
Windows 10 Desktop: Physically building and photographing the logos (2015) - iudqnolq
https://gmunk.com/Windows-10-Desktop/
======
_bxg1
Cool process, but honestly this wallpaper has looked dated from day one in my
opinion. The fog, depth, etc. give it a very 2008 feel. By 2015, skeuomorphism
was already out and flat designs were in. It's extra jarring surrounded by the
rest of Windows 10 which has such a modern look.

~~~
sfjailbird
Yes. Overusing light, shadow and smoke effects was done when those things were
hard. Now, when they are cheap and commonplace, we have gone to find beauty in
minimalism.

The piece doesn't become better because it was all done by hand. In fact, they
kind of ruined it by cleaning it up so much that it looks like just another
stock digital creation. If they had left it 'analog' looking, maybe it would
have looked cool. Maybe.

Seems like someone needed to burn through a big budget and then come up with
reasons why. As always, this needs a reference to the classic Pepsi logo
design case.

~~~
satysin
> In fact, they kind of ruined it by cleaning it up so much that it looks like
> just another stock digital creation.

This was what disappointed me the most. They went to all that trouble to be
able to take a photograph of a physical object then modified it so much that
it ended up looking like a generic render from a Windows forum.

While the XP wallpaper is obviously iconic my personal favourites were the
ones with Windows 7. They had many weird and wonderful ones in that collection
:)

~~~
FussyZeus
Right? Any of those photos that they composited together into the final
would've been great, or to just release them as a collection of wallpapers.
Instead they took them all and rammed them together into something that looked
_less_ interesting.

This is really a good demonstration of the law of diminishing returns relative
to art. Sometimes less is more. A more complicated and weird process doesn't
always, and in fact very rarely, increases the value of the output work.

------
ajflores1604
Theres a great talk from gmunk that goes into the inspiration and process for
a lot of his projects. And some general good life advice for anyone that
creates with a passion

[https://youtu.be/F93CP8UjRxk](https://youtu.be/F93CP8UjRxk)

------
discordance
A background for 1 billion - 1

The first thing I do in Windows is replace the background image with a solid
black

~~~
Gracana
I use the Windows 95 desktop color because it reminds me of a time when I
liked computers.

~~~
zozbot234
Windows 2000 (and Server 2003) changed from the 95/98 dark cyan to a shade of
azure/sky blue. That's another choice that might be quite popular.

~~~
deith
It's actually called "teal" in X11:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X11_color_names#Color_name_cha...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X11_color_names#Color_name_chart)
— It's also available on Windows 10 by default where it's called "Seafoam
Teal"

------
Tempest1981
Much more work than I expected.

How can I replace my tired light-blue Windows logo with the red/magenta logo
they show? I like the richer colors.

~~~
slacka
I too prefer the purple + green lasers over the cold blue. AFAIK, the best you
are going to get is the version they show off on the page like
W10_Process_Beauty_r2.

1\. Click on the logo that you prefer. 2\. Right click -> save as 3\. In
windows explorer, right click on the image -> set as desktop background

~~~
Tempest1981
Cool, thanks! Now I just need to eradicate the plain blue version on the
bootup screen.

------
parsd
The image looks lo-res and full of noise regardless of screen resolution and
color settings of any monitor I've seen. Why it required such complex
engineering is a mystery... Not even talking about the quality of it as a
graphic design/art work - just the technical aspect.

~~~
DaiPlusPlus
Windows handles wallpapers specially and always transcodes wallpaper images to
JPEG (I think the default in Windows 7 was at 60% quality setting) even when
the source image was PNG - or when a PNG version would be both smaller and
have less errors than the JPEG version. There’s a registry setting you can
tweak to change the quality and I think you can configure it to not transcode
PNG images now - but I don’t think it’s the default.

As for the reason why - I think it’s to do with users using high-res photos
(like 10megapixel) as wallpapers which would bog Windows down if used as-is -
and users on roaming profiles causing a 10MB+ BMP image bring copied over the
network every time they logon. Probably. I speculate.

~~~
Razengan
macOS has been using 10-bit 5K wallpapers worth tens of megabytes at full
quality for years now.

~~~
colejohnson66
But they cache them as a GPU texture, don’t they?

~~~
DaiPlusPlus
Windows does something similar now too. It used to be that USER32 (which owned
the windowing system/window manager since Windows 95) would render the
wallpaper - but ever since a semi-recent release - either Windows 8 or Windows
10, Explorer.exe became responsible for rendering the wallpaper - and there's
definitely some tie-in with the DWM too (you can see this because whenever you
kill your session's explorer.exe your desktop wallpaper will disappear). I'm
curious what goes on, exactly.

------
zackkatz
> with Picard and Munkowitz wife-swapping the teams to keep things moving and
> the team extra productive

There’s a way you could say the same thing without being weird. “Swapping”
would have sufficed!

~~~
JadeNB
I think 'swapping' isn't quite the same (it implies whole teams being swapped,
rather than members), but I agree that something like "swapping some members
between teams" would be just as clear and less creepy.

------
Stratoscope
This reminds me of the old BBC and RTF Television logos:

[https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2017/05/when-tv-logos-were-
ph...](https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2017/05/when-tv-logos-were-physical-
objects/)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14391993](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14391993)

------
ianai
Well, I appreciated this post! I’ve gone through random creative spurts, not
for any reason what so ever, through arbitrarily long processes in the past.
Glad to know it’s a “thing” and not just my neurons firing wrong!

------
deith
Am I the only one that thinks this is just absolutely crazy and a complete
waste of money and time?

~~~
burntoutfire
Same here. I'm kind of shocked that it was not done by a single 3D CGI whiz in
a week or two. It's corporate waste at its finest.

My second impression, watching the lead designer speak, is that his job is
more than 50% about bullshiting. I.e. you design something that is passable,
and then give an elaborate story, full of emotions and grandiose ideas, that
make it easier for the decision makers to OK it - they in turn need the story
to justify their decision (esp. if some higher ups question it later). Man,
corporate world has so many people doing pseudo-work and playing out their
bullshit roles in exchange for a comfortable middle-class life. I'm so glad
I'm almost out.

~~~
wildrhythms
I am living this life. I work in "UX" (read: turn this PSD into a web
interface), thankfully in the engineering side more than the design side. I'm
being paid way too much. I'm trying to get out of here because I realize this
is a job where people are desperately trying to find problems to solve.
Nothing is fulfilling about making a prototype of a context menu and watching
researchers ask laypersons what their reaction is to it (yes this is real).

------
cwilby
Super interesting, didn't know they physically built that. The purple Windows
logo is a wallpaper candidate even without Windows!

------
EvanAnderson
I am reminded of the epic HBO "Feature Presentation" intro (insofar as it was
physically constructed):
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agS6ZXBrcng](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agS6ZXBrcng)

------
pupdogg
Much respect to you sir! It’s refreshing to see that your wallpaper wasn’t
just created out of thin air by some photoshop guru. Loved seeing your
process!

------
virtualritz
I'm not sure if 'overengineering' is the right term here.

Certainly in the world of modern art it's often all about process and little
about the art itself. But most people watching the result when they log into
Windows don't know or care about this.

This could have been done by a single artist in a VFX software, art directed
by gmunk.

But as they say: “If all you know is a hammer ...” ;)

------
kccqzy
Someone should try to use a raytracer and other software to recreate the image
to see how it compares with a purely digital version.

------
Tempest1981
Here's some logo history: (Win 1.0, 3.1, XP, Vista, Win 8 Metro style)

[https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2012/02/17/redes...](https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2012/02/17/redesigning-
the-windows-logo/)

------
fuzzfactor
This is the first desktop background I have seen that physically burned in and
damaged a non-CRT flat screen monitor, this was because of the too-bright
white elements.

Looks like this has now been corrected in the latest update.

~~~
Jonnax
LCD or OLED?

~~~
fuzzfactor
A Dell 24 inch LCD over 10 years old which was in perfect shape, originally
about a $1000 monitor.

Works fine but you can still see the pattern with some graphics or
backgrounds, and it only burned in for a few dozen hours before I noticed it.

------
system2
I feel like I am missing something here. I see much more complex work on
reddit by individuals (/r/highqualitygifs). And the final result is just an
animation of a static logo with light show?

------
Thorentis
This is one of those projects that seems complex and expensive for the sake of
being so. I doubt the final image is any better than what could have been
created purely digitally. This would have been cool to see in the 1950s or 60s
before CGI was a thing, but now it just seems over the top.

~~~
spectramax
I agree - It would be ridiculously easy to do this today with CG. Not just
easy, but a few-magnitude-orders easy/fast. It kind of leaves a bad taste
about the whole thing because most people don't know how easy it is to do in
CG.

I could probably do this in an hour or two, including the fog (which really
makes the image) - probably sounds condescending, but I cannot emphasize
enough about the triviality of generating this wallpaper in CG. Most people
don't realize what today's CG software can do, just look at the new features
in Houdini:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIcUW9QFMLE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIcUW9QFMLE)

~~~
Retric
Cool tech, yet every single one of those images look extremely unnatural.

I think people get used to seeing CGI so much they simply get used to it. Take
the faces in frozen, they are intentionally stylized but in a way that looks
utterly freakish. It’s not even that the animators messed up. Somehow rather
than people seeing something deep in the uncanny valley most people simply
don’t have a problem with this kind of distortion.

~~~
spectramax
You’re making an argument that CGI doesn’t match reality - that’s true and
hardly surprising.

~~~
Retric
Not quite, I am saying CGI looks similar to other CGI. Thus, if you’re going
for something memorable and artistic that’s a problem.

------
pcdoodle
Cool but hard to care about when the OS itself sucks so bad.

~~~
IshKebab
Not sure what you're talking about. Windows 10 itself is an excellent OS. The
only real problem with it is all the adverts.

------
prvc
Those clips could be outtakes from the TV show Silicon Valley.

------
greatgib
So useless and not interesting! How did this finish first on HN compared to
more interesting topics?

~~~
iudqnolq
If you really want to know, it was totally unfair dictatorial overreach. I got
an email from dang:

> [original_posting] looks good, but didn't get much attention. Would you care
> to repost it? You can do so here: [repost_link].

> ... the software will give the repost an upvote from the mods, plus we'll
> make sure it doesn't get flagged.

> This is part of an experiment in giving good HN submissions multiple chances
> at the front page. If you have any questions, let us know. And if you don't
> want these emails, sorry! Tell us and we won't do it again.

As you can see, my posting started out with a whole one extra vote and thus
the system was completely gamed. You were right :)

/s [edit: email is real]

~~~
shaklee3
I don't see how this is worse than most other things that hit the home page.
It's interesting, is an in-depth article, is tech-related, and is something
most people recognize. And the fact that it's not just cgi is interesting,
regardless of whether you think it should be or not.

~~~
iudqnolq
That's what I thought, and why I posted it.

