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Comment by pg | Hacker News Reader

If you have no design skills, just try to make things as minimal as possible. Google's UI was designed by engineers with no design skills, and it still works for them.

If you can't design the (original) Porsche 911,

http://www.idee.demon.nl/911_22/b911-117.jpg

just design a Land Rover

http://www.roverclub.org/crmpuf.gif

The thing to avoid is getting halfway to cool design and ending up with a Pontiac Aztek

http://www.familycar.com/RoadTests/PontiacAztek/Images2/Righ...

or an Edsel

http://blog.ninjakiwi.com/images/edsel.jpg

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And dont stray too far from traditional design conventions, or you could end up like Weber's new supercar and people will want to throw up when they see your work:

http://www.autoblog.com/2007/05/04/top-gear-crowns-weber-sup...

Ouch. That's like a distillation of all that's wrong with the latest batch of BMWs.

The problem is not that they strayed from conventions. The problem with that car is that it's fugly.

"the shape allows the car to reach 62 MPH in 2.7 seconds with a top speed of 240 MPH"

People also thought the Aeron was ugly when it came out...

shape -> engine

I wonder how it handles?

Hah yeah, apparently they drank a bit too much from Chris Bangle's "flame styling" cup. Believe it or not, the back is even worse...

That just demonstrated to me how I have exactly zero visual aesthetic sense. All four of those cars seem completely equivalent to me, aside from being functionally different. I'm beyond not having a visual design sense; I can't even notice good visual design when it hits me over the head.

It's just visual that's the problem, though-- I know elegance in proofs and programs, and I know good music; a Monet, though, does no more for me than a hotel painting, in that they're both kind of blurry.

I can still find things like Myspace obnoxious compared to Facebook, but only because of functionality and usage patterns, not any sense of aesthetics.

Do you have an aesthetic sense for women/men as appropriate?

Women, yes, but I'm fairly sure that's evolutionarily hardwired. I have absolutely no sense for clothing on either women or men. Especially not color clash. I was presented with what I was later told was the absolute most clashing colors, period (a green and an almost-green), and had no idea that they were particularly bad.

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