{"id":93,"date":"2006-07-15T19:53:22","date_gmt":"2006-07-16T02:53:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scoobr.com\/niblettes_old\/2006\/07\/15\/vapid-development\/"},"modified":"2021-06-12T03:40:13","modified_gmt":"2021-06-12T03:40:13","slug":"vapid-development","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.scoobr.com\/niblettes_old\/2006\/07\/15\/vapid-development\/","title":{"rendered":"Vapid Development"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Just because blog posting is technically effortless doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mean it should be intellectually so. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not railing against fluffy posts about trivial matters\u00e2\u20ac\u201dI love fluff and trivia<\/a>. What I am railing against is the all to common practice of posting a thin pretense of insight that crumples under the lightest scrutiny\u00e2\u20ac\u201dI\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve labeled these twinkies in an earlier post<\/a>–and the throngs of praising sheep who eat it up (\u00e2\u20ac\u0153oh the emporer\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s delicate fabric is beautiful!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d). In other words I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m railing against the design world\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s vapid blather with delusions of meaning.<\/p>\n

For example, Kathy Sierra\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Does the US suck at design?<\/a>\u00e2\u20ac\u009d offers us the following thesis: a culture of design is about aesthetics and style, and such cultures flourish only outside the US. The corollary to this is that design culture withers in the US. <\/p>\n

She demonstrates her thesis with the following 4 points of evidence:<\/p>\n

1.\tWestern Europe has good graffiti
\n2.\tBarcelona has gorgeous women
\n3.\tArchitecture outside the US is older
\n4.\tAnd Swiss and New Zealand currency is more colorful<\/p>\n

To begin with the foundation of her very premise, that design equals style, is so na\u00c3\u00afve, so unsophisticated, so misguided that it seems more appropriate coming from an accounting manager whose oatmeal cubicle walls proclaim \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Hang in There\u00e2\u20ac\u009d with kittens dangling from trees, than someone who positions themselves as some kind of authority on design.<\/p>\n

But even if each of these premises were true, they still would not support Sierra\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s thesis. Unfortunately this level of reasoning is all too common in the design world. And we designers wonder why we aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t given the credit we think we deserve\u00e2\u20ac\u201dperhaps we are. So, not only is Sierra\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s logic incredibly faulty (her conclusion just doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t follow from her premises) but her premises are themselves demonstrably wrong (at least to the level of rigor shown in her post). So because I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m in a combative mood and have some time, let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s tackle each one \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

Western Europe has good graffiti<\/strong>. Well, since Sierra offers no more than loose personal opinion to demonstrate veracity here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s some counter personal opinion. I too have been to Western Europe (actually only a few select cities, so I can hardly claim expertise over such a large and diverse area). The only place where I was impressed by the graffiti was in Barcelona (many of my pics to the right feature Barcelona\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s graffiti). It is more clever, subversive, political, curious, amusing, absurd and smarter than any I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve seen over here. However in terms of visual aesthetics and style (the metrics Sierra uses) I found it plain and uninspiring, certainly nothing like the Technicolor tag explosions you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll find adorning some of the less well heeled buildings in such an unassuming city as Dallas. <\/p>\n

Strike one!<\/p>\n

Barcelona has gorgeous women.<\/strong> I found this particularly funny. My girlfriend and I spent a couple of weeks in Barcelona. We absolutely loved the city (especially its witty graffiti) but were quite surprised by how consistently unattractive the women were physically\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand the viral mullets and wrestling boots they all wore at that time didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t help the matter.<\/p>\n

Now, as a heterosexual male in the prime of life with no weird fetishes that would land him jail I can say with absolute certainty that Manhattan may have the highest density of physically attractive women in the world (the world that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve seen anyway). And I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not talking about fake plastic models here; I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m talking about regular women who live in the city going about their daily business. Barcelona ain\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even near that ballpark. <\/p>\n

Steeee-rike two!!<\/p>\n

Architecture outside the US is older<\/strong>. Can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t argue with that, but I can make a giant red herring salad out of it.<\/p>\n

Foul!<\/p>\n

Swiss and New Zealand currency is more colorful<\/strong>. While also true I could write pages on how facile and misguided this reasoning is, but I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll opt for brevity instead. <\/p>\n

Sierra complains about how dull and similar US dollar bills are. She further complains about how unusable they are, giving them an F. I have used money all of my life, and I have never myself, nor witnessed anyone else, ever having any difficulty using US dollars bills. I hardly think a product with a centuries\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 old track record of successful use deserves an F for usability. To be fair, her comment about adding non-visual cues to bills for the blind is probably a great idea. <\/p>\n

The greenback\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s usability is (the blind notwithstanding) simply not a problem. And John Carroll says one of the greatest mistakes design can make is to solve the wrong problem.<\/p>\n

Since design is style in Sierra\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s world, let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s dig into the US dollar\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s visual design. But let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s avoid the subjectivity trap of aesthetics, and focus on something more stable like semiotics What Sierra calls \u00e2\u20ac\u0153dull\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is actually quite powerful. The bills\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 conservative visual design communicates a strong, unrelenting, historically unbroken continuity with the nation\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fiduciary stability and commitment. <\/p>\n

Similar to what the Rock of Gibralter communicates for Prudential, the dollar bill\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s visual designs communicates gravity, trust, permanence and importance, the kinds of feelings old banks used to radiate with their marbled floors and Doric columns. They were temples. <\/p>\n

Stamps can be all colorful and whimsical, because they are small, insignificant, single-dosage, disposable currency. But money is permanent, money is forever, money is too important, and the US dollar bills look the part. Save the colour for Monopoly.<\/p>\n

And those same old dead white guys, the guys who founded the US as both a polity and as revolutionary political idea stand behind that dollar just as they stand behind the constitution, yesterday, today and tomorrow. Its all about trust, trust that this bill is worth something, and will always continue to be worth something. What the hell does a coloured penguin represent? <\/p>\n

Stiiiike three–you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re out!<\/p>\n

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m actually not trying to convince you that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m right on any of these points. Rather I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m trying to show that there are equally (and I think much more) valid opinions that contradict the ones Sierra serves up in her dizzyingly anemic logic.<\/p>\n

Oh, and I almost for got my favourite where she says \u00e2\u20ac\u0153[t]hen again, all those MySpace pages could be a real setback…\u00e2\u20ac\u009d demonstrating a monumental incapacity to see beyond self-reference and betraying an absolute solipsistic miscomprehension of what makes MySpace so incredibly fantastic at what its does. Its like old folks in the 50s complaining about rock-and-roll–its a good sign that culture has left you behind in the loving arms of irrelevance.<\/p>\n

Sierra\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcevidence\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 so rooted in the vicissitudes of personal subjectivity maybe be interesting in a getting-to-know-you sort of way, but it is by no means support for a contentious or meaningful claim. Unfortunately this level or reasoning is epidemic in design and it is killing our profession\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s credibility in the business world. <\/p>\n

Thanks but no thanks Kathy, you can keep your twinkies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just because blog posting is technically effortless doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mean it should be intellectually so. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not railing against fluffy posts about trivial matters\u00e2\u20ac\u201dI love fluff and trivia. What I am railing against is the all to common practice of posting a thin pretense of insight that crumples under the lightest scrutiny\u00e2\u20ac\u201dI\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve labeled these twinkies in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-93","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-old"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/parCYG-1v","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.scoobr.com\/niblettes_old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.scoobr.com\/niblettes_old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.scoobr.com\/niblettes_old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.scoobr.com\/niblettes_old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.scoobr.com\/niblettes_old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.scoobr.com\/niblettes_old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":410,"href":"http:\/\/www.scoobr.com\/niblettes_old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93\/revisions\/410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.scoobr.com\/niblettes_old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.scoobr.com\/niblettes_old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.scoobr.com\/niblettes_old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}