We totally need more poetic copywriters in tech.

• Dimmed UI > Kiri, Japanese for fog
• UI animations > Daoist Choreography
• Light grey drop shadow against dark background > ethereal glow of moonlight

Such beauty and elegance......lol

Didn't know Google bought Dropbox

Beauty is diverse. Your beauty is different from my beauty.

I like to use music as an analogy when thinking about aesthetics:

I personally enjoy loud music, like death metal, notably with indecipherable growling vocals, crazy fast drum beats, ear blasting distorted guitars...

It is true that not everyone appreciates this kind of music, some may even say it is not music at all, but I can explain to someone who enjoys classical music that good metal music has real craftsmanship, how they follow certain set of rules, or deliberately breaking them to make new sounds and so on. I think it's the effort and love you've put into the work that counts.

Beauty is not measurable, because trends shift. Remember our old friend skeuomorphism? What is now despised was once held as the beauty standard. I think beauty is the outcome of craftsmanship that lives under some set of rules in a certain time of the society. Some rules stay, like typography/color/space/form, some just doesn't. One may say skeuomorphism looks ugly in the year of 2018, but we can still trace the effort that was given in well crafted works to achieve beauty of that time frame. For digital products, we can measure usability, which in a way, is a kind of beauty.

Aside from the basic "functional beauty", is there a stylistic beauty that everyone likes? Maybe, but it'd be definitely boring.

When was the last time you were amazed by the slick UI of the app you're using? For me, it's probably when iOS 7 first came out, but then I stopped noticing the interface very soon when I'm using the phone daily.

Think about physical products that are crucial for your morning. I can almost finish all my morning routine with my eyes closed. Because I'm so familiar with the environment, the placement of things, how they work etc, and there's not a time I stopped and look at my toothbrush and say,"OMG look at the contour of the handle, sexy toothbrush!" Physical products like these should be invisibly useful, so do digital ones.

Good products make you focus on the content and the experience, not distracting you by making things different for the sake of it. Perhaps some delightful micro interactions here and there, sure, but we have developed familiar UI/UX patterns through the years, why reinvent the wheel? I just want to look at your content, don't make me learn your new fancy minimal gesture based navigation(iPhone X I'm talking about you)

For websites though, we have more space to play with, it's okay to have bold imageries and quirky typography, since we have lot of space to accommodate with. I imagine it'll be an eyesore if I have to read the outline in my phone everyday. Just stop screaming at me with your colors please.

TL;DR - I think for mobile products, it's important to make it look distinctive enough to visually attract people, but not to a point that you need a manual for your users. Websites are different things.

Am I the only one who is confused about Flinto/Finch/Figma? Can't remember which is which

http://www.wsj.com/articles/joshua-topolsky-former-verge-editor-raises-funding-for-digital-media-venture-1470045600