A design article railing against the generically bland "instagrammable" design ethos. I think it's interesting that, having lived through the 90s and Geocities era the first time, it's making a...
A design article railing against the generically bland "instagrammable" design ethos. I think it's interesting that, having lived through the 90s and Geocities era the first time, it's making a comeback, and it's called UGHZ or "The Un-Grammable Hang Zone." Even the writing style of this article feels like listening to a DJ from a 90s college radio station. It's hilarious.
One part did stand out to me though:
Right now, in year ~15 of the fetish for “clean lines” and “understated elegance,” I wanna hang for hours in a FRUMPY, MISSHAPEN, INVITINGLY INELEGANT place like Jump’N Java instead, during which time I would never even think to take out my phone and let the feed know I was there because, despite being packed with vibey curios, the place is way too much of a CHAOTIC VISUAL HODGEPODGE to “work” in the form of an iPhone pic on social media …
It hadn't occurred to me before, but I realized I never really understood what made a space Instagrammable (or Pinterestable before that). This sort of called it out for me. The minimalism, the clean lines, the muted color palettes with only selected statement items that dominate the visual space. All of this is photography on easy mode. You don't need to think about composition the rectilinear angles make it obvious where you need to stand and what the position of the camera should be. The muted colors go with everything, so don't worry about balancing color. The statement items make it clear where not to stand, so no mergers or anything.
The aesthetic this person is talking about isn't really "ungrammable," it's just not friendly to sloppy photography. Cracker Barrels are full of mismatched bric-a-brac but they still look fine. You actually have to know a thing or two about how to frame a shot and understand depth of field and such. I guess this must all have been fairly obvious but I never really thought about it until now.
Not exactly putting the ideas into practice, considering this article is on Substack. Although I suppose Substack is a bit un-grammable in it's own way, considering it manages to make what should...
Not exactly putting the ideas into practice, considering this article is on Substack. Although I suppose Substack is a bit un-grammable in it's own way, considering it manages to make what should be simple text content painful to consume.
The maintenance is tedious and distracts from writing whatever it is you wanted to write. I doubt I would ever self-host a blog again. (I disagree that Substack is hard to read. There are some...
The maintenance is tedious and distracts from writing whatever it is you wanted to write. I doubt I would ever self-host a blog again.
(I disagree that Substack is hard to read. There are some annoyances you can turn off.)
In the case of designers, though, I would think they'd be somewhat into the opportunities to design their page instead of leaning on default Squarespace templates. A big part of what they're...
The maintenance is tedious and distracts from writing whatever it is you wanted to write. I doubt I would ever self-host a blog again.
In the case of designers, though, I would think they'd be somewhat into the opportunities to design their page instead of leaning on default Squarespace templates. A big part of what they're trying to do is not just write, but to present their work in novel ways and experiment with visuals and aesthetics.
I still think of how much of a delight the Yamauchi Family Office page was when I first saw it. In the Geocities era you saw stuff like this online ALL THE TIME. (Okay, mostly just in tribute pages to Dana Scully).
Designers, as a general rule/in my experience, don't know much/anything about writing html/css. They know about Illustrator and Photoshop, not Dreamweaver and Vim. In the case of the outstanding...
Designers, as a general rule/in my experience, don't know much/anything about writing html/css. They know about Illustrator and Photoshop, not Dreamweaver and Vim.
In the case of the outstanding BBSP, neither of them are even designers.
A design article railing against the generically bland "instagrammable" design ethos. I think it's interesting that, having lived through the 90s and Geocities era the first time, it's making a comeback, and it's called UGHZ or "The Un-Grammable Hang Zone." Even the writing style of this article feels like listening to a DJ from a 90s college radio station. It's hilarious.
One part did stand out to me though:
It hadn't occurred to me before, but I realized I never really understood what made a space Instagrammable (or Pinterestable before that). This sort of called it out for me. The minimalism, the clean lines, the muted color palettes with only selected statement items that dominate the visual space. All of this is photography on easy mode. You don't need to think about composition the rectilinear angles make it obvious where you need to stand and what the position of the camera should be. The muted colors go with everything, so don't worry about balancing color. The statement items make it clear where not to stand, so no mergers or anything.
The aesthetic this person is talking about isn't really "ungrammable," it's just not friendly to sloppy photography. Cracker Barrels are full of mismatched bric-a-brac but they still look fine. You actually have to know a thing or two about how to frame a shot and understand depth of field and such. I guess this must all have been fairly obvious but I never really thought about it until now.
Not exactly putting the ideas into practice, considering this article is on Substack. Although I suppose Substack is a bit un-grammable in it's own way, considering it manages to make what should be simple text content painful to consume.
I don't think most of the people on the internet today actually realize that you CAN just write some HTML and host it yourself.
The maintenance is tedious and distracts from writing whatever it is you wanted to write. I doubt I would ever self-host a blog again.
(I disagree that Substack is hard to read. There are some annoyances you can turn off.)
In the case of designers, though, I would think they'd be somewhat into the opportunities to design their page instead of leaning on default Squarespace templates. A big part of what they're trying to do is not just write, but to present their work in novel ways and experiment with visuals and aesthetics.
I still think of how much of a delight the Yamauchi Family Office page was when I first saw it. In the Geocities era you saw stuff like this online ALL THE TIME. (Okay, mostly just in tribute pages to Dana Scully).
Designers, as a general rule/in my experience, don't know much/anything about writing html/css. They know about Illustrator and Photoshop, not Dreamweaver and Vim.
In the case of the outstanding BBSP, neither of them are even designers.