Artists, shrug off that imposter syndrome – the tech world needs you | Hacker News Reader

Artists, shrug off that imposter syndrome – the tech world needs you

magicbell.com

131 pointsdfeusse116 comments

I think people underestimate how UI aesthetics actually improve user experience.

I remember when I was younger it was a lot easier to be more productive and creative with Pages, Numbers, Keynote than their competitors (this was when they were still skeuomorphic). The pretty UI genuinely motivated and inspired me, to an extent that I actually noticed. I really believe it helped start projects easier and work on them longer.

Still, you should never have flashiness sacrifice usability. Pages was a good example because Apple understood usability. I’m not arguing for excess animations, ugly contrasts, etc.

In fact, plenty of minimalist design is pretty while also being usable. Google Docs/Slides/Sheets in the browser, for example, are actually well designed. Material design without the shadows would still have all the usability with less flare, but nobody would build their website off of that. I think a lot of graphic designers who make minimalist designs, strive to make them pretty without even realizing

Another example of this is the investment app Robinhood. They make it so easy for beginners to start investing because they have removed all the cutter from their UI and UX - granted some would argue that it's too simple for the user's own good.

Material design is like the design of a typical hotel room. It aims to accommodate everyone. It aims to be a temporary home for everyone and a permanent home for no-one. Hardly anyone would actively choose to make such a clinical, impersonal, unopinionated environment their home.

That's what happened with user interfaces when software ate the world – once the UI designers tried to reach everyone, be the place for everyone, the hotel room design took over. The call to bring artistic view into designing interfaces only makes sense if you are brave enough or lucky enough to allow your product to be opinionated, to not be for everyone.

As a trained artist in the technology field, actively working on speculative HCI designs, I don't often see companies that are open to opinionated designs. Most expect the designer to produce decoration, whereas the actual strength of a good designer lies in creating a space, a choreography, an interaction that fits the needs of the customer exactly right. That solves the actual, human need in a way that is true to the medium.

don't turn your project into a hotel room, I beg you!

I really enjoyed this comment. I wish new software was weird, I want software that looks bizarre, stuff that is almost nonsensical until you try to use it and realize it makes you feel good. Everything feels the same today because of hotel room design.

Interestingly enough, this is one of the aspects of being a music producer I enjoy! Every plug-in feels like it’s designed to be inspire you. Let’s be honest, an EQ plugin is super basic in what it does to the sound yet we are blessed with dozens of different designs.

It’s the same with any other effect or instrument! The designer's get to have a field day!

It’s my biggest criticism of Ableton - they’re built in modules (not really plugins) are as bland as the whole DAW and don’t act like 3rd party plugins.

basically all DAWs have a stock look and some plugins even ship without an UI and defaults to how that DAW visualizes them. I'm not a Live user, but I'm actually a bit envious because I like how the rack effects look and behave.

>It’s my biggest criticism of Ableton - they’re built in modules (not really plugins) are as bland as the whole DAW and don’t act like 3rd party plugins.

This is one reason why I like Bitwig. It has fewer/inferior native devices compared to Ableton, but I like the UI/UX a lot more, and I almost exclusively use third-party plugins, anyway. Plus it has plugin isolation so a plugin crash won't crash the whole application.

As a long time ableton user that awitched to Bitwig I think you are doing them a disservice by labeling their native devices as inferior. They are different, they are somewhat reduced, but every single internal plugin is incredibly versatile, especially in combination with the insane modulation capabilities Bitwig has. Granted: I still like my Fabfilter Q3 over Bitwigs EQ+, but I also earn money using just that tool for days at a time. If I had to use just Bitwigs internal devices for the rest of my days I wouldn't feel limited at all, something that I wouldn't be able to say about any other DAW I used (except maybe Renoise, which is a totally different concept however).

I think the hotel room design is what's weird, as opposed to unique, specific designs. The former being the result of scaled-up data/market-driven decision making producing something no one person asked for... that's what's truly bizarre

I say this unironically: you may enjoy Vim?

I enjoy Vim. It is opinionated (or its defaults are), and when you first encounter it, it makes you ask why anyone would design something this way ... but then all of a sudden you grok it and you realise that you want everything to be like this.

I agree with you and the other person who replied. I also see how UIs that have become hotel-room-like are similar to auto design. They're converging on a mean that is efficient which limits uniqueness.

I feel like there's a place for being unique and place for being an efficient hotel.

Social media sites, ex forums used to have this uniqueness, now they're consolidated hotels for efficiency (not necessarily user friendly efficiency unfortunately).

This site is also a good example of being purposefully painful and bland even at the cost of hostility towards impaired users, but I guess it's unique in that way.

Taken to an extreme, MySpace allowed every user to customise the appearance of their profile. That was great for individuality (and training a generation of web designers) but the site lacked a consistent look-and-feel, and the platform passed from the scene.

I'd like to see it return, though probably in some subcultures (indie music, hospitality exchange) rather than the mainstream.

Lol, I just stayed at the SF Grand Hyatt for 5 weeks and noticed lots of bad design in the hotel rooms.

1. a shallow basin on top of bathroom counter that encourages splashing water outside the sink

2. because its a basin on top of the counter it's impossible to clean well under it so it looks disgusting if you happen to look on top of the counter under the basin. Like if you happen to push a toothbrush under there (easy) you'll likely never want to use that toothbrush again after to see what it touched.

3. because it's shallow the overflow drain hole faces up meaning bending over to get a mouth full of water has you staring straight into a moldy yucky hole. A more normal deep, more vertical sink the overflow hole might be just as gross inside but it's hard to accidentally look inside it and get grossed out with your nose and mouth being 3-4 inches from the mold.

4. The mirror like surface of the bathroom counter shows a very clear reflection into the back of the mirror light which has tons of gross dust and mold.

Yea, don't design like a hotel room (eg, bad design)

Note: The hotel was not bad, especially for the current price which I'm guessing is a COVID price ($150-$200 a night). It's just interesting how much form over function the interior designer's choices were.

As for your comment in general, I like interesting UIs but I hate bad UIs more. 2 examples I've run into recently.

* Match.com, if you start editing your profile it pops up an overlay to edit. If you click anywhere outside that overlay you lose anything you had entered. I wanted to grab a piece of text and lost several minutes of work.

* Hinge. IIRC if you start entering something and switch away to another app for a moment you lose everything you started entering.

* I forgot which app it was but today I needed to copy a phone number but the app wouldn't let my select it.

* Shopify's phone number entry takes 10 characters. So if you type 123-555-1212 you get 123-555-12. If they don't want the dashes why not ignore them. Or better, allow them and just ignore them on the server. There's no good excuse for forcing the user to format a common form of number into some other format when the computer can do that for them.

My point is, I'd much rather UI designers start with some framework that supports known best practices and also learning what are best practices before just making some random new UI because they feel the need to be different (not saying Material Design is that)

Square is one of my favorite examples. Square was always beautiful and elegant (if skeuomorphic, boy am I glad that trend is over - remember when iCal looked like "an ugly wild west" [1])

Compare Square to a classic point of sale device. Night and day. It really opened up payment acceptance in a way that I don't think it could have without the aesthetic/UI/UX.

Design and usability matter!

[1] https://gizmodo.com/ugh-god-why-is-apple-making-everything-l...

There has been some research into how visual aesthetic affect the perceived user experience. If I don't misremember, the subjects found those applications that were more aesthetic (to them) to function better and easier than a barebones version that did the exact same thing.

missing the geocities eye cancer pages, with the star spinning backgrounds, just kidding, but definitely, the internet has come a long way but there is still a ton of room left for growth

As an amateur painter and professional coder, I must say art and design are key to even my statistical analysis. The issue is the human reader of your product. You want to make their experience easy and pleasant, even if it's reading numerical analyses. Thus, I take very boring looking data and turn it into something that's possible to engage with easily. That's composition, design, detail oriented execution, many crossovers between various creative fields.

Absolutely agree with this. I love that most mainstream monitoring tools today aren’t just “graphs” but they keep in mind contrasting/complementing color codes to make it easy to read and spot changes that may be concerning.

If I’m an engineer operating services I probably have to stare at dashboards and graphs a lot; making them pretty/easy to read makes my life just a little bit easier and I’m grateful for that.

As a technical writer, that also applies to how you write and structure information. I spend a lot of time refining the documentation I write, because I've been the victim of poor documentation.

This goes hand in hand with a good design, good typography and quality code. The result is a website that answers your questions and makes you feel more confident about your goals.

So she lower the contrast and then gave a component a shadow where as none of the others have any 3D effect and are completely flat? It feels widely inconsistent to me and the message doesn’t hit right with me. There are people who train in graphic design that eventually become UI/YX designers… which isn’t to say an artist couldn’t go that route, but this doesn’t seem like a particularly compelling example.

As a frontend dev I would probably stick to the original design if presented with the new one. The new one is inconsistent and looks slightly outdated. Not saying that the original design is perfect though, or that the new one is crap.

On top of that, it has some other weird stuff going on, which might be beside the point, but it still caught my attention. For example, why is every input field now a dropdown? Are you really going to select colors and pixels in a dropdown? It just makes it feel sloppy.

The title is a disaster.

It would only make sense if they are selling training services to artists to migrate to UI design, and they want to lower their self-esteem so that they actually pay them for the training.

Oh.

This article feels like a bit of a mess. It doesn’t really back up either of its two statements.

Imposter syndrome generally requires that you are/were in the role that makes you feel like an imposter waiting to be found out.

There’s an interesting tie between UI/design and a color principle. There’s recognition that an artist may find this gratifying and relevant. But, it’s a limited example not necessarily relevant to all visual artists. As a specific example, these guidelines could easily rolled into UI best practices and require no further input from color experts or artists.

What I was reminded of, was interfaces designed for visual interest with little concern for design principles: Winamp skins, Enlightenment window manager themes and Kai’s Power Tools (https://www.mprove.de/script/99/kai/2Software.html)

> Imposter syndrome generally requires that you are/were in the role that makes you feel like an imposter waiting to be found out.

Not a big fan of the article either, but this doesn't strike me as accurate from my own experience. Impostor syndrome is more often, in my neck of the woods, used to refer to general lack of self-confidence. It can prevent you from applying to a job, too.

That's an incorrect use. Imposter syndrome is called _imposter_ syndrome for a reason.

Imposter syndrome can keep you from advancing your career because you think you shouldn't have a career in the first place and if you try to move up you'll finally be found out.

That just sounds like a lack of confidence. If you aren't an imposter, why would you call it imposter syndrome?

>If you aren't an imposter, why would you call it imposter syndrome?

Couldn't you say this about the names of various psychological syndromes? "If you aren't Alice in Wonderland, why would you call it Alice in Wonderland syndrome?"

It's referring to the person's subjective experience, from their (perhaps warped) point of view.

You can call it whatever you want, but if the description doesn't fit I think it's fair to say it's at best a poor label. And it will always lead to confusion when just trying to communicate something. Why not just call a spade a spade?

It's a psychological condition afflicting someone, not that they're actually an imposter.

Imagine a lawyer who is terrified to go to work every day. She went to a good law school, got good grades, passed the bar exam, is well-respected in her field, etc. But she is terrified that her colleagues will, one of these days, find out that she's not even truly a lawyer at all -- she's just someone who managed to jump through enough hoops to convince people that she's a real lawyer. Once the people around her learn who she really is, hoo boy... she's going to lose her law license and her reputation and her clients and her house... she lives in fear of being "found out" every single day and it's beginning to affect both her career and her health.

Is this lawyer an imposter? No, she's truly the lawyer everyone thinks she is, and it would be inaccurate to call her an imposter. But she is suffering from imposter syndrome.

What you just described is an example of imposter syndrome (at least the way I think of it). The comment I was responding to was not.

If the lawyer feels like an imposter in her current role, that's different from feeling like an imposter in a role you don't even have. This is the distinction I'm making, and why I think the label doesn't fit. Should I feel like I have imposter syndrome because I'd be uncomfortable as a professional athlete, something I don't do? Or should I just realize I don't have confidence to do something else? To me those are very different. Recognizing I can't do everything isn't a form of imposter syndrome - if it is it makes the label completely meaningless.

I'm aware it's a psychological condition. We're arguing over something we haven't even defined yet though, so how would you define it?

If someone doesn't think of themself as a "real artist" even though they really do make real art, they might not seek a paid job that uses their art skills, as a UI designer or otherwise. I think that could reasonably be described as "imposter syndrome" by a layperson, but I'm not going to haggle over whether or not it meets a formal definition.

> but I'm not going to haggle over whether or not it meets a formal definition

I'm not trying to haggle, but we can't have a meaningful conversation about a term if you aren't going to define it.

Agree to disagree, I guess.

>Should I feel like I have imposter syndrome because I'd be uncomfortable as a professional athlete, something I don't do?

We aren't talking about short couch potatoes being scared to apply to the NBA. That's a justified sense of inadequacy.

We're talking about people switching from one fairly normal job to another one that probably has a lot of overlap with what a person was already doing. Imposter syndrome is the unjustified sense of inadequacy.

Its not a binary thing though. Some people would have a little bit of doubt transitioning to a slightly different role and that's normal. Change is scary to lots of people to varying degrees. However, some people are very competent, yet might be afraid to apply for a higher level position or a slightly different role because they fear that they are actually terrible and that they've gotten where they are due to luck and graft. That's imposter syndrome.

Both imposter syndrome and alice in wonderland syndrome have the individual feeling like an imposter/alice in wonderland in this case?

lack of confidence is imposter syndrome. Actual ability or lack there of has nothing to do with whether or not you feel like an imposter

You seem to be misunderstanding what imposter syndrome is. The entire point is that you aren't an imposter but you feel like one.

Its used to refer to people that are actually competent at what they do but they feel like they have faked everything and that the entire world is about to find out. A lack of self confidence is a core part of imposter syndrome.

Language is based on use. Popular use is never incorrect. Dictionaries don't dictate language, they try to follow it.

I hear this argument pretty frequently, but it comes off as more of an excuse.

Most people aren't thumping the dictionary like a fundamentalist might a Bible, they're just pointing out that they have a different understanding of the word than another person does. Language is useful when everyone's on the same page.

And especially regarding words drifting toward hyperbole, exaggeration, and sometimes simple misuse, sometimes it makes sense to resist the change. Compare this to cultural drift as a whole - sometimes, it drifts away for the worse and people calling it out as such aren't necessarily being obtuse just for the fun of it.

Sincerely, a person that refuses to let to of the whole "literally" thing. I'm great at parties.

regardless of whether it's technically correct(or who even gets to decide that) - the point of using language is to communicate, if you are communicating what you want then you're accomplishing your goal.

Sometimes you might want to speak more formally or 'proper' - but that's just another example of communicating effectively, by using word choice to convey the right level of formality. Or to be perceived a certain way.

Of course it's fine people are pointing out that they use the word a different way. Just saying I think the author used a clear word choice to effectively communicate what he meant to the largest number of people - even the people who are pointing out that he used the word wrong know what he was trying to communicate(otherwise they wouldn't realize he was using it 'incorrectly').

>Sincerely, a person that refuses to let to of the whole "literally" thing. I'm great at parties.

Literally has been used to also (or mainly) mean "figurativelly" for centuries, including in major authors, it's not some new phenomenon from some unsophisticated masses...

It's just a sound, it's not attached to some inherent meaning that must stand still till the end of time. Not to mention etymology (it originating from the word literal) != meaning.

In fact, literal itself (and literally) have changed meaning twice in the past, originally they were used to talk about things related to words not to mean "in actuality" (which is also where "literature" comes from: littera from which literature and literal comes from meant: "letters").

So, it's people who don't know the proper history and use of literally that are annoyed by its used as "figuratively".

Probably they also don't know that literally wasn't about "in reality" to begin with, or that this is just one of many contronyms, words that mean both one thing and the opposite (e.g. "dust" - you "dust" to clean a house, and you also "dust" to sprinkle some powder on something, or "clip" which means both to attach and dettach, "sanction" - to approve or to put punitive measures on, etc.).

Thanks for the history of the usage. I found an article that refers to some notable authors using it in a hyperbolic sort of way, maybe I'll do some digging there.

My argument isn't really based in etymology, though, and I don't really care about the history of the words I quibble over - I'm fine with language changing in general. My issue is that making "literally" an alias to "very very" and/or "figuratively" leaves a gap where I liked the word to be and may leave it ambiguous. If I were to write about a guy who heard a joke so funny that his heart gave out, I'd be in a real pickle. A real pickle.

So the history of the word doesn't really change my opinion, and doesn't make my opinion based in some sort of ignorance. It's sort of fun to argue against the history-based argument that's usually used to support "my side" (invalidly, it seems), though.

>If I were to write about a guy who heard a joke so funny that his heart gave out, I'd be in a real pickle. A real pickle.

Wouldn't that be a figurative/metaphorical pickle? I can't imagine you'd be inside a jar in actual brine and left to ferment.

Reasonable, but if you have conclusions that refer to meaning A and meaning B is now dominant, your conclusions may be false.

For instance, let's say "begging the question" is a logical fallacy and we're in the universe where it refers to the circular argument fallacy. Fallacious arguments are bad and so we can dismiss an argument that relies on this.

Now, let's say over time "begging the question" means "the question begs asking". If we still act as if "that begs the question" means "that is a fallacious argument" then the shift in meaning has made us reach incorrect conclusions.

That is, if meaning shifts, you must bust your cache on conclusions that follow out from the original meaning.

>That is, if meaning shifts, you must bust your cache on conclusions that follow out from the original meaning.

Certainly. But most of the time the problem is not people that have a "stale case", but that know perfectly well what the new meaning is, but are opposed to others using the word in that sense for ideological or pedantic reasons.

I mean, nobody really thinks "I'm literally dead from exhaustion" means I'm actually dead. They know perfectly well what it means, and have no meaning-cache issue. They just want to be pedantic...

I felt like this was a case of that. i.e. imposter syndrome is the narrow zone of lack-of-self-confidence-in-the-face-of-counteracting-evidence. i.e. you score 40 points a game but you don't believe you're actually a good basketball player.

My lack of confidence at playing recreational basketball, on the other hand, is fairly well-founded. It does have a basis and I will probably succeed better if I focus on building my game. I'm bottlenecking on skill.

The 40-point-guy, on the other hand, is not going to get any better if he focuses on improving his game. He's bottlenecking on confidence.

On the gripping hand, though, you're right in that this case seems to have just been a prescriptivist speaking and personally I usually find terminology-discussions boring, so I'm horrified to have found myself having participated in one on the side of prolonging. I'll leave the previous bit in just because it's a thought I already wrote.

Good thought. Don't forget that op is an artist not a linguist.

> Imposter syndrome generally requires that you are/were in the role that makes you feel like an imposter waiting to be found out.

Actually, it requires that you perceive other people to perceive that you have abilities, etc., exceeding what you perceive yourself to have. Role is tangential, though having a role that (you perceive) creates an expectation of particular abilities might contribute to you perceiving others to be perceiving you to have the abilities.

But, relative to the immediate context, it is correct that not feeling qualified for a role you don't have and that you don't think you are or would be seen as qualified for by others for is just (justified or not) low (relative to an arbitrary target) self-image, not impostor syndrome.

I've heard this described as "self gatekeeping".

Regarding imposter syndrome: While I know that imposter syndrome is a real phenomenon that people experience, I think that it's become some catch-all solution to the fact that many young people have not actually put in the practice to master their craft. The times in my life where I've felt "imposter syndrome", it would go away after I had put in the work to get better at whatever subject/hobby I was feeling like an imposter doing. This has led me to believe that the majority of people who are dealing with imposter syndrome are in fact just experiencing the perfectly normal discomfort of recognizing that they are not yet as competent in something as they would like to be.

I think this may be a result of the postmodern emphasis on subjectivity that has pervaded American culture for the past decade and a half. If your art sucks, which of the following options is easier on your ego? Saying people "just don't get it" and that you're suffering from a psychological condition, or that you just need to practice more?

I actually think analysis paralysis is more relevant most of the time. It’s not thinking you’re not good enough - more that there are so many options it’s hard to figure out one to focus on.

I agree wholeheartedly with your comment.

Impostor syndrome is a prerequisite for getting a job these days. Companies only want to hire people who feel like frauds and investors like to invest in people who feel like fraud.

Since companies can't actually advertise that they're looking to hire fraudsters, they have to settle for the next closest thing: People who feel like frauds.

Source?

Your own eyes and your brain.

I'm not sure what it is, but something about the colour palette used in the examples shown feels a bit off to my untrained eyes.

Is there actually a job market for pure UI designers? I often see UI as only a small part of job description that involves other non-art-related technical skills.

It feels like the market is already saturated with people who can do UI design and a lot more (or the other way around for that matter). I am glad that the author managed to find internship as a UI designer and I'm aware that the author plans "to extend into UX", but the emphasis on UI design as a career change for "traditional" artists sounds... dangerous.

Edit: removed confusing parenthetical.

There's definitely a market for UI designers (as well as visual designers).

"UI designer" as a job title basically means you as a designer have clear area of responsibility; the user interface. You find these role in larger companies because when you reach a certain scale you need to build design systems, digital and/or print style guides, asset frameworks, micro animations, etc.

Startups typically hire hybrid designers with a mix of UI and UX skills. In Scandinavia these roles are often called "UI/UX designers" and in US, where the design culture is more mature, it's sometimes called a "Product designer" and has a different set of responsibilities.

So the short answer is 'yes' but it depends on a lot of things like the size, maturity, and design org. within the company.

As a practicing visual artist / art school hippie who recently got into working as a software engineer I got really excited when I saw this, noted problems aside. But I wasn't surprised to see it was limited to UI/UX.

I'm having a really hard time finding other art school grads and visual artists working on the engineering side of tech and it's starting to make me feel a little crazy.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to find some other visual artists working as software engineers to connect with?

Art school grad here - Though I'm not a professional software developer myself, I have a couple artist/SWE friends who are involved in the Algorave community along with a lot of other creative coders. While not a strictly visual medium it could be a nice jumping off point to look into!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorave

Hey thank you so much!

Semi-related, I've been trying to get some resources together for a handful of artists / musicians trying to break into tech on this linked repo.

If you or your artist/SWE friends have any suggestions on helpful resources I'm desperately trying to get more on there via pull requests or the discord linked in the repo!

https://github.com/tombetthauser/artists-in-tech-resources

Hey, lets link up. Does HN have dm's?

lol, if only? :^p

I recently set up a little discord community and corresponding github repo for a couple of other artists trying to break into tech to share resources, connect etc. Hit me up on there or github for sure!

https://discord.gg/3vdb6rk24D | https://github.com/tombetthauser/artists-in-tech-resources

So what happened to me was I started working in film and TV production, and as things became more complicated I had to start writing scripts to automate our pipelines, building servers to share files and track equipment. But most of the time when I use the computer, it's to teach it how to help me make films faster. Most of the tools I write don't have any kind of visual UI components beyond how the documentation is typeset.

A couple few groups that I know of off the top of my head where you might find a lot of overlap between art and tech type people would be the "metaverse" (virtual worlds engines [1][2] and their users) and the closely related 3d graphic arts/game design [3][4].

[1] http://opensimulator.org/

[2] https://github.com/HalcyonGrid

[3] https://www.blender.org/

[4] https://godotengine.org/

Thats a great thought and those are great suggestions. Thank you! :)

There's also the livecoding [0][1] world!

[0] https://toplap.org/ [1] https://supercollider.github.io/

The work on reducing dark mode contrasts seems valid.. lots of dark mode is way too high contrast. It's trendy, so I try it, and pretty immediately can feel the contrast messing with my eyes. So it gets turned off.

However I hate the ever increasing emphasis on design that doesn't even care about actual usability. It's all about the shapes and styling of elements and so much less on how all the components fit together, how the user moves through the application, etc..

I've been at this a while and used to be a UI guy, it feels like the balance of design:usability has shifted further towards design than at any other time since I've been using a computer. In places where there used to not be a "designer" flow and usability could end up being emphasized more than it is today. Today a designer sits there and restyles the widgets, in the past with no designer everyone else was happy to take the stock widgets and follow the design guidelines from MS or especially Apple. No thought on restyling widgets meant all the UI design time was on the usability.

Thankfully the project I work on right now has a good balance. Prior to our current UI designer we had a design-first person and it was kind of a disaster, stuff was getting restyled while UI requests from customers to fix usability issues were left to wither and die.

art is often a political choice to prioritize something above money. so its entirely antithetical to lots of people to do what your suggesting. though there's always the urge to sell out to some degree. but this kinda shit comes off like a religious person telling you to join their religion. "tech" in its modern conception is more about money than anything, which often results in extremely lame stuff. you feel sorry for artists who are poor, but they might feel sorry for you because what you do is so lame.

I personally would rather that all artists stay far, far away from UI design forever, for the simple reason that they will never allow me to customize anything. It's bad enough we're stuck with the current bespoke "light" and "dark" modes in UIs that were fully customizable in the fucking longlongago of the goddamned 90s. Not to mention their propensity for form over function.

No thanks. Kindly fuck off.

Way to completely reduce an industry.

Artists I know don't want to be shacked by corporate structures rather than thinking that they are not smart/capable enough.

The implications of the article suggest that there is a notion of ‘real art’. Our graphic designers are already real artists, so are our programmers.

So the guys and girls that know how to physically paint are real artists, and we need them show us the way? I think not.

Does this person even know any actual artists? Many of them would rather die than work in tech.

> Many of them would rather die than work in tech.

At least until they need to pay the bills.

Apparently many of them would rather not pay the bills

I don't know why you're being downvoted, I know at least 15 people who got some kind of art degree, they pefer to work brutal late-night shifts at a pizza shop or deliver food/drive Uber than take a spreadsheet jockey temp job, even if it pays 3x as much.

My experience is similar. I know a few who eventually have made the jump, especially once they saw someone close to them do it, but for the most part they've largely been unwilling to do anything that seems permanent/career-ish that isn't what they dreamed of. I get it and sympathize, to a point, but....

The idea that one's career must bring personal and spiritual fulfillment is one of the most damaging bits of propaganda fed to young people, I think.

there are many ways to make a living

Right?! Can tech/UI learn things from art? Yes, absolutely!

But man, the hubris.

Ironically, hubris has been a subject of art for thousands of years.

The article opens with "I’ve been an artist my whole life, in various forms -- children’s book illustrator, tattoo artist, and maker of branded images and characters." so presumably they know at least one artist: themselves. A career like that has probably left them with social circles that include a lot of other artists.

That said, yeah, I think the only artist in my circles (I'm a artist myself) who regularly expresses envy of people in tech is the one who's never quite managed to get their career off the ground and is stuck in a series of mediocre clerical support gigs. I sure as fuck wouldn't want to trade "swanning around the parks and cafes of a beautiful tourist destination, working about 20h/week, and paying my rent via Patreon support" for having to go to an office and work on making the FAANGs of the world even richer than they already are.

What kind of art do you practice? If you don't mind sharing.

Mostly I draw comics. Mostly with Adobe Illustrator. http://egypt.urnash.com

Presumably he's not talking to those many, then. What exactly do you want him to say. "Guys, do this thing! It's fun! Except for you guys who don't think it's fun! In that case, ignore this!"

Do you want every exhortation to also include a disclaimer to not be exhorted if you actively oppose?

Within the context of contemporary art, UI design and artists are at complete odds with each other.

Afaik, contemporary art deliberately rejects art as a tool for expression of traditional aesthetics, utilitarian maximization or broad appeal to the untested eye. Commentary, metaphor and art as a reaction to other art is the norm. None of these trainings lend themselves well to UI Design which is fundamentally about aesthetics facilitating function.

IMO, architects would make for great UI designers, as it is another profession that mandates a level of function from the art. They also tend to be quite comfortable with complex software work due to common architectural tools. (a couple of my friends did make the architecture -> UX design transition, and are quite happy)

Software engineers are famously stubborn when it comes to their aesthetics. One may say they're sensitive to aesthetics. But IMO, it is more that they're willing to put in a lot of time to learn abstruse interaction patterns and will defend them to death, irrespective of their general purpose appeal or intuitiveness. Git and Vim are amazing examples. Nothing against the tools. But if they needed widespread adoption from the populace then they'd be dead in the water on day 1. (They are amazing despite their terrible UX, not because of it)

I like to believe that I am quite sensitive to aesthetics and a well designed UI can elevate a mediocre tool to near unbeatable in their competition space. (The financial planning tool someone posted a few days ago on HN is a great example of UI/UX done right)

_______

On another note:

Being an artist is also about status and class. Tech is the Noveau-Riche of this half-century. It is the lowest status thing you can be.

We see it all the time. Tech bros are the butt of every joke and their hobbies/culture/lifestyles are widely mocked. You never see the same level of disdain towards lawyers in DC or finance bros in NYC as you see for tech people in places like Seattle. It doesn't help that the demographic is generally male, traditionally unattractive, nerdy and socially awkward. (This is slowly changing, but not quickly enough. The appeal of tech to a certain demographic also isn't necessarily a bad thing. I will concede that very likely other professions have occupied this same chair in different eras)

The only company that manages to look cool to artists is Apple, and they are very careful about hiding that they are a tech company first, rather preferring to highlight themselves as a fashion company. (The fictionalized steve jobs founding myth also helps a lot)

_________

I would love to see more artists come into tech with a mindset of cooperation and good faith towards the community than disdain and disruption. Maybe we'll see truly great UI design.

This article reminds me of people that say the eagles could have dropped the ring into Mordor.

The corporate world has spent the better part of a century convincing the populace that when one doesn't work in cubes, "people" like artists, then they aren't really doing their share.

And now, suddenly, the corporate state wants those people to prioritize their value as resources to the corporatocracy.

Much like the eagles from LOTR, some people don't have any interest of your company, or IPO, or your disruption no matter how "valuable" they could be to some corporate bottom line.

My doctoral thesis was on precisely the question of what role the Great Eagles could have played before and during the War of the Ring to deliver the One Ring to Mordor. It's not simple enough to say they were great beings who would have been corrupted by the ring, or they were not interested in the power of the ring, or even that the story would have ended in ten minutes and therefore they couldn't do it. There is a lot of research and discussion[1][2][3][4][5][6] of this open question.

[1]: http://www.sean-crist.com/personal/pages/eagles/index.html

[2]: https://lotr.fandom.com/wiki/Great_Eagles

[3]: https://www.polygon.com/lord-of-the-rings/22432394/eagles-lo...

[4]: https://www.reddit.com/r/FanTheories/comments/6nysuy/lotr_cl...

[5]: https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/2333/why-didnt-gan...

[6]: https://www.quora.com/Why-didnt-the-Eagles-fly-the-Ringbeare...

Disclaimer: Not an artist myself but a friend of the writer, and a co-founder of MagicBell - the host of the blog.

Aren't there a lot of artists (just like there are lots of actors) who have a day job to pay the bills? If that job happens to be in tech (and pay well) that should ideally be of interest to many people. Not to everyone but surely to some I assume. They won't be invested in the IPO or disruption but they could be interested in doing their job well and making a good living. I have a lot of friends (not all artists) who are super smart but work for low pay at restaurants and I for one sure wish they could work at tech and make more money. I know for a fact many of them would want to.

Only speaking for myself here, and not speaking as an artist, but I think a lot of companies foist a lowest-common-denominator incentive structure on everyone and then act surprised when they have difficulty with recruiting/retention. Not everyone wants the same thing out of work.

For example, I have a fundamental disconnect with the idea of corporate ladder climbing, and it makes me feel like a bit of an alien sometimes. It's not interesting to me, though I realize you need a certain amount of status to maintain some notion of autonomy. I'm not even talking about office politics per se; I just think the notion of "work X years and get Y title" feels empty to me. As I mentioned, I'm motivated more by autonomy than external perceptions of status.

I'm happy with work, but I've had to realize and accept this in myself, and learn ways of navigating a world where many concern themselves primarily with their own status.

This article title is kind of hilarious given that yesterday I learnt that Twitter is currently de-emphasizing the display of tweets with links to Patreon in them, thus making it harder for artists to grow their financial support.

The tech world will happily use our work to keep people scrolling their endless ad spigots, but the minute we ask people to leave and give some money to us? Nothing.

So come join the tech world, artists! Use your hard-won mastery of color, design, and form to help make a nice frame for some Corporate Memphis clip-art we got off a stock site! It'll be great.

Do you have a link to an article on that? Would love to check it out.

Just a twitter link: https://twitter.com/ThornwolfArt/status/1417952808813301764

UI design is inherently a waste of time for artists.

Tech is, quite frankly, a waste of time for everyone. That's why they pay you so much to turn your life into gigantic market caps.

Why are you on a tech site if you think tech is a waste of time?

I like technology but dislike tech. Plenty of good technical discussions on here.

I'm in tech because they pay me big bucks to basically do nothing, and as I rise the ranks, I can do even less and get paid more. Can't pass on a gravy train.

Just curious, do you mean that you dislike what the big corpos happen to be doing, or do you mean "I dislike it all, I just happen to like learning the stuff + it pays". (I'm not sure I see the difference between "technology" and "tech")

Tech pays a lot because there's a lot of money in tech. Most people in tech are underpaid relative to the value generated, in part because a lot of people enjoy working in tech.

Most tech jobs pretty much demand your entire life's focus. Partially due to the mental demands, partially due to office culture.

Luckily with remote work, it's becoming easier to do 10-20hrs for the same pay 40-60 (accounting for commute and other incidental costs) used to get. So I can finally use my technical skills to benefit myself way more than what I'm selling to my employer for the first time in many years. In a way, this transition to remote work is making it so I can clandestinely get a BigCo to finance my longterm career & personal software dreams ;)

>it's becoming easier to do 10-20hrs for the same pay 40-60

For what it's worth, I did exactly this for years even in the office. But I agree, remote makes this way easier for everyone.

Seems like a rather broad statement. As an artist in UI design I disagree and think it's a fantastic meeting point of artistry and engineering.

I think the point is that UI design isn't really art. If you're interested in both, then great! But they're about as similar as fiction and non-fiction writing.

> UI design isn't really art

Who are you to say what is and is not art?

I mean sure if you want it to be art then it can be. But that's not typically its primary purpose. And the skills required to make a UI good for its primary purpose (usable, easy to understand, etc) are quite different from those required to make good art.

In other words, a UI as an artifact might be art. But UI design as process is different to the creation of art as a process. You could do both, but they're mostly orthogonal.

I have little respect for "artists" who do UI because the job requires little skill.

Sites and exposes like the parent of this entire thread serve to inflate the worth of people who do this stuff.

Painting the mona lisa is talent. Arranging text and pictures with flat colored geometric elements is NOT talent.

The idea that the still life painting is even comparable to some website design is laughable. It takes a lot of skill to be able to create that painting, it takes almost no skill to devise the layout to that site.

> I have little respect for "artists" who do UI because the job requires little skill.

It requires little skill to do it badly, and it's easy to get away with doing it badly. That's not the same thing.

This is like people who read some cheesy superhero comics and declare that comics can't be real literature.

This is where we disagree. It requires little skill to do it well.

Minimal/simple/clean designs are not only simple visually but simple from a intelligence and effort standpoint.

There are many UI designers/programmers but their aren't many Character artists/programmers, 3D artists/programmers, animators/programmers, concept artist/programmers.

The reason is the latter examples are two freaking incredibly hard skills to combine. The former dual skill set is common because UI design is extremely trivial compared to the later skill sets.

I see the main difference being that good UI design should be invisible (i.e. less is more, take away everything superfluous) whereas Art is all about helping people to see things.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com