
Did we reached webdesign's coolness boundaries? - paulson77
http://www.bloomberg.com/businessweek/design-conference/
======
dang
Please don't use HN titles to editorialize.

------
randlet
I feel like this is a joke but if you're interested in the "Coming Soon"
schedule, it's actually just commented out in the source. (edit: just noticed
it's a design conference. Has to be a joke, edit2: Sessions 2,3,4 are all the
same so obviously not finalized!)

    
    
        Session One
    
        9:00 - 10:45AM
            Evan Sharp, Pinterest, in conversation with Brad Wieners, Bloomberg Businessweek
            Alon Cohen & Adi Tatarko, Houzz, in conversation with Emma Rosenblum, Bloomberg Pursuits
    
        Break
    
        10:45 - 11:00AM
    
        Session Two
    
        11:00 - 1:00PM
            Matias Duarte, Android, in conversation with Joshua Topolsky, Bloomberg Business
            Michael Bierut, Pentagram
            Tim Brown, IDEO, & Roger Martin, Martin Prosperity Institute, in conversation with Josh Tyrangiel, Bloomberg Businessweek
            Susan Kare, Susan Kare Design
            Marco Tempest, Technoillusionist
    
        Lunch
    
        1:00 - 2:00PM
    
        Session Three
    
        2:00 - 4:15PM
            Matias Duarte, Android, in conversation with Joshua Topolsky, Bloomberg Business
            Michael Bierut, Pentagram
            Tim Brown, IDEO, & Roger Martin, Martin Prosperity Institute, in conversation with Josh Tyrangiel, Bloomberg Businessweek
            Susan Kare, Susan Kare Design
            Marco Tempest, Technoillusionist
    
        Break
    
        4:15 - 4:30PM
    
        Session Four
    
        4:30 - 6:00PM
            Matias Duarte, Android, in conversation with Joshua Topolsky, Bloomberg Business
            Michael Bierut, Pentagram
            Tim Brown, IDEO, & Roger Martin, Martin Prosperity Institute, in conversation with Josh Tyrangiel, Bloomberg Businessweek
            Susan Kare, Susan Kare Design
            Marco Tempest, Technoillusionist

------
stonewhite
We have come the full circle.

This in essence is the same thing with
[http://mahir.faithweb.com/original.htm](http://mahir.faithweb.com/original.htm)

~~~
anton_gogolev
Beware! Music autoplay alert.

~~~
wdmeldon
As all classically well designed sites should.

------
tb303
Jumping in here as someone who has been designing for the web and other medium
since 1994 I think what drew the OP to that question is lack of historical
context. This site is great. It's clearly 100% deliberate, tongue-in-cheek,
like randlet said here as well. Scrolling headers, blink tags, superfluous
animation is what dominated the web like drop shadows / leather & satin /
"flat" / etc. later, as we found we could use it — then jodi, nn, and other
text-only web artists incorporated into their work. This is a nod to both
sides.

~~~
hodwik
I'm not so sure it's tongue in cheek anymore. The problem with post-modernist
design is that eventually it just becomes codified cool.

Look at the Terry Richardson shots for American Apparel, the works of Banksy,
or Miley Cyrus's outfits -- the original intention was to produce camp, but to
young people, without context, they just look cool.

The designers get to feel like they're doing something high-art, because there
is intended irony behind their work, but the masses are just experiencing it
like any other loud obnoxious art -- it still drowns out anything of subtlety.

~~~
tb303
This is a fun conversation and I feel I may be too ignorant on the topic to
hold any informed stance. But my feeling is the problematic issue has a lot
less to do with the producers and a lot more with the consumers. As in, you're
right — the intention may be there, but the result is misguided since the
audience can't appreciate it. Well, I appreciated it at least.

(Banksy's original intent was not to produce camp — read his pamphlets and
manifestos from the early 00s. Highly socio-political, black mirror stuff.)

~~~
hodwik
If Banksy isn't trying to produce camp he is officially the worst artist of
all time.

[http://www.fecalface.com/news2/1-11-11/banksy.jpg](http://www.fecalface.com/news2/1-11-11/banksy.jpg)

------
jbenz
I think it is easy for the design world (myself included) to take itself too
seriously sometimes, and start to sound pretentious.

This seems like a great antidote. I think it's funny. Design needs more humor.

I love the scrolling "BUY TICKETS" and the rollover effect of the cursor
gripping a wad of bills. Ha.

------
avolcano
Bloomberg has a lot of fascinating web design. Their homepage has been walked
down from the height of its punk-rock-ness, but I've always appreciated how
bright and lively their site is, especially for an incredibly boring
business/finance website.

Previously, in the same vein: [http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/year-
ahead-2016/](http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/year-ahead-2016/)

------
zhte415
It looks pretty nice. Does its job. Is super fast.

And... it's a poster. An online poster, a billboard poster, an interactive
online billboard poster, but a poster.

Plus:

 _font-family: sans-serif;_

How fantastic.

------
tosseraccount
It loads pretty fast. No spinning "wait" icons. It's to the point.

I dunno, I wish more sites did that.

------
6stringmerc
Did I really just read "Did we reached" as a viable English construction? Ow.
Easy fix if you can be bothered.

Regarding the question, no, I think that embodies everything wrong with the
abilities of web design. Throwing a layer of Helvetica and various typeface
sizes is not pleasant. What gives with the Mickey Mouse hand cursor? I get it
has five fingers, but that's a glove suitable for a body that's been floating
in a river for the past two weeks. And, if anybody else managed to dig deep
enough into this LARGE PRINT EDITION WEBSITE and get to some of the speakers'
photos, and mouse over, they wiggle and twitch and zoom in and out in some
kind of digital seizure.

If you're going with coolness factor, I can honestly say some Pitchfork and
Vice and other multimedia layouts have been quite impressive. There's a reason
Medium is catching on so well. Clean, image featuring narrative in a not-too-
cluttered-but-still-link-tastic format is highly readable and allows the
subject matter to be the focus[0]

Everybody has different opinions and cultural influences, sure. Same goes for
food. Or musical scales. I suppose that can make it more difficult for
consistent standards and expectations on a global platform like the webs.

[0] [http://www.thefader.com/2015/01/29/chance-the-rapper-
donnie-...](http://www.thefader.com/2015/01/29/chance-the-rapper-donnie-
trumpet-the-social-experiment-cover-story)

~~~
abledon
Maybe its a Meta on the cheekiness Meta of the post's content

------
wiremine
Title reminded me of "Cool Site of the Day". Surprised to see it's still going
strong, 21 years later. Extra points for using a perl script via CGI. Now
that's cool.

It's a bit disappointing to see how many websites no longer exist. Would be
cool to see a mashup of Cool Site and The Internet Archive.

[1] [http://www.coolsiteoftheday.com/cgi-
bin/stillcool.pl](http://www.coolsiteoftheday.com/cgi-bin/stillcool.pl)

------
rm_-rf_slash
Think of it like architecture: you create a design that works, people copy it,
it becomes standard, then boring, then people make baroque experiments, and
then finally it goes retro. Rinse and repeat until a new technology replaces
the old (steel over brick/concrete).

Web (and mobile) design is now stuck on the hamster wheel. Until we have
nanomachines swimming through our veins, all we can do is reinvent what we
have to make it fit the fashion of the day.

I'd argue the same goes for tech startups' business models, not just their
websites. Snapchat didn't introduce any new technology, it just changed how we
use what we have. That's why you see so many Uber/Airbnb clones: tech has hit
a ceiling, for the time being.

I think in the next 5 years there will be a contraction in Silicon Valley, and
a cynical cultural backlash as people see more and more that all this new tech
isn't making life all that much better than years previous, but instead it
just serves to make a few people very rich and the rest more rushed than ever.

------
roymurdock
Couple of very serious omissions:

\- No autoplaying MIDI

\- No flaming 3d banners from dafont.com

\- No hidden white text that needs to be highlighted to find the super secret
link to the super secret webpage

Otherwise, bravo to the design team. They've developed a unique style (anti-
style?) for Bloomberg pieces that many are now trying and failing to emulate.
Good to see web design satirizing itself and staying fresh.

------
Grue3
I'm using Firefox and there are actually many usability issues, which I only
noticed when I opened the same page in Chrome. The bigDot's are too large and
cover some of the text. The venue map doesn't show up on Firefox at all.
Circles next to About/Speakers/Schedule/Location overlap each other. And so
on.

------
dates
Some talented artists getting away with amazing stuff over there, like how the
'what is code' article logs an ascii art "smash the patriarchy" tweety bird
into the console. i love it.

If authors are reading- The 6 in BWDESIGN2016 wraps at smaller browser widths.

------
gotchange
I'm noticing two emerging interesting trends on the web design/development
front nowadays where people embracing and exploring international typographic
style motifs mixed with minimalism on one hand and on the other hand, people
dabbling with a revival of the ill-fated Flash websites in the early 2000s but
this time around built solely on web technologies.

Nothing against those two specific trends and going experimental away from the
bland and boring corporate and "professional" look dominating today's market
but I must say that the Flash and extreme artsy minimalism are a step
backwards and not a best fit for this specific medium and use cases.

------
mhd
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a powerpoint presentation in your
web browser -- forever.

------
cousin_it
I'm reminded of this oldie but goodie:
[http://www.goer.org/htmlhorror/htmlhorror1.html](http://www.goer.org/htmlhorror/htmlhorror1.html)

------
tammer
The most interesting trends in web design I've seen lately aren't aesthetic -
they're features engineered into sites that work and feel like native apps.

~~~
ashark
> and feel like native apps

True, in a way. Thanks to Electron, quote-unquote native applications now
feel, perform, and use resources just like web apps.

------
UseStrict
This is the funniest thing I've seen in a while, definitely tongue-in-cheek
poking fun at design.

------
shade23
And now the site seems to have messed up.

------
pskocik
I actually kind of like this design.

------
gotchange
Can someone please fix the title? "Reached" is sticking out like a sore thumb
that I can't bring myself to ignore it.

~~~
malvim
Or maybe "did" should be changed to "have", and we'd all be fine...

~~~
gotchange
The pedant, polemicist, anal retentive in me would argue that losing just two
letters is more economical than scraping a whole word and then inserting a new
one in its place but that's just me and my multiple personalities.

------
splouk
I just realized something.

At some point in the future, there will be a resurgence of 90s style shitty
web design as a retro movement.

------
test1235
wow ... I actually thought the site was broken for a second there, or that I'd
accidentally blocked something style-related.

------
akilism
bloomberg business week graphics pretty much kills it when it comes to
cool/weird web shit.

------
mhd
29 requests, a megabyte of data.

~~~
JustSomeNobody
There's some aggressive downvoting going on here.

------
desbo
It's fun. I like it.

------
pauly
where is the "under construction" digging man animation?

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
And "Best viewed in IE6"?

------
DrNuke
aka the raging cretinisation of the world

------
janlukacs
this sir, is awesome.

------
workitout
That site rocks!

------
Stolpe
The markup is actually pretty neat.

------
Angostura
Holy moly.

------
JustSomeNobody
I read that date as April 1, 2016 at first.

------
reefoctopus
That's the worst thing I've ever seen.

~~~
bovermyer
Clearly you have never been to
[http://www.theworldsworstwebsiteever.com/](http://www.theworldsworstwebsiteever.com/)

~~~
silon7
My eyes filter all that out already.

------
klum
Yeah, that site is never going to get peoples attention... :)

------
return0
I m not sure. I would like more scrolling backgrounds please. Try harder plz.

------
anjc
Needs more...pop.

And maybe <blink>

------
codewithcheese
Wow that site actually broke my cursor, now i see 3 separate images. To line
cursors and a hand. Kudos!

------
maxwellito
I don't know what to think but I feel the need to say that I don't know what
to think about this.

At the end they mark a point, you love or hate it, but you've heard of it, and
it's all what matters.

------
chillydawg
Wow. Someone paid for and approved that website.

------
username223
To think we used to hate on the <BLINK> tag...

------
heimatau
Even their CSS is atrocious. [http://www.bloomberg.com/businessweek/design-
conference/stat...](http://www.bloomberg.com/businessweek/design-
conference/static/css/style.css)

Why do they have this in the first block of text: /* 1 */

What's the point to commenting out the number 1?

I guess when they have a good lineup of speakers it doesn't matter? I don't
know. I honestly don't know what to say.

So many questions, I don't know where to start.

~~~
kedean
That's not "atrocious css", that's minified CSS. They're running their backend
code through a resource compression system like JAWR to conserve bandwidth.
Who cares if the CSS that's presented to you isn't pretty, it's a declarative
language anyway.

