
Design culture is a frozen shithole - jonphillips06
http://blog.colepeters.com/design-culture-is-frozen-shithole/
======
moron4hire
I've had similar frustrations, but I've started to understand it as a matter
of visibility bias. There are lots of people out there, doing the good work,
doing it well, for the right reasons, in the right ways, without buzzwordy
bullshit. But you don't hear about them because... they're working. They
aren't promoting themselves. They're just working. It's the asshats who don't
know what they are doing, don't have their skills in constant, 100% demand,
don't have work to do, that have the time to promote themselves like this.

I've been on a PR bent for the last 6 months. It's a slog. If I don't treat it
like a full-time job when I do it, it doesn't go anywhere. And that means my
other work suffers. You can't be in two places at one time.

I sometimes rail against the larger market of "DIY" and "Makers" and
"Creatives". Most people who would call themselves a "maker" are in-name only.
People who actually make things call themselves “postal worker” or "teacher"
or "accountant". In other words, we make things as a matter of course and
don't use it as a status symbol, as a component of our identity that we need
to broadcast to others.

I think it's the same way with Design. There is design in everything we do.
"Design" is nothing more than the human condition: impacting upon the
environment through your will, through your intention. At least it is to me.
If I think of any way that design is different than a monkey throwing shit on
the wall, it's intention. Agency. And every man and woman has that. So to call
someone a "designer" is a null statement. Designer of what? And how? For whom?
And most importantly, by what set of values?

So keep working, and don't let the TEDx asshats get you down.

~~~
madvoid
I'd love to know more companies that are doing good work, can you (or anyone
else) list some startups/employers that are working on "real" problems, but
may not be well known?

~~~
moron4hire
Personally, I'm a freelancer.

Don't ignore the public sector. Not everything is as bad as working for
Raytheon on war industry projects, or working for Health and Human Services on
disease industry projects. My experience has been: the more local, the better.
There are some municipal IT departments that are trying to do good work and
support open standards at the same time, in a realistic environment. I think
it's a burgeoning area where more young people could turn their attention.

There are a lot of small manufacturers across the country (don't believe what
you've heard, it's only gigantocorp manufacturing that is dead in America, and
that's more because gigantocorps are on the way out than anything to do with
manufacturing) that have very good, results-based attitudes to work. My
current client is one such place. They essentially give me free reign over
their project.

But ultimately, I think a person can do good work in any environment. Though
you probably want to stay out of the boiler-rooms of anything that is closely
ran by someone with an MBA. When you hear them start to talk about "our
employees are our greatest asset", then you know they doth protest too much.
Why would you want to be considered an "asset" anyway, which is by definition
owned property? Stick to places that are pragmatic, open, and honest.

~~~
mrfusion
What makes you think gigantocorps are on their way out?

~~~
moron4hire
Starting with the assumption that centralized system are generally wasteful
compared to decentralized systems [1]: Why does middle-management exist? As a
class of worker, I mean. They are a vast body of employees who do nothing
directly towards consuming input resources and transforming them into output
products and services. They exist solely to organize the people who do real
work into a large, hierarchical organization. But to what end?

From a labor and trade perspective, the most efficient transaction is Person A
making a thing and Person B buying it directly from Person A. There is no
additional overhead of management, transportation, holding stock in display
rooms, etc. But it's impossible to make those sorts of connections on the
daily, hourly, minutely basis necessary to make an economy flow.

The best answer I've ever gotten was "it's more efficient!" So we've been
told, but has anyone checked? And to which, the best answer I've ever received
was, "well, it hasn't been disproven." Because of the key role of
_distribution_ in an economy, we accept these other inefficiencies.

But is that absolute? I think we are seeing proto-elements of decentralized
distribution in sites like Etsy (which serves only to connect producers to
customers) and Amazon (which both connects trading entities and performs stock
warehousing and shipping for them, but doesn't actually produce anything of
their own). We are only _now_ entering an era of eCommerce. Everything before
now has been "commerce as it has been since the industrial revolution" just on
the Internet.

[1] and I do acknowledge that it is an assumption. But I think it's a stronger
position than "bigger is better".

------
taeric
"There was once a time when design was a vehicle for social change, for
political disruption, for speaking up and giving a big “fuck you” to the
status quo."

I'm tempted to just say "no there wasn't." There were good designs during
times of social change. Feels that this is a general "rising tide lifts all
boats" situation, though. Probably more accurate to say survivor bias.

That is, I find it hard to believe that the "designs" truly facilitated these
changes, so much as they helped what was already moving. Think of it as the
coefficient of friction for moving bodies. The designs and such are enough to
overcome the kinetic values, but not static ones.

~~~
aridiculous
I agree, but I think what he's trying to get at is that designers were more
politically engaged on the whole, especially during Modernism. However, it
also had its downsides, the major being design hubris (e.g. over-planned
cities, complete top-down organizational thinking, treating all people
interchangeably, etc).

~~~
taeric
Right, and that is almost exactly survivor bias. It isn't that they were more
engaged as a whole. The ones that we talk about were.

~~~
aridiculous
Ehhh, yeah, sort of.

There were far less people who could call themselves designers at the time. It
was a slower craft and took more training.

It's like in music. Yeah, there were other bands other than the Beatles and
Rolling Stones, but it was harder to produce and distribute music back then.
Thus, the industry was more monolithic than it is now. The ones we talk about
now are more representative of the state of the industry back then than Lady
Gaga (or whatever) is of now.

~~~
taeric
There may have been less people that would call themselves designers, but I
would wager it is still larger than the body of folks you and this link have
in mind.

Further, and here is where it is exactly survivor bias. You have to show that
there weren't other people _trying_ to be designers. That the ones you are
focusing on are the ones that were _successfully_ doing it, is what makes it
survivor bias.

------
compare
Thanks for this. Design trends really are detached from any sensible reality.
They're turning good designs into bad designs whenever a site tries to
modernize themselves to match these trends.

Here's my rule for web app design: 90% of the page, by area, should be somehow
derived from the app's dynamic content, versus static filler content from the
designer, no matter how pretty the filler is.

Second rule: Designers, stop calling your OWN apps sexy or beautiful. Would
you walk up to someone that you just met, and tell them that you're beautiful
while they're looking directly at you? What the f## are you designers
thinking?

------
cageface
This would be a lot more convincing if it explained exactly what is wrong with
the designs he dismisses and even more so if it offered a few examples of the
kind of design he'd like to see instead.

~~~
at-fates-hands
I was waiting for when he was going to put in some clear examples about what
he was talking about. It's easy to say, "This sucks, we need to do better!"
when you don't really lay out specific examples.

------
hipsterelitist
As someone with a formal design education and a uhh "technologist", I think
this argument is pure crap. You're looking at "designers" in tech and making a
very valid critique of the industry at large, but these designers have very
little to do with it. Yes, they're pumping out derivative cloying work like
every start up does because that's what they get paid to do. I think you might
need to step out of the tech bubble before throwing stones at others for
sitting in it.

Most of the designers I know aren't in tech (mostly so they can have autonomy
and greater impact, slightly less to do with finding it wholly un-interesting
and trivial) and your whole critique just doesn't seem to hold water for them.

~~~
aridiculous
I agree, I simply replaced "design" with "interface design" and everything
makes sense.

~~~
fowkswe
Replace "design" with "startups".

He is describing the culture of creating business's whose real purpose is to
attract VC funding with the goal of finding an 'exit'.

------
ffn
Wait, why are we attacking flat buttons, rounded borders, and non-gradient
backgrounds when it's the incestuous nature of ideas in the Valley that's
really the problem. I mean, in the article, the guy spends time at the
beginning puking flat-rainbows, then goes on (much later) to say the real
problem is that we're not being humanitarian or actually useful enough.

While I agree the next best share-your-photo-and-or-chat app is all another
sack of shit and you're a shill if you or your company is working on such an
app, I don't see why or how it make sense to attack san-serif fonts, plain
backgrounds, or flat buttons. Compared to the real concern that the stuff we
build doesn't help our users make more money, find meaning, discover long term
happiness, or really do anything other than get them addicted to wasting their
time, the existence and popularity of flat buttons and thumbnail carousels
just don't seem like problems at all.

Another thing, why this obsession with "saying 'fuck you' to the status quo?"
This is 2014 and we're all adults (maybe), why are we still so obsessed with
this rhetoric of disruption, competition, and being a general nuisance? What
happened to the entrepreneur who says stuff like "Oh hey, it looks like those
guys in the trucking industry have a lot down time between jobs, let me build
this service to help all the trucking companies find stuff to load everywhere
so they make more money." Unless you're either our RoR overlord DHH, or the
latest incarnation of Dante from DMC, no one builds a successful company by
saying "Fuck you" to everyone.

------
serve_yay
I am tired of seeing these takedowns of the same things with no broader
structural critique. It has become a piece of groupthink now to decry the
flowery language in acquisition announcements, flat design,
whimsical/pointless products, greed, etc. But no examination of why things are
this way, or what might change them. Disappointing.

~~~
lbotos
Do you have thoughts as to why things are this way? I'd genuinely love to
discuss them (and it sounds like you would too).

~~~
Throwaway823
I'll toss in a few thoughts. Design is something that evolves over time. We're
slowing working towards improving the design of the internet by taking two
steps forward and one back. We build off each other, so you don't see huge
changes in design overnight. This is no different than any other technology.
If I raise someone in solitude, and ask them to design a car, it'll be quite
primitive. Modern cars improve each year from those prior. Occasionally they
misjudge, and take a step backwards, but over time, they improve. It's the
same with design. If you ask someone that has no experience online to design a
webpage, they'll fall short.

We keep building from what we assume is the best. If a popular site goes with
flat design, it leads us to believe flat design might be attributing to their
success. So, we try to follow suit with trial and error. If flat design is
working for them, maybe taking it to an even more extreme and reducing all
images and gradients will leave us even more successful. Or, maybe only some
aspects of their flat design are contributing to their success, and it's a
balance between flat and non-flat elements.

Which is best? No one knows. We'll try all the possible combinations, and
gravitate towards what's successful with profits, and with users. You can't
expect these changes over night. Right now designers are quite sure the future
involves more minimal design. The only way to test this is to experiment with
different combinations.

So, don't piss on someone because they try an extremely flat design and it
fails. The only reason we know it fails is because they went out on a limb to
try it out. Instead, thank them for trying, look towards any aspects of their
design that did work, and improve on their failure. I can guarantee we're
going to have an even better experience browsing the internet 10 years from
now. It's going to happen because of many designers and developers failing,
and few standing on them and succeeding.

------
aridiculous
This is uncomfortably scathing. And true.

The part about the Icebergs acquisition is particularly depressing. We are
losing the trust of consumers by constantly shutting down products. It's one
thing if those products are failures, but these acquisitions demonstrate they
are useful, successful products (perhaps just with a small to medium-sized
potential market).

People always talk about this and that policy stifling innovation. This
practice of shutting down products after a building a user base is just as
bad. Consumers (I know I feel this way) are simply not going to trust products
that aren't from the big guys. That hurts the small guys. "Early adopters"
don't solve everything.

~~~
smacktoward
_> It's one thing if those products are failures, but these acquisitions
demonstrate they are useful, successful products (perhaps just with a small to
medium-sized potential market)_

Do they really, though? There's no shortage of acquisitions that are driven by
motivations other than "these people built something useful." Such as:

"We want to hire these people whose startup is a clear failure, but they won't
bite unless we give them a way to save face"

"Our VCs funded these people too, and we want to give them something
resembling an exit on their terrible investment in order to keep them happy"

"Our CEO needs to demonstrate to Wall Street that he is a Dynamic Leader,
which he does by buying startups more or less at random"

~~~
aridiculous
You're very right! I was generalizing.

I've just seen too products I use get shut down because they refuse to create
sustainable businesses.

------
jasontsui
Isn't this more of the very same smarmy navel gazing bullshit OP has taken up
arms against? There are plenty of designers doing meaningful work in various
fields. The big red flag in this article is the implicit bullshit! Who said
design is for social change? Political disruption? What if design is just
making these buttons look good so 10 year olds can Snapchat more better? Whos
to decide whats a real world problem and whats not?

Jeez, its gotten to the point where I balk when introducing myself as a
designer.

------
keithpeter
Two quotes from OA

 _" if you can’t find an honest-to-goodness, human-centric, non-rich-white-
person problem to solve, even if in your spare time and without financial
reward, then perhaps design is not a field you should be working in."_

and

" _(For the record, I’d consider designing flyers for your local corner store
better than what’s touted as ‘design’ in the Valley.)_ "

I live in a non-white area in a city a long way from the 'valley'. We have
local printers who do flyers rather well. I get plenty through my door
advertising everything from pizza to halal Chinese food through spiritual
enlightenment.

 _And_ we have designers who are non-white as well as designers who are white,
and clients who are non-white and clients who are white. There seems to be
plenty of good basic communication and design going on.

Has OP read Lee McCormack's work (and not the books about bikes)?

------
at-fates-hands
"We follow the same worn-out, well-trodden, clichéd paths of those who came
before us, over and over again, claiming to be the next best thing, when in
reality we’re just the latest in a series of cookie-cutter gimmicks and frauds
hoping to be validated by soulless marketplaces and rich white geriatrics like
those bright-eyed, pimple-pocked stars that came before us."

Besides being a horrible, run on sentence, this is exactly how web design
works.

People build the same thing over and over because that's what people BUY. If
nobody bought any Toyota Camry's, then we wouldn't have millions of cars that
all look the same and do the same thing. It's the same thing with web design.
The people are who doing the really cool cutting edge design work are outliers
- not the stuff you see a lot of in the mainstream sites who get the awards
and visibility.

It's like Henry Rollins said about punk rock being dead. Actually punk is very
much alive and kicking, but you won't see it on MTV, or on the music charts,
or on the radio. You have to really dig to find real punk rock anymore. You
can't go to the local "hipster" bar to see the local band imitating Green
Day's pop-punk sound. No, you have to go to Chicago, in some dungy, hole-in-
the-wall bar, and sit in the mosh pit with skinheads who haven't showered for
a week, and the band comes on and belts out an hour of angry, non-conformist
anthems and just oozes with anger and disenchantment. He said a lot better
than I did, but you get the idea.

So yeah, good design isn't dead, you just have to did a little to find the
good stuff.

------
tesq
So is Winnipeg.

~~~
mijoharas
I'm glad someone else appreciates venetian snares. :)

------
kordless
You can't implement a good design by committee...

------
carsongross
Does this mean we can have buttons that look like buttons back?

I'd love that.

------
sp332
Edit with actual content: The number of companies that describe in glowing
terms how they're moving forward by shutting down and taking all your data
with them is really way too high. I think fotopedia.com is the last one I
heard of, you should check out their blog post and the comments:
[http://blog.fotopedia.com/fotopedia-
shutdown/](http://blog.fotopedia.com/fotopedia-shutdown/)

Mods: why can't I make a comment linking to the ourinrediblejourney tumblr?
It's relevant to the "make companies just to flip them" point in the article.

