You Could Almost Do Anything Pt. III

http://www.elischiff.com/blog/2016/4/27/do-anything-iii

by rbinv • 10 years ago

71 28 10 years ago

elischiff.com

jaybosamiya• 10 years ago

Links to part 1 and 2:

http://www.elischiff.com/blog/2016/4/12/do-almost-anything

http://www.elischiff.com/blog/2016/4/20/do-almost-anything-i...

supercoder• 10 years ago

This guy is good at baiting the clicks, but I'm not sure why his opinion holds weight. He's got a pretty average looking website & logo, and isn't really know for his work in any design circles..

lachiephilipson• 10 years ago

I don't understand this sentiment; one mustn't have mastery over a field to be critic of it.

tvanantwerp• 10 years ago

But it would help.

The web is full of critics who themselves couldn't hope to achieve what they call out as mediocre. All I've learned from this series of blogs is that forward slashes are bad. Criticism without showing a better alternative is so pervasive and so draining.

Teddy Roosevelt put it well:

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."

erikb• 10 years ago

Yes but people who value a field will put effort into achieving something more than mediocricity in it.

y7• 10 years ago

This is where critical reading comes in.

coldtea5• 10 years ago

Lester Bangs and Greil Marcus aren't known for their music either. And the former had an average sounding LP out.

lobo_tuerto2• 10 years ago

It's not the same being good at something than being known.

trashtoss• 10 years ago

This whole series misses the trees for the forest.

Design for logos and branding doesn't happen in the platonic realm and isn't focus grouped against brand-unaware Martians; such designs are engineered to serve a real role in the real world, in the minds of real people.

When you propose a super simple abstract logo -- a dot, a circle, a slash -- it works or not depending on if the organization in question is already well known or not.

Thus, proposing such a logo to a client is a form of flattery -- you, yes you, are already so well known you, yes you, can get away with simply having a slash for your identifier! -- and that is all there is to it.

Like all things this can be cargo culted, and smaller clients often want to look bigger than they are, so sure a lot of un savvy operations wind up with fashionably vague and functionally inferior designs, but it's always been that way.

Lastly, it also matters that logos appear all over the place today -- print, web, tv, mobiles, tablets, etc -- and simpler, cleaner logos are easier to make work across all physical scales.

This isn't a problem vector assets solves, either; at smaller sizes you need to change proportions around and generally cheat the spacing -- in short, smaller physical representations look better if deformed into charicatures -- and it is hard to get external parties to respect your rules about which variant to use at which sizes.

Much easier to make something that looks reasonable at all sizes and scales and use it consistently.

coldtea5• 10 years ago

Design for logos and branding doesn't happen in the platonic realm and isn't focus grouped against brand-unaware Martians; such designs are engineered to serve a real role in the real world, in the minds of real people.

Judging from what actually gets picked most of the time, you'd be surprised.

maldusiecle• 10 years ago

It's also worth noting that he has essentially no aesthetic sensibility--the genuinely hideous logo at the top of each page being only the most obvious example of that. Time after time he praises ugly, inelegant logos over designs that are striking and memorable.

joshvm• 10 years ago

I always thought that the 'Flag' was a window, perhaps because of the name association. It certainly has panes. If you look at the history, it evolved from Windows 3.1 which was assuredly a window. I don't see a flag in the most recent logo either, it just looks like a typical move to flat branding (and I think it works, it looks great on the back of a tablet).

What I see in front of me is a rectangle with a green stroke. Perhaps Gomez-Palicio and I are looking at something different. Either way, ostensibly Whitman had fully justified the HP mark, so why did Gomez-Palicio feel compelled to invent metaphors where there were none? This compensatory narrative about server rooms shouldn't be necessary.

Yet this is exactly the rationale behind the 'Slate' thing which had some weird allusions to a corporate tower block and random space pictures. Why did everyone start gushing over it?

bluedino• 10 years ago

I never 'got' the Windows 8 logo. Something about the shape put me off. Something about that cyan color draws me back in time, it's just so abrasive to the eyes, and it's almost a match for the non-enterprise HP blue.

The color choices for the UI in Windows 8 were just so odd as a whole. It's as if Microsoft was so criticized for being too 'cartoony' with XP that they just completely went off the wall.

kevindeasis• 10 years ago

The windows logo makes much more sense to me now.

It literally looks like a window receiving light from the outside.

The windows logo before 8 did not make any sense at all to me. If I show it to the younger generation they will ask me what is that logo.

Just like when they ask what is the floppy disk icon and why is it used as a save

bitwize2• 10 years ago

Back in 2012 or so Microsoft was on this cyan-magenta-white kick. It's as if their design team spontaneously decided "oh, that nasty CGA palette? That's the height of cutting edge!"

cocoflunchy• 10 years ago

Snarky and a fun read, just as part 1 and 2, but ultimately not very constructive... I'd be more interested in reading about what he thinks are great logos and why they work well.

ethanbond• 10 years ago

Well, don't hold your breath. I've literally never seen a positive word on this guy's blog. He posts over on Designernews quite a lot and it's predictably vitriolic every single time.

They're certainly fun to read, but does he actually think this is a remarkable insight into anything? You can pick any shape you want and then point out how logos are all trending towards that shape. Obviously by just selecting the logotypes that fit your argument.

It's a weak argument (what is it, anyways?) presented in an unhelpful way (criticizing a kid's school project?). Not that I buy into the idea that you have to be an artist to be a critic, but I do think your overall output to a community should be positive. You can either contribute critically by making good commentary or you can contribute productively by making good work. Eli does neither, and by the 3rd or 4th post you read by him it becomes painfully obvious.

Entertaining nonetheless, I suppose.

jalfresi• 10 years ago

I had the same experience; signed up to the mailing list because the articles looked like there was real depth (at last!) really digging deep in the aspects of design. I was also excited by the fact that he appeared to be arguing from a non-modernist design perspective, and as an ardent believer in modernist design, I was excited to have my beliefs challenged.

Unfortunately I found there wasn't much there. Whilst some (most?) of the articles seem to dig into some depth, it's all over shadowed by a negativity that has nothing to back it up, just empty criticism. It's telling that I can't even determining if he's arguing from a pre or post-modernist perspective, or even from a different perspective completely.

I found it all a bit disappointing really. I think he has a point to be made in there somewhere, he certainly begins his arguments from a position that seems tenable, but for the life of me I couldn't prune it from all the dead-wood of negativity.

I really hope the author does dig in and argue a point, because like I said, it certainly feels like he's arguing from a position.

I just hope that after all that, his point isn't "design is art" because he can GTFO :)

bitwize2• 10 years ago

Says the guy whose logo looks like a candidate for a Big Hero 6 emblem.

iQuercus• 10 years ago

Eli Schiff, whilst pointing out potentially valid concerns about minimalist designs, is also himself with his articles a symptom of a much larger Soviet-style centralist attitude that seems to pervade the modern design community.

Right now, the Soviet Design System (SDS) has decreed that we must all have minimalist everything. Eventually folks like Eli will get us back to something with more flair and embellishment. And then that will be the correct way, and everyone must do that.

But the question is, when will we start designing for context and people rather than some arbitrary, centrally decided (by the fewest people) paradigm of correct design?

dgant• 10 years ago

Part of the challenge is that design isn't viewed in isolation. A design leaves an impression on the viewer partly based on how it contrasts with other designs.

A minimalist logo in a sea of embellished logos says "We are smarter and easier to use". A minimalist logo in a sea of minimalist logos says "We are safe and normal."

So following a design trend can be one of the tools you use to design for an audience.

Silhouette• 10 years ago

But the question is, when will we start designing for context and people rather than some arbitrary, centrally decided (by the fewest people) paradigm of correct design?

Some of us never stopped. Fortunately for all of us, just because someone with a blog or some business with a popular product decides they like a certain style, we don't have to design our blogs and our products the same way. As with any kind of hype, the best solution I know to the current promotion of minimalist styles is to see whether there is anything useful in there and if not then to ignore that hype and let the results speak for themselves.

cylinder• 10 years ago

I have always liked Windows logos. I have fond memories of eagerly upgrading to Win98 or installing Windows on new PC builds and seeing the logo for the first time during setup. I also like the new Microsoft and Windows logos as well as the Store design. Surface looks great too. I don't know why Msft gets so much slack on the design front.

You Could Almost Do Anything Pt. III

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