> Back in the early 2000s, UI design like this had a high skill ceiling. It took years to master lighting, materials, and depth. Now? That level of craft is often just a [AI] prompt away.
That is very interesting: Modernism and its descendents were very much about minimalism - how much could you do with minimal components. It applies to visual aesthetics (including much of abstract art), writing (e.g., Hemingway), architecture, and much else, even some music (singer-songwriters, Philip Glass). It's democratic - anyone can do it, or far more than can design complicated aesthetics. There have been other trends since, some rejecting that concept, but you can see that minimalism everywhere, in clothes, in industrial design, and even in HN's design. 'Great designers', you may have heard, 'focus not on what to add, but on what to take away'.
AI enables maximalism; it could transform aesthetics in everything. It enables complexity - including in fashion, in architecture, in writing, almost everywhere.
This theory is that AI removes the issue of efficiency for the creator: AI allows people to create maximalist, or non-minimalist design easily. Still, minimalism's value is very much about efficiency for the user, including focus. Excess design is a distraction and is generally not productive - how does distracting us with detailed icons help us? What is the value?
I love that efficiency in modernism. HN takes the minimalist approach, iirc, in part to attract a community that is focused on its content and not bells and whistles. And I worry that in broader society, as people now routinely hide from very serious dangers (to freedom, to peace, from climate change, etc.), this new trend will be more circuses to distract us.
I think it's important to mention the two main underlying streams of thought in functional that contribute to minimalism: Louis Henry Sullivan's maxim "form follows function," and Adolph Loo's Ornament and Crime[1]. Both of these made ornamentation unjustifiable, either that ornamentation doesn't have a function, or that it is a product of uncivilized impulses.
What's left is that every design choice must be functional leaving minimalism as the bleached bones of design - the only thing left after everything has been stripped away. I want to be clear that functionalism and minimalism are not synonymous, but one's impact on the other is rarely overstated.
That is very interesting: Modernism and its descendents were very much about minimalism - how much could you do with minimal components. It applies to visual aesthetics (including much of abstract art), writing (e.g., Hemingway), architecture, and much else, even some music (singer-songwriters, Philip Glass). It's democratic - anyone can do it, or far more than can design complicated aesthetics. There have been other trends since, some rejecting that concept, but you can see that minimalism everywhere, in clothes, in industrial design, and even in HN's design. 'Great designers', you may have heard, 'focus not on what to add, but on what to take away'.
AI enables maximalism; it could transform aesthetics in everything. It enables complexity - including in fashion, in architecture, in writing, almost everywhere.
This theory is that AI removes the issue of efficiency for the creator: AI allows people to create maximalist, or non-minimalist design easily. Still, minimalism's value is very much about efficiency for the user, including focus. Excess design is a distraction and is generally not productive - how does distracting us with detailed icons help us? What is the value?
I love that efficiency in modernism. HN takes the minimalist approach, iirc, in part to attract a community that is focused on its content and not bells and whistles. And I worry that in broader society, as people now routinely hide from very serious dangers (to freedom, to peace, from climate change, etc.), this new trend will be more circuses to distract us.