Jason Fried Rants about Modern Web Design | Hacker News Reader

Jason Fried Rants about Modern Web Design

tech.co

8 pointsdanmaz749 comments

Interesting to compare that with the rather controversial comment I made some time ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5797626

In that I said:

    I'm probably in a minority here, and I'm speaking
    purely for myself, and it's a strictly personal
    view, but ...

    I hate it.

    I'm sure it's technically very clean, elegant, and
    "nice", but more and more as I look at the "gorgeous"
    and "beautifully designed" sites pointed to from HN,
    I just feel like my face is being pushed through mush.

    I know that sounds entirely negative, and I'm sorry
    about that, but the obsession with blended buttons
    and perfect pastels and crafted corners and so on
    just makes the whole thing feel wishy washy.

I said something similar here[0]:

    There's a mis-match between the terms "well-designed"
    and "looks beautiful." I find many sites that look
    gorgeous, but I can't find what I want, and can't make
    them do what I need. So I leave. They fail the basic
    requirement that they meet the needs of me, a potential
    customer.

    But I'm also finding increasingly that I feel like my
    face is being pushed through mush. Everything seems soft,
    or rounded, or pastel, or otherwise character-free. This
    button is blended, that panel is graduated. It's all free
    of any kind of personality.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3609634

Probably I'm wrong, but it feels a bit like Mr Fried is saying something similar, although probably better phrased, and with better credentials.

It really does seem like we're getting back to the same problems we had when people would use Flash to build an entire web app. Since you could invent a completely unique-to-you set of UI conventions, people did. Now that browsers offer that same capability natively, we're back to the point where for some sites you have to spend extra minutes looking past all the eye-candy just to figure out how the thing works.

There's something in common with what he said imho, but I think he was more concerned with the trend to have less functionalities to reduce clutter than with the choice of colors or rounded corners.

Seems to me that you're complaining about nicely visual laid out websites with poor usability. I am not so sure that Fried is complaining about this. To me it seemed more that in a world full of sleek sites he prefers fake amateurism.. pretty much like how people like to wear retro clothes and be hipster.

I'm not just complaining about poor usability, I'm complaining about how everything is "gorgeous" and "blended" and "just so". There seems to be no edge, no clarity - it's all "just so" and "swoosh."

Problem is, I don't have the language to make it clear what I mean, and if you don't see it, I can't help you to do so. So many web designers think it looks lovely, so that's what we get. I think it all looks "meh", but you know, what do I know, I'm not a designer.

Also, some of the best buildings in the world are made by people who aren’t architects.

What? Which building? If you manage to "make" a building, aren't you an architect by definition?

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernacular_architecture

Do you consider these buildings to be "the best in the world"?

I think the point is sometimes architects eschew local traditions or materials to make a building to their aesthetic standards, often to the detriment of the buildings inhabitants.

These houses might not be "the best" (how would you even classify that?) but they are "evolved" to be comfortable and efficient in the areas in which you'd find them.

Read A Place of My Own by Michael Pollan for an exploration of this very topic.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com