<story><title>The Comeback of Fun in Visual Design</title><url>https://applypixels.com/blog/comeback</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>alxlaz</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t really care about &amp;quot;fun&amp;quot;, but I just can&amp;#x27;t find the words to explain how happy I am that there&amp;#x27;s a chance we might put all this flat madness behind us. I&amp;#x27;m looking forward to:&lt;p&gt;* Not having this conversation with my mom (who, at 60+, is remarkably adept with computers but hey, we all run into trouble sometimes) over the phone anymore:&lt;p&gt;Me: Okay mom, now press the &amp;quot;Edit&amp;quot; button&lt;p&gt;Mom: Which one&amp;#x27;s the edit button?&lt;p&gt;Me: Uh, the... um, it&amp;#x27;s the one that kindda looks like... a bunch of lines in a rectangle, I guess?&lt;p&gt;Mom: Alex they all look like lines in a rectangle&lt;p&gt;* Not hovering everything for five minutes until I can figure out what I can click and what I can&amp;#x27;t click (for bonus points: not trying to click something for five minutes like an idiot, only to find out it&amp;#x27;s a label, not a disabled button)&lt;p&gt;* Buttons, tree views, tabs and all that having relief borders again, not necessarily because I like &lt;i&gt;that&lt;/i&gt;, but because without it, the only way to &amp;quot;isolate&amp;quot; the information in them is using whitespace, and seven years of flat design hell later I can fit only slightly more content on my 1920x1080 screen than I could fit my Amiga&amp;#x27;s 1024x768 screen 20+ years ago.&lt;p&gt;* Being able to tell file types apart from each other when I&amp;#x27;m browsing at minimum zoom level -- which is how you end up browsing &lt;i&gt;any&lt;/i&gt; collection of more than a few dozen items or so&lt;p&gt;* Being able to tell application icons apart based on what&amp;#x27;s in the icons, not based on colours. People keep parroting this idea that &amp;quot;symbolic icons are easily to tell apart from each other because they&amp;#x27;re so simple&amp;quot; but when &lt;i&gt;all&lt;/i&gt; icons are a letter or some anonymous symbol on a blob of colour, they &lt;i&gt;all&lt;/i&gt; look the same when you put a few dozen of them next to each other. Maybe they&amp;#x27;re easy to tell apart when you have like four 128x128px icons but when you have 40 of them in a tiny dock at the bottom of your screen, the only useful information they retain is what colour they are.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Pxtl</author><text>Honestly, I was actually excited by flat design when I first saw it, but that was on Windows Phone 7.  And WP7 had an exceptionally rigid and consistent approach to flat design.  If something was colored, it was a button.  If you wanted to color something that wasn&amp;#x27;t a button?  Too bad for you.  Basically, on WP7 you didn&amp;#x27;t get to &amp;quot;design&amp;quot; at all - the UI framework basically said &amp;quot;this is what your widgets look like, if you don&amp;#x27;t like it you can make software for a different operating system.&lt;p&gt;Ironically, I think &amp;quot;bringing back the fun&amp;quot; is what destroyed flat design, because people who wanted to make their designs &amp;quot;fun&amp;quot; destroyed the design-language.&lt;p&gt;Overall, I don&amp;#x27;t care if you go flat or otherwise - I want the WP7 attitude in my software.  The platform provides a rigid design-language, and the individual applications do not deviate from it.  Unfortunately, web is fundamentally a platform designed for styled documents and not GUIs so we don&amp;#x27;t have that kind of standardization available, and the web is the center of modern design.</text></comment>
<story><title>The Comeback of Fun in Visual Design</title><url>https://applypixels.com/blog/comeback</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>alxlaz</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t really care about &amp;quot;fun&amp;quot;, but I just can&amp;#x27;t find the words to explain how happy I am that there&amp;#x27;s a chance we might put all this flat madness behind us. I&amp;#x27;m looking forward to:&lt;p&gt;* Not having this conversation with my mom (who, at 60+, is remarkably adept with computers but hey, we all run into trouble sometimes) over the phone anymore:&lt;p&gt;Me: Okay mom, now press the &amp;quot;Edit&amp;quot; button&lt;p&gt;Mom: Which one&amp;#x27;s the edit button?&lt;p&gt;Me: Uh, the... um, it&amp;#x27;s the one that kindda looks like... a bunch of lines in a rectangle, I guess?&lt;p&gt;Mom: Alex they all look like lines in a rectangle&lt;p&gt;* Not hovering everything for five minutes until I can figure out what I can click and what I can&amp;#x27;t click (for bonus points: not trying to click something for five minutes like an idiot, only to find out it&amp;#x27;s a label, not a disabled button)&lt;p&gt;* Buttons, tree views, tabs and all that having relief borders again, not necessarily because I like &lt;i&gt;that&lt;/i&gt;, but because without it, the only way to &amp;quot;isolate&amp;quot; the information in them is using whitespace, and seven years of flat design hell later I can fit only slightly more content on my 1920x1080 screen than I could fit my Amiga&amp;#x27;s 1024x768 screen 20+ years ago.&lt;p&gt;* Being able to tell file types apart from each other when I&amp;#x27;m browsing at minimum zoom level -- which is how you end up browsing &lt;i&gt;any&lt;/i&gt; collection of more than a few dozen items or so&lt;p&gt;* Being able to tell application icons apart based on what&amp;#x27;s in the icons, not based on colours. People keep parroting this idea that &amp;quot;symbolic icons are easily to tell apart from each other because they&amp;#x27;re so simple&amp;quot; but when &lt;i&gt;all&lt;/i&gt; icons are a letter or some anonymous symbol on a blob of colour, they &lt;i&gt;all&lt;/i&gt; look the same when you put a few dozen of them next to each other. Maybe they&amp;#x27;re easy to tell apart when you have like four 128x128px icons but when you have 40 of them in a tiny dock at the bottom of your screen, the only useful information they retain is what colour they are.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>gambiting</author><text>100% with you. I absolutely &lt;i&gt;hate&lt;/i&gt; the material design, it&amp;#x27;s the least intuitive way to use a computer. Paired with touch-first interfaces it&amp;#x27;s one of the worst thing to happen to computers.</text></comment>