Top all-time · #1528
Stopdesign
Personal blog · stopdesign.com/archivedesignculture
Stopdesign is a personal blog at stopdesign.com about design and culture. Since 2008, 47 different Hacker News readers have linked it 50 times, most often “Goodbye Google: "Visual Design Lead" leaves Google”. The last post was in 2023, but the archive is still widely read.
Most-linked posts?
- Goodbye Google: "Visual Design Lead" leaves Google34 people · 35 mentions · first linked 2009-03-20
- Wired.com: 20 Years Later2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-10-11
What Hacker News says?
You're thinking of Doug Bowman. http://stopdesign.com/archive/2009/03/20/goodbye-google.html Yes, it's difficult. It's less that Apple needs to hire a famous designer and more that it has to give a designer (there are many badasses in-house) serious authority. Apple has to realize it's lost the software leadership that it used to take pride in for that to happen.
Comment linking /archive/2009/03/20/goodbye-google.html
on “Apple Stole My Music”Submitted Goodbye Google: "Visual Design Lead" leaves Google as a story · 188 points
HN discussionGoogle leans pretty heavily on machine learning for even trivial design choices http://stopdesign.com/archive/2009/03/20/goodbye-google.html mentions the infamous testing of 41 shades of bue to decide which was the correct one. But truly someone has to design the learning system, at some level you will always have design, if it is the design of how the design is to adapt to it's environment.
Comment linking /archive/2009/03/20/goodbye-google.html
on “20 lines of code that beat A/B testing every time”Submitted Recreating the button as a story · 110 points
HN discussionThis really reminds me of the depressing way that Google optimised the blue colour of a button, while ignoring all other considerations: http://stopdesign.com/archive/2009/03/20/goodbye-google.html If you trust your metrics and nothing else, you have to be very sure that your metrics encompass every aspect of the reality you are modelling. If they just tell you about clicks and sales, they might be missing longer-te…
Comment linking /archive/2009/03/20/goodbye-google.html
on “Whatever goes up, that’s what we do”Submitted Goodbye, Google (2009) as a story · 12 points
HN discussionGoogle is the company that user-tested 41 shades of blue¹. Malice or not, that yellow was surely intentional, and working as intended. [1] http://stopdesign.com/archive/2009/03/20/goodbye-google.html
Comment linking /archive/2009/03/20/goodbye-google.html
on “How Google Chrome’s ad blocker works”Submitted A love letter to Twitter as a story · 3 points
HN discussion> Marketing and design are surely down to a psychological science by now. Really? I just read an article about how Apple is intentionally avoiding a traditional social media presence as a part of its marketing strategy. So does the science work like, "if you are rich enough to buy out several independent nations, do not use social media for marketing?" Or what? And as a designer myself, I have to say "science" appli…
Comment linking /archive/2009/03/20/goodbye-google.html
on “Death to Bullshit”Submitted Goodbye, Google as a story · 3 points
HN discussionBut how, as a design idiot armed with a recently downloaded copy of Gimp, do I tell whether or not my fine edit has "botched" your design or not? Here we come to a fundamental problem of FOSS economics. There are three forces which protect the software from the work of well-meaning but clueless people: A) Physical reality. The software has to work. If I take an ax to the internals of Apache it will quickly become ap…
Comment linking /archive/2009/03/20/goodbye-google.html
on “Designers, how do we get you guys to contribute to open source projects?”Submitted Wired.com: 20 Years Later as a story · 2 points
HN discussionReplicatorblog's response made very good points. Though I think the FLOSS community should start by appreciating the huge differences between developing code and developing design. I am a designer and a FLOSS guy and I have actually researched this subject a lot, both in practice, in writing and in teaching. The essay I written for Smashing Magazine a few months ago might be relevant in this context, it is called "T…
Comment linking /archive/2009/03/20/goodbye-google.html
on “Designers, how do we get you guys to contribute to open source projects?”Submitted Wired.com: 20 Years Later as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI think this is the link you are referring to: http://stopdesign.com/archive/2009/03/20/goodbye-google.html
Comment linking /archive/2009/03/20/goodbye-google.html
on “Things I've learned at Google so far”Submitted Wired.com: 20 Years Later as a story · 1 points
HN discussionYou're probably thinking of Doug Bowman's classic "Goodbye Google" post: http://stopdesign.com/archive/2009/03/20/goodbye-google.html I think two things are entirely possible here: One, that in reaction to Bowman's high-profile indictment of Google's design culture, there has been a shift over the past few years toward Apple-like, auteur-driven design at Google, that was misapplied in this case, or (I think more lik…
Comment linking /archive/2009/03/20/goodbye-google.html
on “GMail: designer arrogance and the cult of minimalism”Submitted Using background-image to replace text as a story · 1 points
HN discussionThe classic blog post on this: http://stopdesign.com/archive/2009/03/20/goodbye-google.html (aka "41 shades of blue").
Comment linking /archive/2009/03/20/goodbye-google.html
on “3px of padding makes all the difference in the world”Submitted First autistic presidential appointee's call to us who work in technology as a story · 1 points
HN discussionThe example about Google engineers "thinking like designers" is actually an example of "engineers thinking like engineers thinking about engineering a color choice" which the author is calling design. This is embarrassing. Engineers shouldn't think about design. Remember Douglas Bowman? http://stopdesign.com/archive/2009/03/20/goodbye-google.html People want to use things - i.e. products, digital or otherwise - with…
Comment linking /archive/2009/03/20/goodbye-google.html
on “Are Designers Crazy?”Submitted Choosing the Right Tool as a story · 1 points
HN discussionWell said. It should be noted that it was under this individual's reign at Google that the notorious 41 tints of blue occurred[1], which was clearly an indicator of abject ineptitude regarding art and design. The comment about Illustrator was cringe worthy. The idea that someone is so filled with hubris regarding a field well outside their domain has the wafts of Denning - Krugerism pluming out. [1] http://stopdesig…
Comment linking /archive/2009/03/20/goodbye-google.html
on “Geeking Out on the Logo”Totally right. That's why the design by consensus is always wrong. The brand is now biased. MM had a reputation of being intrusive even on silly details making the design process horrible and with crappy results. From this I remember various things you may remember too: 1. The Google favicon. They did thousands and the one they choosed was crappiest one. They had to change it later. 2. The Google favicon with blue.…
Comment linking /archive/2009/03/20/goodbye-google.html
on “Geeking Out on the Logo”One of the defining articles on this exact topic was written by Doug Bowman back in 2003: http://stopdesign.com/archive/2003/09/03/absolute.html
Comment linking /archive/2003/09/03/absolute.html
on “CSS Positioning 101”This sounds like you have no clue of who the guy is. I don't think there's a single company or start-up that wouldn't hire him. You're talking about a guy who talks at numerous conferences every year (or at least did), who designed Blogger templates before being employed by Google, who designed Webmonkey, Wired, etc. ( http://stopdesign.com/about ) Besides, he was simply pointing out that this was a complete mismatc…
Comment linking /about
on “Goodbye Google: "Visual Design Lead" leaves Google”Perhaps they were the best blues of the 41 shades... (cf. http://stopdesign.com/archive/2009/03/20/goodbye-google.html )
Comment linking /archive/2009/03/20/goodbye-google.html
on “Our new search index: Caffeine”On the other hand, "When a company is filled with engineers, it turns to engineering to solve problems. Reduce each decision to a simple logic problem. Remove all subjectivity and just look at the data. Data in your favor? Ok, launch it. Data shows negative effects? Back to the drawing board. And that data eventually becomes a crutch for every decision, paralyzing the company and preventing it from making any daring…
Comment linking /archive/2009/03/20/goodbye-google.html
on “Why did so many successful startups come out of PayPal? Answered by Insiders”This is an older but relevant post from a former Google designer: http://stopdesign.com/archive/2009/03/20/goodbye-google.html More anecdotally, I find that the best design and illustration I've seen from Google is usually on a very small thing: Google doodles, the CR-48 pilot program videos and illustrations, the Google TV quick tour. Some amazing work has gone into Chrome marketing. But it's almost never on a prod…
Comment linking /archive/2009/03/20/goodbye-google.html
on “Larry Page's first blunder”Your complaint b) seems to apply to everything recommended by the uxmovement.com site. This is interesting to me because of things like the infamous '41 shades of blue' at Google: http://stopdesign.com/archive/2009/03/20/goodbye-google.html
Comment linking /archive/2009/03/20/goodbye-google.html
on “Why Users Don’t Fill Out Sign Up Forms”
