Comment by fermienrico | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fermienrico | Hacker News Reader

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I didn’t claim Decoration and creativity is bad and said that when it’s required for cultural, aesthetic or media appeal then it makes sense, for example a music band website.

But a web framework should adopt the most neutral stance and designers can modify as they see fit. In other words, decorative frameworks as proposed by the OP that are based on an Architectural movement are not appropriate for majority of the webpages on the internet. They distract. Decoration distracts. Doesn’t mean it has no place in society.

Also, Dieter Rams proved that design can be un-decorated, yet inviting, comfortable and human centric. As a direct legacy to Rams, just look at the success of Apple and it’s stance on design. Personally, I argue that Decoration is shallow and doesn’t solve the fundamental goal in design : to make products and services that interface with humans easy to interact, understand and use. Instead Decoration distracts, deludes and creates confusion. It steals clarity and intent in design. In some cases, Decoration is not honest. Can you imagine Casinos built by Tadao Ando?

> But a web framework should adopt the most neutral stance and designers can modify as they see fit. In other words, decorative frameworks as proposed by the OP that are based on an Architectural movement are not appropriate for majority of the webpages on the internet.

This is true. Not all web pages need high decoration. Think of art nouveau Google sheets. Hah, what a nightmare that would be. But I would say we make a mistake to say that most web pages are similar. That's how we get these design philosophies to end them all. What works for material design won't necessarily work for your design.

> Instead Decoration distracts, deludes and creates confusion. It steals clarity and intent in design. In some cases, Decoration is not honest.

You are describing ~BAD~ decoration and design. And I totally agree with you that bad decoration is the MOST detracting thing. But good decoration actually moves your eye, body, and intent towards better function. Art deco has many leading lines that guide people towards main entrances or even displays the ethos of the organization. Intuitively I know you think this is true because a web without any decoration would look like a terminal. Grids and layouts are decoration and if used improperly will distract users as well.

>Decoration distracts.

This is the principle that lead to the abhorrent and unusable flat design. Sometimes, lack of decoration distracts. Because it is this "decoration" that makes things look familiar. Without the decoration people have to stop and think and figure out things.

iOS 6 and below is an example of decoration making things more familiar and intuitive. As Steve Jobs designed it, the world inside the iPad screen was a seamless extension of the world outside the screen. When you went inside the iPad, everything looked familiar. But now we have a hard boundary at the device, and different rules apply inside that boundary. You have to learn and memorize new rules because the outside rules that you are already familiar with are of no help inside the screen.

I think you're confusing skeumorphism with decoration. Decoration is adding elements to design for the sake of aesthetic ornamentation. For example, Geocities websites had all kinds of blink tags and fireworks going on inside a webpage. That is decoration.

A save button icon that looks like a floppy disk is not decoration. It is a use of skeumorphic semiotics that takes advantage of historic familiarity - which is what you're referring to. I agree with you that it has its place in design. The original discussion of this thread is whether we should decorate websites with architectural motifs whether it is art-deco or brutalism.

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