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Fall of the Designer Part III: Conformist Responsive Design(elischiff.com)
8 years ago from Ivan Bozic, Founder @ arsfutura.com
Oscar von Hauske, 8 years ago
Obviously you misunderstand what I mean, throughout history there has been an endless debate over ornamentalisation.
The latest way of describing this debate as “flat vs skeumorphic” only demonstrates a lack of knowledge about history, aesthetics and critical thinking in the design field, are we just pixel pushers?.
I for one do not propose that one is better than the other, simply that one ought to use the tools that work for the job at hand.
Sometimes it'll be flat, sometimes it'll be skeumorphic, actually in the end those very distinctions are pointless and meaningless, what one ought to do is design what's best for the goal at hand using ALL the tools at our disposal.
Ben MJT, 8 years ago
The latest way of describing this debate as “flat vs skeumorphic” only demonstrates a lack of knowledge about history, aesthetics and critical thinking in the design field,
Yes, yes, yes. I've said this for a while now, designers don't read, and this whole skeuno/flat charade perfectly exemplifies it.
Design is and should be work. That's what this comes down to. You may not prefer skeuomorphic design, but you can't argue that it didn't take work and talent to make it happen. You can design a usable app by snapping a bunch of flat colored panels to a grid, but it seems disingenuous at best to call yourself a "designer" while you do. You aren't a designer any more than someone with a Squarespace account is a designer.
I can see where your heart is leading here, but I honestly think you're mistaken. You seem to have this idea of digital design being some form of meritocratic art, where the more time you spend doing something, the better or more valuable it is a solution. Hopefully you agree with me that that is a bit ridiculous.
For example, Paula Scher can design a logo (e.g. Citi) in 5 mins. Would a logo someone spent months on be better by default? Again I hope we can agree that that it would not.
The time and sweat it takes to design something is pretty close to irrelevant if it achieves the desired result, and design is all about results, otherwise it's just art. I think you're a little tied up in the idea of digital design being a craft. Don't get me wrong, there's an element to it, but design is about functionality first and foremost, otherwise form dominates.
No, it isn't meaningless. I think you're trying to make this into a semiotic argument about "style" when that's precisely the opposite of what Eli Schiff is doing: he is actually saying that skeuomorphic design, in the absence of anything better, is more expressive than so-called "flat" design because it doesn't create more problems than it solves.
Did skeuomorphic design over do it sometimes? Of course, yes. But flat design under does it—and worse than that it does so while lying to us about how its effectiveness is driven by data and makes apps faster, blah blah blah.
Design is and should be work. That's what this comes down to. You may not prefer skeuomorphic design, but you can't argue that it didn't take work and talent to make it happen. You can design a usable app by snapping a bunch of flat colored panels to a grid, but it seems disingenuous at best to call yourself a "designer" while you do. You aren't a designer any more than someone with a Squarespace account is a designer.
Flat design is a poor rationalization of engineer driven design, and it's making design less expressive. That argument is not meaningless.