Random Thoughts Thread

[Luke]

I may be in a minority but the flat design look is starting to get old and bland fast. All this stuff i keep seeing just doesn't seem to really have any depth or character to it anymore to me

Not sure what you mean here.
Minimalism?

Although it is what I have, I'm not a fan of all Stainless steel kitchens appliances. Makes the kitchen feel so sterile. Like walking into an operating room, it lacks character and warmth which is what a kitchen should feel like. Warm and inviting with character.

[darsparx]

Minimalism and flat are interchangeable in my vocab right now since they seem to be the same. Just seems to be over used and everything nowadays. It just doesn't feel like what uses it has any life to it(only site i'm okay with that on is google but that's because it's always been that way). Though I'm kinda with you on stainless steel to some extent. I'd kinda would rather see black or some other color if it's a option

[Luke]

Minimalism and flat are interchangeable in my vocab right now since they seem to be the same. Just seems to be over used and everything nowadays. It just doesn't feel like what uses it has any life to it(only site i'm okay with that on is google but that's because it's always been that way). Though I'm kinda with you on stainless steel to some extent. I'd kinda would rather see black or some other color if it's a option

Design is cyclical much like interests. Well, there are always exceptions.

Think about food, fashion, and automobiles. The pattern is always HUGE or tiny. There is an ebb and flow to these things, and we're already starting to see smart phones get larger and larger, where as "small" was the trend a decade ago.

Not saying that fridge companies will be selling avocado green and harvest yellow refrigerators anytime soon, but soon stainless steel fridges will be "so 2000".

[AppleQueso]

I like minimalism sometimes. I really dislike the look of something like, say, Windows 8 though.

Of course i'm of the opinion that everything can work if it's pulled off right.

[Hobie-wan]

Not saying that fridge companies will be selling avocado green and harvest yellow refrigerators anytime soon, but soon stainless steel fridges will be "so 2000".

Granted green is my favorite color, but I liked the avocado stuff in the kitchen as a little kid. I wasn't sold on the white with gold spots counter though and the dark brown wood paneling and cabinets could have gone too.

[darsparx]

Of course i'm of the opinion that everything can work if it's pulled off right.

Yeah, but I guess I just haven't seen it pulled off right anywhere except on google(and they've been rocking it for a longer time than extreme minimalism has been popular lately). Windows 8 is the epitome(I think that's the right word?) of why I can't stand it...it just doesn't feel and look right at all. The same goes for apps now a days even on iOS too. Especially netflix (they're doing it wrong now. Especially because honestly it looked like a great app before now it just looks like someone took a rolling pin to it and decided inverted colors looked great. Plus the logo is now red on white instead of white on red....it just seems off to me )


@luke I hope you're right, I'd love to see "extreme minimalism" and stainless steel fade into the background....

@hobie - mine too to be honest(don't know why)...I'm almost half tempted to find that avocado stuff if I could....though I really like the black-brown wood. Nice stuff for some odd reason

[Ziggy]

So the other day my friend told me some words from his dad. "Go to bed with an itchy butt, wake up with a smelly finger." I'm thinking, oh, it's kind of a vulgar way to put a pretty standard adage. "Don't put off to tomorrow what you can do today," or something cliche like that. In this case, don't wait till tomorrow to wash your butt hole. But apparently dad's words weren't even that deep, and he just literally meant it in black and white. Wash your ass.

[lisalover1]

I like minimalism sometimes. I really dislike the look of something like, say, Windows 8 though.

Of course i'm of the opinion that everything can work if it's pulled off right.

One of the biggest problems with W8's "metro/modern" UI graphical design (I could rant for hours about its actual usage mechanics) is that it lacks both iconography and consistency. In a traditional graphical OS, you can expect an application's icon to look the same and perform the same each time you launch it, and you expect it to be easy enough to remember what it looks like at a glance.

In Windows 8 (and more so in Windows Phone), most apps' live tiles both lack color and a consistent image. Live tiles - by nature - will always be displaying changing images and information, so you can never truly grasp where everything is on the start screen with just a glance. The only way that the start screen is useful is if you want to passively glance at information across many apps, and don't care about specifics. But, that isn't how most people use their computers, and even if it is, it is too minimal to be really useful, and is better-suited to lockscreen info-feeds like Android's "daydream" feature than anything.

Plus, now that Windows Phone 8.1 encourages all app icons to be transparent to accommodate custom backgrounds, you can be sure that the use of color to memorize an icon will be a thing of the past for the OS to an even greater degree.

[RyaNtheSlayA]

Speaking of minimalism, I bought my friend's old MacBook Pro. I feel dirty.

It has a bad graphics chip so it needs to be sent in for depot repair for about ~300. Overall it will have cost me $700. It's a late 2011 model with an i7-2760QM, 256gb SSD, 16gb ram, and an AMD 6770m. Cheaper than buying a new ThinkPad which was the other option I was considering.

That all said, even if I don't particularly care for their software, Apple's hardware design is still fantastic. (Mac Pro notwithstanding)

[AppleQueso]

I like minimalism sometimes. I really dislike the look of something like, say, Windows 8 though.

Of course i'm of the opinion that everything can work if it's pulled off right.

One of the biggest problems with W8's "metro/modern" UI graphical design (I could rant for hours about its actual usage mechanics) is that it lacks both iconography and consistency. In a traditional graphical OS, you can expect an application's icon to look the same and perform the same each time you launch it, and you expect it to be easy enough to remember what it looks like at a glance.

In Windows 8 (and more so in Windows Phone), most apps' live tiles both lack color and a consistent image. Live tiles - by nature - will always be displaying changing images and information, so you can never truly grasp where everything is on the start screen with just a glance. The only way that the start screen is useful is if you want to passively glance at information across many apps, and don't care about specifics. But, that isn't how most people use their computers, and even if it is, it is too minimal to be really useful, and is better-suited to lockscreen info-feeds like Android's "daydream" feature than anything.

Plus, now that Windows Phone 8.1 encourages all app icons to be transparent to accommodate custom backgrounds, you can be sure that the use of color to memorize an icon will be a thing of the past for the OS to an even greater degree.

someone's really into design