fallback to image-is-a-link when JS is disabled (I also would've opted for no google fonts, but it ultimately isn't my site)
Meanwhile another friend built a similar site: https://kaeillustrates.art which may have more of that Gen-Z aesthetic (albeit we're millennials, so it doesn't go overboard) & is built on tailwind/react
Hopefully minimalist-as-fashion design will go away & minimalist sites can return to being small memory/dependency footprint
One note: can you tag that NSFW or somesuch? Even artistic nudity can be unwelcome and get people in trouble.
This is really colored by who you're paying attention to.
https://yesterweb.org/webring/members.html <-- this is a lot of Gen Z, especially with the more active people. Literally animated gifts, tiled bgs, etc.
> Many more people want the minimalism of a page that gets out of the way and shows you the content you came for
This is an assumption, not data.
It's almost like a charicature of 90s web design rather than actual 90's web design.
To be clear, I'm not saying they have bad taste. What I'm saying is that there's always design subcommunities who want retro this or edgy that, and they're kinda ridiculed or marveled at or admired for their distinction, or whatever, and then the majority of users look for something else for daily life.
It's a kind of design sampling bias or something. The huge swaths of genz who don't care or who like the minimalist stuff, or who say that webring is too much are off on TikTok or some other platform not bothering.
I mean, I do acknowledge how messy 90s websites were. Overly bloated with GIFs and annoying MIDIs playing on the background. But they were full of personality. And it was also a time where getting into "the internet" was an exciting thing by itself.
Only us, people who are "computer literate", complain about a 3mb download or 10mb javascript blob. Most people don't care as long as their phone or computer are able to do the job.
Beyond design trends and generational preferences, the purpose of the app in question matters. A video speed dating app should probably have a more fun atmosphere than Hacker News, Wikipedia, or the Wifi settings panel.
Visual graphix aside, it's just exhausting to listen to. Dude, take a breath, or at least allow your viewers to take one. Had to double check I didn't leave my YT player in faster than normal playback speed.
I don't know about the rest — might just be the video's author's style — but I have a feeling the high speaking speed is there because they're mostly reading a definition off of this article (https://aesthetics.fandom.com/wiki/Weirdcore), with no content editing to compress for time, but still a need to make the video feel like it's not "dragging on" for viewers who are impatiently waiting for visual examples. (The proper thing to do here would have been to do the content-editing of the script, of course.)
I'm literally a video editor/motion graphics person, so no, this doesn't take "literal ages" to edit.
This would be common knowledge amongst people that have spent any time in an edit bay as a client or as an editor. It's one of those things that those that know just sit back and smile while those that don't are in awe.
There's approximately three animated memes per second in these and people are usually using pirated Vegas to make them.
Maybe I’m overly sensitive, but I’m really tired of ADHD ableist jokes like this one. With the controversy and struggles of medication for ADHD, implying that the only functional ADHD brain is a medicated one just frankly sucks.
Yes, I would suggest in this specific instance you are.
>but I’m really tired of ADHD ableist jokes like this one
Not once did I mention ADHD which is a medically recognized condition. However, the use of Ritalin in today's society is not limited to those that are prescribed Ritalin as a treatment for ADHD. There are many many people that use it recreationaly. Being around people using it as an upper gives me the impression that I'm stuck in molasses with their hyper-everything. It's exhausting.
"Needs to up their dosage" would imply someone who medically requires Ritalin to treat something, which could only be ADHD. Take that part out and the joke is otherwise fine/about what you're saying.
However, anyone familiar with recreational drug use knows there's a common phrase of "know your dosage" right along "know your dealer". Yes, it's borrowed from else where, but it's still a thing. Do I need to eat half a bar, or take 2? I might suggest Wolf Of Wall Street as an example of knowing one's dosage.
Taking "too little" Ritalin recreationally — i.e. not meeting the threshold dose — doesn't result in ADHD-like symptoms.
Unless, y'know, you have ADHD. In which case it's not "recreational usage", you're just self-medicating.
People taking Ritalin when not prescribed to them by a doctor do not care about ADHD-like symptoms. They are using it purely as an upper. "To help them concentrate" or whatever they tell themselves. It's less "trashy" than meth, easier to find than coke. The affects are also different than these other drugs.
Besides, pointing out ableism isn't an accusation. In fact, I don't accuse you of anything personally, I bemoan the joke. In the face of this, you retreat to a scenario where you are besieged every day by recreational Ritalin users in order defend your ego from maybe admitting your joke wasn't actually funny (or accurate).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUKPaCoQPEU
For those who don't get the farm auctioneer reference:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkPUX8rv7gs
I blame some late Gen-Xer who got stuck in a basement and got too obcessed with gaining likes on the internet they just morphed into this one-weird-trick pony with their clipart coming exclusively from 90's Magazines that come with a CD kinda thing
https://www.cameronsworld.net/
(which was the anti-trend to the original, booooooring beginnings of hypertext)
'All grown-ups were once children... but only few of them remember it.' — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
There are “fun” sites where proper UX, information hierarchy, and general good design patterns take a backseat to some wild design (band websites for example).
Then there are sites that focus on productivity which should have all the elements of good design. Craigslist is from the 90s, yet it doesn’t have sparkles and random shit scattered across the page.
Everyone is reminiscing about the wild designs of the past. How many of those sites you visited were actual productivity focused sites vs now? You can’t compare Geocities to Jira…
I hope so, I thought that the original intent of it was anchored in a functional way of designing UIs. Now it seems to have been taken to absurd levels where important controls are hidden behind modals, dropdown, hover states, popovers etc. instead of just being visible and available when you want to use them. I really don't understand this but have given up pushing back on it.
This IMO is what made Win8 so bad.
Literally the thing that went through my mind when reading the article: "the 90s/early 00s design is coming back!"
Time to start replacing the cursor with unicorns barfing rainbows (or nyan-cats, whatever you prefer!) and adding on-click confetti explosions to our web pages again.
What an exciting time to be alive!
Minimalism isn't appreciated in some Asian countries. Their print, ads and web pages use every single inch/pixel to saturate it with the maximum amount of content, be they text or visuals. It even translates to physical products, as an example a laundry machine with 500 buttons and lots of blinking lights.
True. Buy my training is in military, process control, and nuclear. In those context, I've never heard a project manager say "make it look like a game". Whereas in business apps, I have heard that many times.
Just wait until someone proposes to build a blinky-clicky UI on top of the serious stuff to make it easier for users. No joke, I have that problem at work right now...
Humans naturally crave both novelty and familiarity and the tensions between those desires mean that aesthetics will always evolve and oscillate.
The Recyclable Camera Includes development, a prepaid mailer, & free shipping.
Photos are sent straight to your phone, where you can upload them to your Partiful party page.
Go ahead, make some memories
(The specs: Premium Kodak 400 ISO 35mm film with 27 exposures.)
Really? Everything old is young again!
I can see why the change from minimal to 'busy' would be the inverse when starting from a minimalist POV like the younger generations. Great article.
Heart broken.
But I grew to love the minimalism design.
Recently I started Youtubing and make designing thumbnails, minimal doesn't work. The demography 18 to 35 year old prefer something that quickly grabs their attention.
Amused to see the trend seeping into UI/UX as well.
Screens were tiny low res, mice had no wheels and people where not used to scrolling. I don't think <marquee> was originally intended as a toy, even though it was mostly used like one.
The amount of time wasted in Windows constantly changing the interface skin (especially the new taskbar that has lost a lot functionality in Windows 11) instead of fixing core issues in the OS or expanding elsewhere is a concerning cost of human time. I suspect many people buy "pretty" rather than functional but its kind of annoying the amount as an industry we waste on trends that achieve nothing other than a make over.
I struggle with phone UIs but that feels like mostly because I can’t be bothered to guess at the “intuitive” ways I can touch a screen that do different things across apps. For instance, some of my video apps are double tap to fill screen, others are outward pinch (is there a word for that?), or a press of certain buttons, or they just don’t do it.
That Joe Brandon has bio labs in the Ukraine too! Election stealing sonuva…
Though, if you must know: The US has clearly said there are bio labs in Ukraine, and that they've built some and funded others.
And from the US Embassy in Ukraine: The 2005 agreement between the US DOD and Ministry of Health of Ukraine, signed in Kiev, is here. [3][1] https://media.defense.gov/2022/Mar/11/2002954612/-1/-1/0/FAC...
[2] https://ua.usembassy.gov/embassy/kyiv/sections-offices/defen...
[3] https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/05-829-Ukra...
I'm still in my 30s, and I prefer the Millennial Minimalism now, but I didn't always. And I find myself bumping up the font size to 125% once in a while - and I expect to be doing it more and more as the years progress.
Cat photos with cut out style animation playing guitars. The whole electroclash thing. Just watch the music video for The Knife’s heartbeats.
I associate the sterile corpo chic with 2015 onwards because in my young adult days (2011-2014) we were wearing Aztec print stuff, ripped 501 jeans and iridescent shell jackets with fresh prince colour vomit snap backs, bright plastic sunglasses and abusing psychedelic amphetamines like it was 1988
Yes, the last few years has seen iOS design trends to learn towards sterile apps where there is little uniqueness across apps.
This is good for novice users, the consistency makes it easier to onboard into a new app. The downside however is that many apps feel the same and have little differentiation.
The solution is to invest in UX and design to find ways to give your app a personality while keeping with the visual affordances users have learned. The solution is most certainly not to add sparkles and off angle text boxes.
What visual affordances? Those were all removed in "the great flattening".
I feel that there was a transition period were you really needed to show of the new capabilities and colors that your computers can do now. But with current trends, this won't impress anyone anymore and just look cheap, so people got back to subtle, timeless designs.
[0] I'm assuming a well-done design - you can of course overdo it.
I agree that they are very different though. Windows 2.11 is a flat design [2], Windows 3 - XP are a design philosophy of physical metaphors.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_3.1x#/media/File:Windo...
2: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Windows_2.x#/media/D...
For me internet video speed dating is a concept that's fun, spontaneous, maybe corny. None of that is expressed in the filteroff design which looks more like an accountant's blog. It's a "filter on" look.
It looks like a defensive design intended to avoid criticism, but does that inspire users to go out on a limb and try a new form of dating?
Perhaps a different minimalist design (or changes to the copy text) could do the job, but this seems like exactly the type of app where a maximalist, colorful, tongue in cheek kind of design could have worked.
That's contradictory. "Flat" design is just text on a rectangle (at best); Windows 3.1 actually indicated what was a control and what its state was.
When a friend of mine saw Windows 8 screenshots his first reaction was "why does it look like Athena[0] widgets?" :-P
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Athena_Widgets
At the time I was shocked - since when did the google UI become the traditional? They really had no clue how long it took us to get things look right.
Completely off topic, but why do I need to know your sexuality? Seriously, can we stop doing this? It does not matter.
It's a joke. Straight men are stereotypically less sensitive to fashion trends than women or gay men. He's using his age, gender, and orientation to make light of how baffling he finds the design preferences (and language) of other groups.