No love for paleolithic design?
90s because they used logic in designing things. Now they change for the sake of change.
Y2K would like to have a word…
Y2K was fine. We fixed it in the '90s, it employed practically the entire tech workforce for all of '98 and '99. It made it so easy to get into that industry for people like me
Like how there was a damn good reason for the start menu button to be on the button right: you could fling your mouse the lower left and no matter if you did it too far or fast, it would always hit the corner, and be at the start button. You never had to “target” the start button, you simply went all the way down to the left. Didn’t even have to look.
So obviously, they must of had an equally smart, thoughtful reason to put it in the middle, right? That’s a decision born from utility, not aesthetics. Clearly not making a painfully obvious attempt at copying their main competitor.
What on earth are you talking about? What start button is in the middle?
I think this is about windows 11 and Microsoft’s stupid decision to move the start menu to the middle
Windows 11 Windows button is now in the middle of the taskbar, as opposed to where it’s been for literally 30 years.
Although you can change it to be bottom left again. But it should be the default.
I gravitate towards the ones I came up in, and that’s probably not a coincidence. I will say that flat design becomes self-defeating sometimes. Every damn Google icon looks the same.
Far and away the 90s and it’s not even close. We had the internet but it wasn’t stalking us. We had cell phones but your parents couldn’t drop a tracker app on it to see if you were actually at Doug’s house. Gas was cheap. Airports were better, flying was better, fewer people, god I miss the 90s.
I think they’re talking about the designs, not the whole decade.
Boy did I miss that by a mile.
Yeah but you’re right.
You’re still right. You forgot just deciding to rent a place out downtown with your girlfriend on a whim. How life is supposed to be.
It’s an interesting idea, though, that one’s preference for a particular design or aesthetic, especially when that design or aesthetic is emblematic of a particular historical or cultural moment, is never wholly isolated to its visual or material components, but also innately tied to our memory and understanding of that moment. I personally don’t think you can extricate a particular aesthetic from the psychic background noise surrounding it. Our minds don’t work that way. It’s always forming these subconscious or unconscious connections, binding events and memory to abstract signifiers.
We don’t like the 90s aesthetic because it’s “better” or even attractive. I mean, nobody has wallpaper in their home with those pastel and neon triangles. Many of us like it because it reminds us of childhood, of not having responsibilities other than waking up early enough on Saturday to catch all your cartoons and of not complaining too much when you have to go visit your grandparents who can never remember your birthday and who always ask you how old you are this year, of finishing Super Mario on the SNES before your friend does so you can brag about being better at video games than him. It’s of a simpler time and place, because we were simpler. And it was, in retrospect, of an America briefly sandwiched between the end of the original “Forever War” that was the Cold War, and the beginning of the 20th Century’s new “Forever War,” that is the War on Terror.
Then the 80s show up and takes your lunch money, by blinding you with our awesome fluorescent clothing
Ha!
Give me the 90s with today’s safety standards (for things like car/aircraft/etc)
Don’t forget about the banning of indoor smoking in public places. God the 90’s were a horrible time for that although it was winding down.
It wasn’t so great if you were gay, either. Racism was mostly passe, but everyone thought Columbus was a cool guy and the natives disappeared on their own, which is not ideal.
Not being poor and the blissful delusion that history is over sound lit, but there are some hard edges to the era I hear about occasionally, as a Zoomer. And WTF is up with that song about rubbing your boner on people?
I was fortunate to have grown up in the pacific northwest where being gay was mostly fine, racism was mostly absent and we learned about smallpox blankets in school.
Dope. I grew up in a rural area where even in the 2000’s homophobia lingered pretty good. I could be wrong about Columbus in the 90s, I guess, but he was definitely a hero at some point.
I grew up pretty rural as well but in a very liberal state and since course standards were set at the state government level, the education definitely leaned that way. I think Columbus is still celebrated in certain parts of this country where they refuse to acknowledge indigenous people’s day.
Can I get a link to the dick-rubbing song?
It’s subtle, so really listen to the lyrics
Edit: Actually, think it’s too close
Yep, Too Close.
It was in Leave the World Behind, and if the characters weren’t taking it seriously I 100% would have thought it was a parody song.
Amazing time for music as well.
and real original movies. and tv shows with writing. and music videos. and exciting new progress in video games. and cheap live music. and thongs under low rise jeans.
90s, BeOS
Memphis design will always win my vote. The weird ass electronics, the ground breaking UI components, just absolutely nutty decisions and insane product concepts built on everyone’s wild dreams of the future. I even think the same forward looking design concepts carried into the Y2K designs— particularly with personal electronics like phones.
I’m biased towards Y2K from the nostalgia, since those were the prime years of my childhood right before my teenage years kicked in.
But, I love the design of that time because of how obsessed with futurism everything was. It took the future chic look of the mid-late '60s and revamped it, taking that hype for the future- with the Space Race- bringing it back, and updating it for the Information Age.
It felt like we, as a society, had so much optimism for the world that was to come. So, if anything, I think that’s what I’m mostly nostalgic for. I was so excited to grow up in that world. Damn.
It felt like we, as a society, had so much optimism for the world that was to come. So, if anything, I think that’s what I’m mostly nostalgic for. I was so excited to grow up in that world. Damn.
We lived through the dawn of internet for the masses. It’s like seeing the start of the Iron Age. Historians in the future will wonder about proper like us and what went through our minds, seeing this huge inflection point in human history, and it’s not finished yet. The effects are still rippling.
You can make a telephone call now, with video, for free, to anywhere in the world. Even chatting to random strangers. The world has shrunk and we’re all getting to know each other and looking around and seeing what’s bullshit and what’s not. It’s slow progress but it’s happening.
US/Israel’s genocide live streamed is going to change the world order for example. The optimism was well placed.
I really thought that the internet would bring the 1st world and 3rd world together: e.g. I’d be able to videocall a farmer in India.
Instead our attention has been focused “upwards” towards a small minority of people, very few who interact with their followers meaningfully.
Apps that have been powering the gig economy (ridesharing, workrabbit, renting apps) have largely helped employers and landlords coordinate their efforts, and not helped the working class negotiate better conditions.
I’m not sure if optimism is warranted tbh
It felt like we, as a society, had so much optimism for the world that was to come. So, if anything, I think that’s what I’m mostly nostalgic for. I was so excited to grow up in that world. Damn.
As with anything regarding the past, there’s a lot of rose-tinted glasses going on. Be careful what you wish for
I would also argue we lived in a pre-9/11 world.
It us shocking how much the world changed in response for the sake of security and safety, and I know it’s a controversial take but the terrorists succeed in changing the world to their image.
Before: wow, this new thing is literally 4 times faster with a fuckload of features.
After : wow, this new thing allows 800 companies, fifty countries and 2 superpowers to spy on me at the same time and has 4 times the bloatware!
And all the alternatives do the same thing!
Me too, on the design, what I like about it is it wasn’t the ultra clean look futurism of the 1980s it was sort of collided with grunge.
augh jazz cup my beloved. I wish we had loud baggy pants like that again.
I just bought myself a pair of parachute pants! They’re not nearly as loud as the wind breaker suits of the 90s and early 00s, but I love them.
Translucent electronics FTW
Hey that’s a nice ilustration!
Honestly? Any of them except the last one. My preference would be 2005-2015, but any of them is better than what came after. Late 2010s was alright, but around 2020 you can really tell UI designers got their marching orders.
It’s all so damn boring and lifeless. Rounded corners on literally everything for no reason other than trend chasing, wasted space and needless gaps between elements, white OR black - rarely anything else, lest it interfere with whatever systemwide adaptive coloring thing is running (even if there isn’t one), boring and lifeless icons/logos, an obsession with “clean” and “streamlined” that effectively equates to the removal of usability for aesthetics, etc. All of it copy and pasted to every single piece of software or app or site.
Its ironic you put Corporate Memphis images next to it in the 2015-2024 section, because that is effectively what this trend in design aesthetic will be remembered as.
Bland, lifeless, safe, focus-grouped garbage, implemented by companies that have reached a point where the innovation is dead, corporate consolidation has effectively destroyed any room for something new and original to enter the space, and the only thing they do anymore is trend chase. Even the slightest bit of originality or doing something different from the market leader may risk the potential loss of a sliver of shareholder profit, and that simply must never be done.
And I swear to God, if I hear one more focus group generated argument about how rounded corners are more inviting or human, I am going to break into your home, and personally change every last single doorway into a hobbit hole, and every window into a port hole.
The needless gaps are there for touchscreen optimization, even on things you never use a touchscreen on, like a desktop OS.
Windows, pretty much the desktop OS still would like you to drag the screen up to start a login
Dude, you detected a mouse and keyboard during setup
I think it’s to make desktop computing more approachable for people because smartphones are so ubiquitous nowadays and used by literally all age groups, so it makes a little bit of sense I guess.
… Can you turn my place into a Hobbit hole anyway?
I was born and raised throughout the whole Memphis Design era, reluctantly tolerated the Y2K era, gained a little hope for humanity during the Frutiger Aero era, then subsequently lost all hope once the Flat Design era hit.
I’m between frutiger aero and Y2K
Y2K. Let me just run this chromium look filter on my pillow embossing.
Tbh I kinda like flat design if done tastefully and within a confined scope, but that Alegria/Globo Homo bullshit from evil corporations and the weird full plastic boxes of nothing can rightly go to the dump.
I will hate the decade though for its prevalence of the bland beige and off-white interior design.
