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Comment by dchest | Hacker News Reader

Dieter Rams's Ten principles of good design state:

5. Good design is unobtrusive. Products fulfilling a purpose are like tools. They are neither decorative objects nor works of art. Their design should therefore be both neutral and restrained, to leave room for the user's self-expression.

6. Good design is honest. It does not make a product more innovative, powerful or valuable than it really is. It doesn't attempt to manipulate the consumer with promises that cannot be kept.

If you read these principles and reverse them, you get your typical "product art" — a product form of clickbait titles — an attention-grabbing product that's intended to shock and generate PR, not sell the actual thing.

Such products are usually shallow: stylized to some theme without deeply understanding it, like user interfaces from movies, or like Lcroium's* own website (https://acrnm.com), which is stylized with useless _underscores and [brackets] without understanding why they are used in computing.

*) that's how you read ACRONYM's logo if you know Cyrillic.

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> Good design is unobtrusive. Products fulfilling a purpose are like tools. They are neither decorative objects nor works of art. Their design should therefore be both neutral and restrained, to leave room for the user's self-expression.

Excuse my French, but fuck Dieter Rams. I certainly understand this viewpoint, and I have no problem with folks that adhere to it, but my problem is with stating as some sort of axiom, with no evidence or reason, that "Products fulfilling a purpose are neither decorative objects nor works of art."

Humans have built things that are both functional and beautiful since culture first existed, and there is nothing wrong with designing products with a strong visual aesthetic viewpoint. If we all followed Dieter Rams' silly advice, all of our computers would still be boring beige boxes, maybe covered in stickers "for the user's self-expression."

Note I say this while agreeing with the latter part of your post. I'm not a fan of this particular design - it feels kitschy and shallow in the same way that Hollywood "hacker" movies show terminals that look like 3D game worlds. But that's just my personal opinion, and I don't fault people for feeling the exact opposite. I do fault people for saying that you shouldn't be allowed to try, and if you do that you are "not following principles of good design."

> I do fault people for saying that you shouldn't be allowed to try…

Can you remind me of the quote where Dieter Rams says that you shouldn't be allowed to try?

I am responding to the author that, at least in my take, appears to be stating that these are "anointed" "good design principles", and that if you don't adhere to Rams' singular viewpoint, you are by definition engaging in bad design.

The exact words I typed are "If you read these principles and reverse them...".

These are Dieter's principles — a product design approach that he believes leads to good design. I pointed out that if you apply the opposite of them, you get this product.

Rams' functionalism is itself a reaction to the ornateness for its own sake that characterized a lot of design in decades prior. But these days functionalism itself seems to be the hegemonic school of thought - consider Apple, for example, which hews closely to functionalist precepts by deliberate intent, and provides a lot of cues for other companies. So a reaction to what was itself once the challenger and is now the incumbent seems reasonable.

That said, I agree the aesthetic here under discussion is pretty miserable. Ostentatious CNC tool marks might impress some, but to me it just says they couldn't be bothered to finish manufacturing the thing before they shipped it, and it shares with brutalism the trait of being deliberately unwelcoming to the senses as a way of demanding attention be paid to itself.

The irony being of course, that huge flat slabs are not somehow inherently more "functional" than something with a handle, or a screen that doesn't break, or a back that doesn't scratch etc.

We just kind of hand-wavy announce that anything boring, sleek, or rectangular is "functional". It's not.

I didn't say "functional"; I said "functionalist" and "functionalism". The latter terms refer to a school of industrial design that aspires to its particular definition of the former.

I can respect the motivation behind this; I favor midcentury modern furniture not least precisely because it doesn't insist on itself with an excess of ornament, as Rams also inveighs against. But there's a seasonality in any new idea; after the first generation for whom it's revolutionary comes a second for whom it's the status quo ante, and most of those raised with any norm will defend and uphold it for its own sake just because it's what they know to be "normal", whether or not the idea itself or its application still makes sense. Hence the canonization of an aesthetic based originally around the idea that no aesthetic deserves to be canonized.

> So a reaction to what was itself once the challenger and is now the incumbent seems reasonable.

I agree with everything you've said, but would just point out that the pendulum has perhaps started swinging in the other direction: a lot of folks in the design world are starting to push back against the associated minimalist/functionalist aesthetic that has taken over much of the world: it can make our built environments feel sterile, boring, and robotic.

Yeah, I get that, although I'm not sure if functionalistic design is only to blame; I'd look also to a culture of disposability that inculcates the idea that if something isn't or ceases to be fully satisfactory as received from the factory, the way to address that is by throwing it out and buying something else, rather than fixing or modifying it to better suit the need.

Design is meant to exist in conversation with culture, and after such a long time developing a society that revolves around consumption I think that meaning has been lost. "Right to repair" is a partial reaction to this also, and valuable as such, but what I really want to see is a swing back in the direction of the idea that made things can and should be made to last - not as perfect, impenetrable monoliths of capital-D Design, but as longstanding participants in the lives of the people with whom they're surrounded, and which can be and are changed by those people to better meet the needs of the day and year and decade.

That isn't something the money power has any incentive to want these days, of course; every thing that need not be replaced today is a thing for which no replacement will be bought or sold today. But this is not a novel problem, and it has been solved before.

Exactly. The removal of user modification from culture is a big loss.

In the 90s, it was nothing to stitch a patch on a piece of clothing that made it uniquely yours, or artfully distress your jeans.

Now, people just... don't. Because they can buy them like that.

Great for consumerism. Less great for individuality and building self-reliance.

This product isn't any less sterile, boring and robotic.

Just the opposite. It's ostentatiously sterile, boring and robotic.

While also being retro, and trying very hard to look like something that might have appeared in the original Matrix movie - which was 24 years ago.

Visually, it's unoriginal, which is an unforgivable design sin - literally a stock laplet with pointless metal bits stuck on which will get in the way if you're trying to use it seriously.

It fails as fashion because it looks like a mess, neither cool, exotic, nor aspirational.

And it fails as design because while it's - perhaps - trying to be ironic, it takes itself too seriously to be funny. And it's just not very functional.

> it shares with brutalism the trait of being deliberately unwelcoming to the senses as a way of demanding attention be paid to itself.

Interesting, is that what you take away from brutalism? To me brutalist design and art is deliberately unwelcoming to critique the blandness and safeness of our modern cushioned existence, not a puerile drawing of attention. I actually enjoy the aesthetic.

But then, disclaimer, I'm a sucker for histrionics and theatrical gimmicks.

That's a reading of brutalism I haven't encountered before. It's not one with which I find myself at all favorably impressed, not least because a phrase like "the blandness and safeness of our modern cushioned existence" suggests a level of engagement with history that, speaking charitably, could stand to be much further developed. But maybe there's a more detailed treatment of this analysis that you could point me to.

I'm sorry, I'm being vague. I didn't mean it like that, I'm not talking about why le corbusier's had a love affair with concrete. I was thinking about how I hate corporate memphis and the design of 95% of UIs, and how I wish there was more "nu-brutalist" web/app design to give all those bland pastels the finger.

Ah, I think I see what you might be driving at. Would it be fair to summarize the view as holding that, beyond valuable affordances for safety equivalent to handrails and warning signs, etc., it does no one any favors to attempt to conceal the essential complexity of the technology underpinning much of contemporary society?

I went to high school in what was essentially an old castle-looking building- when they converted it to have electricity and stuff, they put in conduit and the like, but then painted it to match the walls.

One of my friends did a bit of photoshop to see what it would look like if the conduit was instead a dull gray and it looked so much better and so distinctive that it felt like I had been robbed.

I think there's a reason everybody seems to love the star trek engine room

> If we all followed Dieter Rams' silly advice, all of our computers would still be boring beige boxes, maybe covered in stickers "for the user's self-expression."

Parent should have quoted the entire set, in which good design...

   - is innovative
   - makes a product useful
   - is aesthetic
   - makes a product understandable
   - is unobtrusive
   - is honest
   - is long-lasting
   - is thorough down to the last detail
   - is environmentally friendly
   - is minimal

Dieter Rams and the Ulm functionalist school of thought differed from the immediately preceding minimalists ("less is more") by accepting that design exists and needs to be great on multiple planes: e.g. function, aesthetic, psychological, etc. (many of which are human and subjective!)

To chisel functionalism in industrial design down to something I can fit in a HN comment, my takeaway was that their central tenant was 'Have a specific useful vision, that values your user above yourself, and optimize everything in service to that vision.'

With the understanding that designed objects aren't paintings and must have a utility component.

PS: I would also have a long disagreement about fanciful graphical representations of computing in visual media as a metaphor intended to convey an experience to a computer-illiterate audience, versus a kitschy misunderstanding of reality. ;-)

Technical advisors and directors aren't idiots. You think it's a coincidence that the primary method of interacting with a computer in the Star Trek universe is voice-first?

It seems like they're a fashion company. I don't see how one can "leave room for the user's self-expression" if one doesn't permit and even encourage the user to buy pieces of fashion or artwork to go along with utilitarian sensibility.

Also, the website proper that you linked is amazingly utilitarian, especially in contrast to your introduction. It loads fast, and shows a list of images of various products right on the front page. I have seldom seen a product company with such a practical website as this. I had to look around to find the misuse of special characters that you're criticizing them for. This hardly ruins an otherwise good website

This is a very bad take, and serves only to highlight the joylessness of the person writing it (and the original "design principles")

I would instantly dispute pretty much any word of the first 3 sentences in your post. (except maybe the name)

If you want to live in a world without choice, where everyone and everything looks the same (the inevitable endpoint of form follows function), be my guest, but at the end of your sad life you will remember all the times you looked back over the fence at all the people enjoying life in all its diverse forms, shapes, textures, activities and regret some choices you made along the way.

> everything looks the same (the inevitable endpoint of form follows function)

Optimizing for different tradeoffs (i.e. utility) tells us that sameness is not the end-state of form follows function.

There is certainly a grey zone, here. I personally think a more long lasting enjoyment and satisfaction comes from the possibility of putting some work in e.g. modifying (self-expression)/modularity and not some highly polished "finished" product which barely holds itself:

>Their design should therefore be both neutral and restrained, to leave room for the user's self-expression.

But I also have nothing against highly volatile treats from time to time reminding myself that in the end one must be also able to let go and enjoy the moment.

In keeping with the golden mean (μεσότης) these two things pushed too far are of course ugly, indeed, but the beauty of it very much depends from which side you need a steering direction.

For me for example the tension between the aesthetic choice (ornament) camouflaged by caricaturing multi-functionality (usefulness) of the packaging of an ordinary product is an artistic expression of the state of affair we find ourselves: instant technical obsolescence the moment you have the product in your hands becoming an artifact in its own right. Is art ever useful? Is its value ultimately not just based on a fundamental impotency? I guess nowadays the most talented pool of artists express themselves through marketing. /s

> If you want to live in a world without choice, where everyone and everything looks the same (the inevitable endpoint of form follows function), be my guest, but at the end of your sad life you will remember all the times you looked back over the fence at all the people enjoying life in all its diverse forms, shapes, textures, activities and regret some choices you made along the way.

Are you implying that the same gray macbook, paired with the same iPhone, that everyone else at your company, in your social circle and every coffee shop of your town is not the PINNACLE of social existence?

I don't see how buying something that is mass produced is a form of self-expression outside of the idea that you're an adherent of basic capitalism. Expression is what happens AFTER you buy it.

Personally speaking after growing up in the 80s and having to be a slave to multiple brands from year to year lest I be labeled a lesser child for not having whatever was chic, I'm happy if everyone wears non-descript but functional items that they then modify how they want. Most children in 1987 were walking Coca-cola billboards who wouldn't be caught dead without Guess, Girbaud, or Z Cavaricci jeans. It's one of the outlying reasons that most public schools have dress codes nowadays.

Almost every iPhone user I know has a distinct unique case. Some cases are designed specifically for wireless charging, some have pop sockets which make it easier to hold, some have clear cases with a photograph inserted between the phone and the back of the case.

Plus they all seem to have their own unique crack along the screen.

Or maybe that's just my iPhone owning friends.

Consider how joyless the designer of the unreadable keycaps must be, their sad life as they remember all the times they willfully damaged their even more clueless customers in pursuit of pseudo-style, looking at life in all its diverse forms, shapes, textures, activities and choosing bad ones for the lulz.

Technical constraints do exist, and if you shit on them you are a pretentious bad designer of products that cannot be taken seriously.

Maybe not every keyboard has to be designed for hunt-and-peckers. It's not even particularly original, Das Keyboard has sold blank keyboards for a decade, and many mobile keyboards have supported hiding the key labels for ages too (I've used it in Fleksy and MessagEase, but I'm sure many others have it too).

Maybe it's not for you. That's okay. If it's been a niche for this long then I doubt it's gonna be the default anytime soon.

I had a das keyboard blank face for a few years and really liked it.

I ended up getting rid of it because my org’s password rules were annoying and I struggled to touch type symbols and numbers that weren’t in a word. And whenever I had “guests” it was uncomfortable to them and me so I would have to keep a guest keyboard anyway.

I don't know how y'all type, but typically looking at a keyboard is only something you do for your first year after encountering a computer for the first time. After that, the keyboard takes up your desk, but isn't something you look at in order to use. Thus, keycaps optimized for looking nice while not in use makes more sense than keycaps optimized for being readable. You shouldn't be reading keycaps while you type, because you have a limited field of view and what's showing up on the screen is more relevant than what keys are being pressed.

So the designer doing "I can just focus on art" is probably experiencing more joy than the designer doing "this has to be as cheap as possible" or "this is a keyboard for children learning to touch type", simply because the scope of work is so much more unconstrained. Art could be anything! A keyboard for people learning to use computers is going to mostly be letters.

"Λ" = "A" is the most annoying faux-futuristic typesetting/logo trend I've ever come across. It's a lambda, "L", the ancient symbol of the Lacedaemonians.

It should be possible to make an avantgarde font without confusing or oversimplifying letters.

As an aside, I wonder how many graphic t-shirts those guys sell at $200.

Their plastic macs cost two grand!

Yes, designers are nuts for wanting to make logos that stand out. The design trend I'm sick and tired of is spacing common words with underscores and using capitals to achieve the exact same effect.

Well, it could be worse. I could have done this: ΛDΞPT

Anyway, my point was that the symbol "Λ" has a distinct meaning from the symbol "A" -- and, try as I might, I can't see them as interchangeable.

Most people that come across this logo have never seen Λ before. They might mistake it for an elongated '^' or an upside down 'V' but the bulk will just see an 'A' with a missing '-'.

There is also 'V' as 'U' which is quite confusing and some others. Creative people will be creative, that's what they get paid for. It's low hanging fruit, obviously but it works because you are talking about it. And that was their goal: to get you to notice it. Mission accomplished.

By ignorants, for ignorants.

И for N is equally terrible and meaningless.

There are smart people who like things you hate. You know what kind of person isn't empathetic and compassionate towards their fellow humans? They're idiots! Stupid idiots! MOOOOORONS.

Aren't they sociopaths?

ABBA started it...

Looking at new camera bags, I stumbled across the WANDRD (sure, okay) PRVKE (what? Pruke? Took me far longer than it should to realize it was meant to be 'provoke')...

Have you seen that cool recent movie set on Arrakis? I believe it's called ⊃∪∩∈

Nice, love it. What's the technical explanation for this? I assume it's because HTML5 renders all UTF-8 characters?

Hackernews actually throws out many Unicode characters, such as emoji. But it renders the ones I used, in order U+2283 SUPERSET OF, U+222A UNION, U+2229 INTERSECTION, and U+2208 ELEMENT OF.

I swap the N and M keycaps on my keyboard because I think they should be in alphabetical order. It turns out that the labels on the keys have absolutely no bearing on which scancodes they produce!

Blame NASA ca 1975?

Who are you to say that your interpretation of that character is any more valid than anyone else's? One might see a "turned v"[0] or any other manner of meanings.[1] However most English-speaking people are going to immediately realize that it's meant as a stylized "A".

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turned_v [1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E4%BA%BA

Who said they thought theirs was better? They just stated their opinion.

That being said, who are you to say their interpretation of interpreting things is wrong? Etc etc.

Personally, I think it’s stupid too. Of course people recognize it as “A.” My dislike isn’t because it’s confusing, it’s because I think it’s pretentious and ugly.

Fair enough. Those are some good points!

If we're being pedantic about the lamba, it's worth noting that a word mark logo is not a font, it's almost always a one-off. It doesn't even have to be readable, it just has to be memorable — and hey, it is!

Being a good designer is knowing "Dieter Rams's Ten principles of good design"

Being a great designer is knowing they don't matter

I didn't know about this manufacturer, but I'm glad I do now, because I've been wondering since 2015 where Ubisoft got the design cues for "WATCH_DOGS".

'Shallow' is indeed the word...

I have a 7950x, 64GB of ram, a 4800RTX and that website won't run 30fps for me. Hell it shoots my cpu to 100%. Gross.

3950x, 64gb, 3090 here. CPU usage on firefox didn't rise above .7% for me.

I have a cheap laptop with 8 GB of RAM and an integrated graphics card yet loading the website doesn't even register on my CPU usage.

You have a problem with your setup.

What could it be? Everything else runs fine.

Is 8gb ram notably low now?

Further you mention 2 sets of specs, and use an unmentioned spec as your measure.

> Lcroium's*

> *) that's how you read ACRONYM's logo if you know Cyrillic.

If you know Cyrillic, then why not read it as it is written? What's the point of bastard translating it to Latin?

And also incorrect, C produces variant of the S sound. With ʌ not even being a Cyrillic character, but one from the IPA symbol set. L is Л or л.

That said though, the translation of Cyrillic to Latin is commonly done, and a rather opinionated field. As is the reverse, Cyrillization.

Λ, although not standard in most Cyrillic typography, is a valid Cyrillic form of Л — it's how you write Л by hand, and also how it appears in some typefaces. It's also used in Bulgarian Cyrillic.

My point more here is that л in typeface means something very different. That character has a specific meaning, the logo is clearly just picking and choosing random symbols to look good. That said, my point about C still stands.

It is good to know that symbol is acceptable for handwritten forms though, I've been struggling to differentiate л and п in my handwriting.

I know some Russian and worked with people native from Russia, so I would use the opportunity to train my Russian language skills chating with them. Using a latin keyboard as Russian input is incredibly easy in my opinion. But this keyboard is not cyrilic. It is just a mix of symbols for no purpose beyond visual appeal.

Yes, my point exactly.

That's the thing — normally at first sight you might recognize "И" as mirrored "N". However when you're used to reading Cyrillic alphabet, you see it as "И" at first and only later realize that it's mangled Latin. Given enough similar looking characters, it becomes hard to read. This doesn't work all the time, e.g. if a word has a single "Я" ("ya") in place of "R", it's usually easy to read. Your milage may vary.

Speaking of keyboards, how the hell do they think this product would be sold in countries where there are two sets of alphabets on keyboards if it already comes prefilled with nonsense characters? :)

Personally, I have a few languages mapped to my keyboard. First language is Icelandic, second is a Cyrillic, the other is Czech. I assume it would work similarly to keyboards with no characters on the keycaps (popular with mech keyboard users). When I type I'm not looking for the specific character, but rather going off touch typing.

I don't understand what you mean. There are two Cyrillic letters (ok, the first one is more Greek with the same meaning) in their logo: Л and И, the rest are Latin (apart from "C" which is pronounced "s", and "Y" which looks like У and reads as "u"/"oo"). I provided an attempt of latinization of how I read it at on first attempt.

To be fair, Fashion isn’t really the same as design. No one expects the latest Gucci dress or Lamborghini to be unobtrusive

> Lcroium's

even worse - C -> S in Cyrillic :)

Dieter Rams's principles apply more to consumer products rather than art or fashion.

> more to consumer products rather than art or fashion

Surely this computer is still ultimately meant for computing (in style)?

Surely their jackets are meant to keep you warm and dry (in style)?

It doesn't even apply to consumer products. Thankfully to Apple's shareholder, they obviously ignored these rules.

that's how you read ACRONYM's logo if you know Cyrillic.

Wouldn't it be more like Lsroioum's ?

Acronym make elite tier men’s clothing — they’re anything but shallow.

I said nothing about their clothing. I didn't come to their fashion field with my knowledge and taste. They came to computing, a field I'm passionate about, and produced shallow cargo-culted design presented as an actual product.

This makes no sense. You can absolutely be high end and superficial. Nothing about the two is mutually exclusive.

"Elite Tier"

Oh, says who?

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