Why do we round corners?

You can't just write "The following examples are taken from this great [other article]" and then proceed to copy the entire other article, swapping synonyms like you're in 9th grade and forgot about your history report until the night before.

Pretty egregious and disingenuous article IMO. Even the captions to the pictures are the same. The only way I'd consider this even _remotely_ acceptable is if it began with an into stating "printed with permission from user 'Anthony' at uxmovement.com" or something of the sort.

Since this HN comment thread, which was well-deserved, the webpage now implies that the copycat author's account has been suspended (likely thanks to reports from HN users), noting: "ERROR 410 This account is under investigation or was found in violation of the Medium Rules. There are thousands of stories to read on Medium. Visit our homepage to find one that’s right for you."

For reference purposes, this is an archived version of the article with plagiarized content that was originally submitted: https://archive.fo/x4UDs

Briefly: boards get wider and narrower as they absorb and release moisture from the air, respectively. The length remains constant. Anywhere you have a wide board (or glued up panel) affixed cross grain to another piece, you need to account for wood movement.

The problematic joint in this case is where the side panels run into the posts that form the corners and support the "roof".

Best case is that your grandkids live in an area with extremely constant humidity and nothing bad happens. In any other case, those wide panels are going to get wider and narrower as the seasons change and you'll either split a panel or the Kreg screws will work loose over time.

Traditionally, there are a couple of ways of dealing with this. If you're doing mortise and tenon construction, you'd have multiple mortise and tenon joints along the width of the panel/length of the post. Only one is fitted tightly and glued. The remainder are left unglued and loose along the length of the post to allow the panel to grow and shrink in width.

Table tops are traditionally joined to table bases using table buttons. Modern figure eight hardware or elongated screw holes are other equally valid options.

On the subject of rounding corners, I try to avoid a super aggressive rounding for most furniture. I agree with your dad that this is a great place to put a heavy round over. Those beds are going to be a fort, jungle gym, and probably space ship over time.

For anything that isn't going to be used quite so hard (bookshelves, for instance), I usually consider whether the client has kids or not when I'm deciding how much to break the edges.

If there aren't kids, I shoot for my old boss's standard of "looks hard, but feels soft", if there are kids, I break them a little more aggressively than that, as much for the preservation of the furniture as the children. Sharp corners wear pretty poorly, and a little extra softening helps keep the finish and wood in better shape over time at the cost of some initial crispness.

Anyhow, I hope the grandkids love the beds, and that everything works out without things loosening up over time. Just the same, maybe give them a little shake next time you visit to make sure :-)

Glass optics (lenses, mirrors, etc.) will usually specify "protective bevel on all edges," and the fab shops know exactly what to do. The beveled edge is resistant to chipping.

Second would be how rounded corners on buttons or inputs helps distinguish the background and surroundings from the interactive part of the page.

From the article:

+ Boxy shapes are commonly seen as reliable, uniform, traditional, and professional.

+ Round shapes are commonly seen as charismatic, endearing, harmless, and friendly.

Sounds like you and the authors would agree.

It's a little ironic to me that we've literally resorted to "cutting corners" with our latest UX trends.

Recent HN discussion about the wyze cam app - it was pointed out to me that a feature I had never been able to find (and only put in a less than half-assed attempts to find tbh) - was via a HUGE green button on X screen.

Seeing as though I have used this app many many times over the past year plus, I went looking for it - and wham - it is actually there.

But.. it's a large sharp cornered bottom of the screen - which made it look like a header / footer / name of page to me.. it never dawned on me that it was a 'button' - if it had rounded corners and a drop shadow it would have be obvious to me.

Of course I had other expectations as well - that the 'thing to push' would be above the half way fold of the screen to access such an important function - and that the naming conventions would be done better - but I digress.

Now I did like the 'beauty' of slightly rounded corners back in the day when everything was sharp, and many web pages had 'sidebars' - I liked the look of a round corner there.

Sadly most content is absorbed via the mobile devices and such 'form' is not as much about beauty / style as it is to show function these days it seems.

Small data points, but another perspective that may not have been considered nonetheless.

I don't agree with a lot of what Jobs did, but he was absolutely right about rounded rectangles.

> Bill's technique used the fact the sum of a sequence of odd numbers is always the next perfect square (For example, 1 + 3 = 4, 1 + 3 + 5 = 9, 1 + 3 + 5 + 7 = 16, etc). So he could figure out when to bump the dependent coordinate value by iterating in a loop until a threshold was exceeded. This allowed QuickDraw to draw ovals very quickly.

Still blows my mind. I have a hankering to try to blind-rewrite this algorithm knowing only the above.

The square rectangle pairing was also easier than the rounded one to match (there were fewer details to compare).

Easier to "interpret"? Maybe not.

Easier on the eyes though is one aspect of the point they are making, an aspect I can get behind.

I think there is a way of thinking where you step outside yourself, try to see things in a novel way as though seeing them for the first time. I think in those times of reflection/meditation, you do see how maybe a thing like a shape can worm its way into your subconscious — cause a mild sense of unease for example.

Designers, artists, I would argue are more in tune with that — maybe more sensitive to it?

More seriously: I found the examples in the article quite interesting. "Which of these is easier to look at?" The high frequency of the starlike shape (spiky circle?) and the fork tines induce a bit of fatigue versus the given example alternatives. But I found the curved lines and the grid of rounded rectangles to be of a similar noise: added visual complexity that required more effort.

    -webkit-border-radius: 5px;    
    -moz-border-radius:5px;
    -khtml-border-radius:5px;
    border-radius: 5px;

An artifact of modernity, surely? Historically, tight, neat corners required large amounts of skill and the right tools to create, whereas there were many approaches to rounding-off an arbitrary corner or edge.

I think rounded is what sharp corners will look like over time. A woodworker takes a block plane and chamfers the edge of the furniture they are working on so that it isn't instantly dinged up within days of being in the buyer's home.

At the same time then, a sharp-edged piece of furniture shows that either the material itself is extremely strong, resilient, or shows that the owner is fastidious in the care of their furniture. The sharp edge is perhaps a subtle status-symbol.

Oddly, Jobs' next venture, NeXT, went with a sharp-cornered rectangular UI.

I guess I still prefer the former to the latter.

Tide goes out, tide stays out?