I've got many Hot Takes™ about the state of modern design in general. If you agree with any of the points below, I'd love to work with you. Email lama at nuha dot so.
- I'm severely disappointed by the state of design today. I think a lot of it can be traced back to influence from Dieter Rams. Admittedly, I'm not a HUGE fan of his work, but I do think the design style works for him because it is his. He can pull off industrial design in that style because he thinks about and controls balance in a way that resonates with a lot of people (including myself on occasion).
- I do think that people have fanboyed too hard and tried to copy his style, which was a mistake because they couldn't pull it off well. You should not be thinking "how do I make X thing in the style of Dieter Rams?" but more along the lines of "how can I design a delightful product?" The former outputs tasteless products and the latter outputs innovative design.
- Early Apple might be the only exception to this, because they were inspired by him, but deliberately went out and did their own thing. There is a cohesive "Apple"-esque style that people can point out. I firmly believe that they've long since lost this, and it hasn't been present for well over a decade, maybe a decade and a half.
- Overall, I'm not trying to bash Dieter Rams, I'm trying to criticize the state of design today. A lot of modern industrial design is performative art pieces that don't make any sense or have any use, and they feel cold, hard, and hollow.
- All of the above has also spilled into software, where we're left with sterile, bubbly interfaces everywhere on the web. I can point out to you what "SaaS drawings" look like in the blink of an eye. This all sucks.
- It took me a while to articulate what it was that I wanted/was looking for that was missing, and I realized that texture and layering were the things that I was looking for that were missing. If these stood out in your design output, it probably means that you thought a lot about and were very intentional with the way you tried to balance things. Textures and layers are what give a product life.
- There's a large over-reliance and over-dependence on color hues and saturations to do the heavy work of "good design" on one end of the scale, and I also see products on the complete opposite end that rely on engineered perfection that frankly looks sterile. It's boring and uninteresting. You can make well-designed products that don't rely heavily on either of those things.
- What sparks joy? Something that feels human. It has texture, it has layers of meaning, and makes you feel like you want to explore it. Because ultimately, real things are not always perfectly sterile or overly stimulating.