How Technology is Changing the Design
Okay, so the days when the designers had freedom in designing gadgets, smartphones, websites and everything else are long gone? Or are they?
Well who is to blame? Steve Jobs? Google?
Yes the iPhone changed the world, period. We all remember how Steve Jobs presented the iPhone right? And not only the technology, the smartphone industry was changed, but also the design language for everything, i mean everything.
Why am i writing this? I just got a new Pixel Xl, the first ever Google made smartphone. I'm will write my opinions of the phone later in another post, but i was really disappointed in the design. I mean it's ok, it's a beautiful phone, but there is something that bothers me, the iPhon-y thing in an Android phone.
And then i realized how the world was suddenly changed by this big companies. I have the utmost respect for Apple (i'm typing this post on Mac), and Google is a great company too. But there is something that bother me.
Firstly Apple changed every single smartphone company in the world, now everybody is competing to make a phone that is better looking than the iPhone. Every thing is compared to an iPhone, and the majority of the phones copied something from Apple. Why is that? They don't have great designers that can sketch something better? No, i don't believe that! Everybody wants to play the safe way, Apple did a huge job with that design, lets just play it safe and do the same thing. No, that's not how the things work!
Now Google is doing that? First of all was the Material Design. They have one big site that is dedicated on the material design, how buttons should look, how everything else should look like. And when i open my phone 90% of the apps are looking the same. Where is the creativity here? The Pixel smartphone is excellent phone, but i hate the fact that looks like iPhone. It's not that the iPhone is not a beautiful phone, but it's something familiar. And on top of that, their marketing accent was on "Designed by Google". So what is next? Every company will now make circle icons on their phone, just because Google did it?
I really liked the OnePlus One when it first came out few years ago. It was a brave move from a small company, they've made a great design, a great software and they had a great way for marketing, but now with their new OnePlus 3 everything is gone, now they are just like everybody else - without soul.
In the web design it's the same thing, i can't even remember how many site look like Facebook right now. Every Wordpress theme that i know looks like something else, something very familiar. I feel like there is some lack of creativity. Well, ok to be honest there are some great web design companies that are doing some great job still.
At the end, i really like some of the designs but i feel that there is lack of creativity shown, mainly by the big companies that can really change something.
What are your thoughts about this?
