DeLorean
Liking the pointless angularity is fine. My point is that it's referenced from a very different place [1974] and time to all the other current design thinking that works. And the important word there is 'Works'.
Angular lines don't often appear in nature. Man's arrogance [and often laziness] has lead to the use of flat and angular solutions in design, especially where pressing out curved solutions in plate steel are harder to design, more difficult to control tolerance wise, and more expensive to produce.
And by 'Work', I of course mean it sells because people choose to buy it, as opposed to have to buy it because they have no other choice. And they buy it because the word has got around that it works.
Yes, I'm talking about the iPod. It's no secret that Apple lead the World in product design. The reason is because Apple has Jonathan Ive who is without doubt the best designer alive right now.
And this leads me to the subject of positioning quotes on this forum.
You say that Putting the quotes on top is: "...not even a matter of preference - it's a matter of following suit."
Let me introduce myself - I'm not someone who follows suit. I began my design career in print when letterpress machines were still in common use. I watched men set type in the old fashioned way. It was as much art as it was science and labour. Everything we have done for us today by the computer, we owe to these men and those who went before them.
When you read a book, the reference material is placed at the back [English tradition], or at the bottom of the page [American tradition], often in an italicised font a point size smaller than the body text. Now, that's the original convention.
So, just because some people have seen fit to bastardise the arrangement, and trash the print originated conventions in favour of one that suits the mentality that also condones the lax attention to punctuation and grammar, does not mean we all have to be "following suit".
In my opinion, it's bad practice, ergonomically retarded and slows down the serious reader, the lazy reader and the dyslexic. Ironically, the only place where it might just be an issue is when reading these posts on an iPod or iPhone screen - because it's harder to view the whole page.
I don't even want to contemplate what issues you'll find if you try reading them on a Zune 'HD'!
Finally, he who would seek to limit the amount of thought another puts into any subject, should consider why he would do so. You appear to be extolling the merits of NOT knowing something, as if ignorance itself were a virtue. What's not clear is how you believe this unimaginative and non constructive attitude furthers anything, other than a mud wall around closed minds.
Ignorance never was a virtue, yet it's sold as such out of expediency, and we watch people die as a consequence of it every day.
[the DeLorean has just made the first time-jump] "Ah! What did I tell you? 88 miles per hour! The temporal displacement occurred exactly 1:20am and zero seconds!"
Dr. Emmett Brown 1985
"The stream of the mountain pleases me more than the sea."
Jose Marti 1854-1895
I actually disagree with the bulk of the posts I've seen by you, but I think we agree on the "cut off" parts just being very unappealing. Personally, I like the "pointless" angularity. That's just an aesthetic preference. Elements that are cut off or hard to visually recognize due to cluttered graphics are a different sort of issue, and like you say, this does say something about the slipshod GUI design.
(By the way, just put the quotes on top. It's not even a matter of preference - it's a matter of following suit. Really, it's not that hard, nor is there any merit to giving it even half the thought you've put into it.)
on it.
