The Contrasts of Design
Or “How Your Laptop & Local Coffee Shop Can be Mini-Study in Anthropology”
As I was sitting with an acquaintance at a coffee shop, something struck me about the contrast currently in design, and what it might say about us.
The laptops, iPhones, headphones and other items strewn across the surfaces were the epitome of minimal, clean design. Meanwhile these same fans of the fruit shaped logo and sleek UIs of every stripe were sitting in faux-aged metal chairs, at rough sawn wooden tables, surrounded by metal, wood, burlap and all sorts of industrial or vintage items.
This juxtaposition says something about us, and about the world as it keeps changing.
Online vs Offline Design
Take a look at that laptop or tablet. Or your phone. Now look at the best apps and websites you use. Most will have simplicity as their common thread. It’s intuitive to use. It’s uncluttered. It’s visually clean in a wonderful way. (You could argue that these are actually hardware, but many would agree with me that at this point the hardware is simply the access point to the web.)
Meanwhile what I see in real life is an ongoing push the other direction. For vintage (fancy-speak for old or old looking) items — from furniture to clothing to architecture. For repurposed and reused. For perfectly-imperfect surfaces and furniture that show character in their evident use.
We are dressed like the 50s, in a restaurant that matches the 20s, sipping on drinks from the prohibition era; as we type away on space age tablets and phones.
We’re a Walking Contradiction
I think this says something about our own internal dichotomy. A subconscious attempt to find equilibrium in an ever changing, ephemeral world.
As we endlessly strive to keep our mental world clean and orderly with ever-learning SaaS products, to do lists, and other helpful apps, we have another craving physically.
The desire for something tactile, that tells (or pretends to tell) a story. For a feeling of authenticity and being tied to a particular person or place.
Take a quick look around Etsy and I think you’ll see my point. Handmade, vintage, and reclaimed are the top descriptors. People make an impressive variety of unique items that gives us a connection to the crafter and to the history or character of the particular item.
Now look at Pinterest — it’s the perfect case study. A visually clean pinboard that mimics it’s physical inspiration, but in a perfect way you could never accomplish in real life. And what’s pinned on a lot of them?
DIY advice on repurposing items. Etsy products from your favorite craftsman (or woman) that would have looked right at home 40,60,80, even 100 years ago. Advice and ideas for your garden, chicken coop, and so on. An online board of ways to connect more to the land, or to create things in the physical world.
So What?
So what’s the point of this hastily-written-on-an iPhone post? I didn’t really have one. But I guess it’s this.
The dichotomy is ok. In fact, maybe it’s healthy.
More and more of our time and our jobs involve work that gives us no lasting, physical “thing” we can touch. And I think we naturally want that feeling. So we search to find it elsewhere.
It may be in a hobby making something for 2 weekends that we could easily buy with the equivalent of a couple hours of time at work. Or it’s in combing through the local junk/vintage shop to repaint a 50 year old dresser with squeaky drawers.
Or sometimes it’s just going to that intentionally eclectic coffee shop to hold a warm cup of coffee in a chipped cup, run our hands over the marks and scrapes of the table, read the handwritten scrawl of specials on a chalkboard, and look around at how beautiful imperfect and old can really be.
j
