Many of my friends are well-invested into various forms of arts, either as hobbyists or professionals. So I hear a lot about the zeitgeist™ of whatever art communities are relevant at the time. As a result, I also start thinking more about art and its value (but usually it’s nothing more significant than “wohaoh this art looks very cool”).

Someone I know, being a part-time UI designer, spread their interest in graphic design over to me. aHA but I hear you say “Why does your website look so BAD then?” ¹

I’ve realized that some people actually like conventionally “bad” design (if done well at least). In fact, I like the way my site looks, despite how out-of-date it looks. It’s simple and I know where to click to find things. Lack of colours for emphasis, poor whitespace management, and occasionally poor typeface choice, among other things, can all be overlooked depending on who your primary audience is.

It’s sort of like why a Linux man page has pretty lackluster design. The users of a man page want to consume information. What does this function do? What does it return? Some people just want the no-bullshit answer to their questions.

I hope this doesn’t get misconstrued as a hurr durr programmers have bad taste in design!!! because I honestly do think that there should be more exploration in designing for the right audience, even if it challenges some fundamental design principles. Speaking of which, The Futur has a really cool YouTube channel that uploads many videos with topics ranging from design critiques to the industry of art as a whole.

This post was inspired by one of those nights where I was procrastinating my coursework. Here’s the Hacker News thread I stumbled upon that night.