

Ketchup Bottles & The Physicality Of Design - flyosity
http://flyosity.com/design/ketchup-bottles-the-physicality-of-design.php

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unwind
I was first surprised (and, admittedly, a bit disappointed) that the post
wasn't more about the bottle itself. Then, I was even more surprised when the
post never mentioned the term for the effect it discusses
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeuomorph>).

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kazuya
It's mentioned in one of the articles he linked to.

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geoffpado
What I find weird is that there's an extra line on the 57 to add a 3D effect
to text that's _really 3D_.

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baddox
It's not that surprising. Clearly the "3D" on the bottle is "monochromatic"
(not the best term) in the sense that everything is either flat (no change to
the original surface), or embossed to a fixed depth. The extra line makes the
big "57" look even deeper.

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x3c
When I read the title I was expecting an article about the impracticality of
the Ketchup bottle design itself. For something that is so widely used, I've
never been able to understand the impractical design of ketchup bottle. For
such a viscous fluid, bottle design in highly inefficient and bothersome, so
much so that the wikipedia page of ketchup itself, addresses the issue [1].
Admittedly, with the prolific use of squeeze bottles and sachets, the issue
has been sidelined, I guess its just one of those things that have no rhyme or
reason.

[1]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketchup#Viscosity>

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ricardobeat
At the risk of sounding arrogant, I found the post very naive, specially
considering the ignorance of skeuomorphism which is the basic theory behind
this "phenomenon", and has been pretty much under the spotlight recently.

The wikipedia article is worth a submission by itself, thanks.

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tikhonj
I've never been a big fan of design like that. I like it subtly and in
moderation--not like that Apple buttons. I've always found that certain
elements of Apple's UIs stand out too much (scroll bars and buttons mainly).

I personally like minimalist design (like HN, actually). From what I've seen,
WP7 has the most minimalist interface of the main mobile systems, and I am
drawn to it (if only it wasn't so closed and supported by a moderately
annoying company...).

~~~
baddox
Are you referring to OS X scrollbars prior to Lion? The bars in iOS and Lion
are about as subtle as they can possibly be.

I'm fine with so-called minimalist design, like the _visual look_ of HN. That
said, there are some _features_ that are woefully missing on HN. The bizarre
too-wide text width makes it unusable on a mobile phone without reflow (which
is a feature that makes browsing unusable on most other websites), and barely
usable on even larger tablets like the iPad. Comment threads can't be
collapsed. The whole user experience of voting and replying is bizarre and
unpredictable (some threads can be voted and replied on, some can't, and
voting icons just disappear after you click one).

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moe
Design trends come and go in waves.

In the past few years skeuomorphism was the hotness partly due to the arrival
of CSS gradients and drop-shadows, and of course because of apple.

Now that the last gradients and drop-shadows have been explored (again) we're
entering a new era of minimalism (cf. google, android, WinMobile).

Lather, rinse...

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munaf
Yup, perceived affordances.
<http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/affordances_and_design.html>

