Ketchup Bottles & The Physicality Of Design | Hacker News Reader

Ketchup Bottles & The Physicality Of Design

flyosity.com

29 pointsflyosity10 comments

I was first surprised (and, admittedly, a bit disappointed) that the post wasn't more about the bottle itself. Then, I was even more surprised when the post never mentioned the term for the effect it discusses (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeuomorph).

It's mentioned in one of the articles he linked to.

What I find weird is that there's an extra line on the 57 to add a 3D effect to text that's really 3D.

It's not that surprising. Clearly the "3D" on the bottle is "monochromatic" (not the best term) in the sense that everything is either flat (no change to the original surface), or embossed to a fixed depth. The extra line makes the big "57" look even deeper.

When I read the title I was expecting an article about the impracticality of the Ketchup bottle design itself. For something that is so widely used, I've never been able to understand the impractical design of ketchup bottle. For such a viscous fluid, bottle design in highly inefficient and bothersome, so much so that the wikipedia page of ketchup itself, addresses the issue [1]. Admittedly, with the prolific use of squeeze bottles and sachets, the issue has been sidelined, I guess its just one of those things that have no rhyme or reason.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketchup#Viscosity

At the risk of sounding arrogant, I found the post very naive, specially considering the ignorance of skeuomorphism which is the basic theory behind this "phenomenon", and has been pretty much under the spotlight recently.

The wikipedia article is worth a submission by itself, thanks.

I've never been a big fan of design like that. I like it subtly and in moderation--not like that Apple buttons. I've always found that certain elements of Apple's UIs stand out too much (scroll bars and buttons mainly).

I personally like minimalist design (like HN, actually). From what I've seen, WP7 has the most minimalist interface of the main mobile systems, and I am drawn to it (if only it wasn't so closed and supported by a moderately annoying company...).

Are you referring to OS X scrollbars prior to Lion? The bars in iOS and Lion are about as subtle as they can possibly be.

I'm fine with so-called minimalist design, like the visual look of HN. That said, there are some features that are woefully missing on HN. The bizarre too-wide text width makes it unusable on a mobile phone without reflow (which is a feature that makes browsing unusable on most other websites), and barely usable on even larger tablets like the iPad. Comment threads can't be collapsed. The whole user experience of voting and replying is bizarre and unpredictable (some threads can be voted and replied on, some can't, and voting icons just disappear after you click one).

Design trends come and go in waves.

In the past few years skeuomorphism was the hotness partly due to the arrival of CSS gradients and drop-shadows, and of course because of apple.

Now that the last gradients and drop-shadows have been explored (again) we're entering a new era of minimalism (cf. google, android, WinMobile).

Lather, rinse...

Yup, perceived affordances. http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/affordances_and_design.html

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