elou's comments

Super interesting to see an arena specific to coding. I love the retro throwback.

How are you deciding which challenges to start with for this first release?

Nope, that's just poor planning on behalf of the company.

But let's say the company's boss refused to let his employees have Thanksgiving off because he did not want to be alone on Thanksgiving, so he was going to selfishly make his employees be with him and keep him company. However, all of his employees got caught in traffic --> behind a Thanksgiving parade --> that his company was sponsoring --> (with the theme, "home for the holidays") --> and he ended up alone at the office anyway...that would be ironic. It's situational.

Irony is situational - it doesn't have to do with meaning unless the confusing of that meaning resulted in some coincidental action directly related to that meaning...

For example, the character "Annyong" in Arrested Development is always saying "Annyong" (meaning, "hello") when another character says hello to him. Everyone else thinks he is just repeating his name, but he seems oblivious to this confusion. The irony is that his real name is "Hel-loh", but he does not seem to get the connection either. The misunderstanding of his name and its meaning causes an ironic comedy of errors. Arrested Development is full of these, as are most situational comedies.

The word takes its root from comedic wit, such as puns and comedies of error. For example, in the musical, "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum" there is a character who has searched for his missing children for decades. A captain of the army comes to his town to wed a virgin concubine, only to find out that she is actually his sister and they are children of the old man. Furthermore, they were only reunited with their father because another character, seeking to disrupt their marriage for the benefit of his master, pretended to be a fortune teller that would help the old man find his kids and then actually did, inadvertently, through his devious acts. That's ironic. While also unexpected and coincidental, the irony stems from the circumstantial nature of the event.

Rain on your wedding day is not ironic. Holding your wedding in April in Arizona with the theme "April Showers", knowing that it very rarely rains in Arizona in April and thus making light of the point, and then having it rain in the middle of your ceremony...that would be ironic.

From Wikipedia's article on the word, the best description I found was "a contradictory outcome of events as if in mockery of the promise and fitness of things". It is the comedic relief that comes from recognizing the curveballs you are thrown just when you have it all figured out. Often, it's the situations that help the underdog.

Generally speaking, because they are circumstantial, most ironies must be deliberate or else unique to that situation. A "No Smoking" sign on top of a poster of a smoking Sherlock Holmes (seen in the Wikipedia article) is not in of itself ironic. However, someone deliberately placing a no smoking sign atop that poster would be. This photo is ironic because it is unique to the situation: http://bit.ly/6SqBsD

While we're on the conversation, can we please stop using the word "literally" to mean something happened, as in "I literally ate the whole sandwich." That implies that you did not do something figuratively, but there is no figure of speech having to do with eating a sandwich. It is an explanatory word, not an emphasis. "He literally went around the world in 80 days" is an accurate way to describe your friend's 80 day trip across 4 continents. "Did you hear? NASA is building a spaceship that can literally travel faster than the speed of light." Accurate. "I literally worked for 12 hours straight on this"...please revise and resubmit!

The responses to this comment seem a bit unnecessarily condescending, but they share an underlying point - unlike the more realistic design trends, this one does not require Illustrator/Photoshop tutorials (except, perhaps for the icons, but that's more about learning precision with the pen tool). The flat design trend is more about an overal feel than exact design technique. Color plays an incredibly prominent role here - you'll notice that the same teal, dark blue, burnt orange, etc. shows up in the popular examples of "flat design". Note this UI set, the Layer Vault site, Built by Buffalo, Spelltower, etc. In comparison, Craigslist theoretically uses a "flat" design, but it would not be grouped in the same category because it doesn't have the same feel. If you start with a similar color palette and forgo the use of gradients and drop shadows, you will be well on your way.

Typography plays a large role in this trend as well, although not as prominently. You'll notice the heavy use of sans serif fonts, although some examples (Medium sticks out in my mind) have nicely used serif fonts for body copy. Larger line heights and font-sizes (18px+ for base font size and line heights between 1.2 and 1.5 em) utilize white space well to make the design seem less compact - an excellent practice, because without other cues for depth, the flat visuals can look quite cramped.

I would advise creating a dummy page and playing with these different styles. This trend is great for learning by doing, rather than learning by recreating (you don't need to get that perfect gradient to pull the design together). Tools like color.hailpixel.com can help you pull your color scheme together, and resources such as Symbolset.com can provide nice icon fonts that will tie your flat design together. You can also download the "What Font" extension to Chrome (do they have one for Firefox too?) to see the dominent fonts being used in these designs. I've been seeing Lato (http://www.google.com/webfonts/specimen/Lato) pop up a lot recently.

Anyway, best of luck!

Simply disliking the lack of depth in this UI does not imply that he thinks leather stitching would be a better alternative. There is something inherently enjoyable about clicking a button with a bit of depth, even if that depth is subtle. The flat UI perspective often removes that emotional touch. Several prominent designers (@kerem and @craigmod, to name two) have emoted that adding a bit of depth to a button makes clicking it more satisfying. We are in the design business, but that involves making things more than pretty and trendy. Flat design does look beautiful, but there is a growing consensus that in many cases it also removes a bit of soul and energy from a design.

Poorly implemented here, though a sound concept when done correctly.

Information Architects (the creators of iA writer) shared an interesting post [1] on responsive typography that you may find interesting. One rational for having smaller text on small viewports, in addition to saving space, is to adjust for the distance that most readers view content on their phones from. We tend to hold our phones closer to our eyes, sit farther from our desktops, and hold tablets some distance in the middle. Having smaller text on a phone therefore accommodates that. Trent Walton wrote a useful post on the subject as well [2].

1. http://informationarchitects.net/blog/responsive-typography-... 2. http://trentwalton.com/2012/06/19/fluid-type

It's hard to say a forum is dead before it's even taken life...it's three weeks old! how active was Hacker News three weeks into its inception?

My point was, yes, the site needs polishing, but save the judgement of the community and its curated content until after it has had the chance to gestate a bit.

It's worth it to note that Designer News began as a side project, which may explain the less-than-perfect design details. I guess you could argue that a side project intended for designers should still meet basic accessibility guidelines, but the point certainly apologizes for some of the weaknesses of the framework.

I am very excited about the future of Designer News. As the community grows and matures, I hope it will conjure more discussion-oriented posts and less of the generic links that have made up the bulk of the content. But there is really no place for designers to discuss thought-provoking articles and trends or ask for feedback/criticism. I find Hacker News to be somewhat intimidating as a venue for design discussion, or unable to provide the perspective I am seeking feedback on. Other sides such as Dribbble or Forrest tend to be poor venues for constructive conversation - perhaps because it is the same place where people are displaying their work that might go under fire during the conversation, and many of us don't like to shit where we eat, as it were.

It's a strong concept, even if it needs a few more weekends of polish before it's truly fit for prime time.