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Comment by krackers | Hacker News Reader

The same art world (or more specifically the "Consumer Aesthetics Research Institute") also named "Frutiger Aero" the defining aesthetic of 2000s, even though it was really only seen in a few places (Aqua aesthetic is very different from Aero). All of this should probably be taken with grains of salt.

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Is CARI part of the ”art world”? Where have CARI said that Frutiger Aero was ”the defining” aesthetic of 2000s? They are working to identify many different aesthetic trends that existed in parallel, not one that defines each decade.

Their description of Frutiger Aero explicitly includes Aqua, both mentioned by name and included visually:

https://www.are.na/consumer-aesthetics-research-institute/fr...

There is no “official opinion” of the art world. These are just different organizations with their own opinions.

In fact, when you see someone in the art world claiming that X is a "defining" anything, it usually means that they have a big collection of X for sale.

In this case, I imagine it's submarine marketing for the movie that's out.

Submarine? Astro-turf or native-advertising, maybe? Or perhaps I misunderstood.

Basically the same. An “article” planted by a PR firm, where the promotional target just happens to pop up about halfway through.

I'm not sure this magazine is nearly popular enough for that to be worth it.

hacker news is, though. I'd be interested to see if the same article has been posted to two dozen subreddits etc (though not so interested as to actually do anything about it lol)

I never got why Frutiger Aero got so popular as a ‘nostalgic’ aesthetic, when it’s basically the Windows Vista, GNOME 3 (the awful rewrite of GNOME 2), KDE 4.0 (the buggy, emo black rewrite of KDE 3) look?

It was the lowest point of computer graphics. Who the hell is nostalgic for that? Probably just kids that had their formative years in those ~2-3 years. Not sure you can even call it a niche.

I’m a fan on the vaporwave/Windows 2000/XP aesthetic, the Vista era is when everything started going to shit.

Its fascinating to me. I grew up in the UK home computer scene of the mid 80s-early 90s. After this, the Frutiger Aero aesthetic seemed to me redolent of the total corporatization of what previously seemed a much more human and approachable computer world. Now everything was behind glass, impossibly polished by unfathomable, expensive machines. I found it totally alienating.

Same, I hated when everything transitioned to it and became harder to read as a result. Frutiger Aero was a sterile sort of cheerful in a way only a CEO could think was relatable. It basically marked the turning point where the UI stopped being something janky that felt human made, into a mass produced corporate template.

Looking at it felt like the visual equivalent of licking soap.

Every time I see it now, I can only think “good riddance”.

Well yes, nostalgia is based on age. The people who are nostalgic for that grew up with those sorts of UI.

Yeah, even nostalgia is no longer what it used to be...

Welcome to old age :-).

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