[mavu]

This is a very bad take, and serves only to highlight the joylessness of the person writing it (and the original "design principles")

I would instantly dispute pretty much any word of the first 3 sentences in your post. (except maybe the name)

If you want to live in a world without choice, where everyone and everything looks the same (the inevitable endpoint of form follows function), be my guest, but at the end of your sad life you will remember all the times you looked back over the fence at all the people enjoying life in all its diverse forms, shapes, textures, activities and regret some choices you made along the way.

[HelloNurse]

Consider how joyless the designer of the unreadable keycaps must be, their sad life as they remember all the times they willfully damaged their even more clueless customers in pursuit of pseudo-style, looking at life in all its diverse forms, shapes, textures, activities and choosing bad ones for the lulz.

Technical constraints do exist, and if you shit on them you are a pretentious bad designer of products that cannot be taken seriously.

[jrockway]

I don't know how y'all type, but typically looking at a keyboard is only something you do for your first year after encountering a computer for the first time. After that, the keyboard takes up your desk, but isn't something you look at in order to use. Thus, keycaps optimized for looking nice while not in use makes more sense than keycaps optimized for being readable. You shouldn't be reading keycaps while you type, because you have a limited field of view and what's showing up on the screen is more relevant than what keys are being pressed.

So the designer doing "I can just focus on art" is probably experiencing more joy than the designer doing "this has to be as cheap as possible" or "this is a keyboard for children learning to touch type", simply because the scope of work is so much more unconstrained. Art could be anything! A keyboard for people learning to use computers is going to mostly be letters.

[Nullabillity]

Maybe not every keyboard has to be designed for hunt-and-peckers. It's not even particularly original, Das Keyboard has sold blank keyboards for a decade, and many mobile keyboards have supported hiding the key labels for ages too (I've used it in Fleksy and MessagEase, but I'm sure many others have it too).

Maybe it's not for you. That's okay. If it's been a niche for this long then I doubt it's gonna be the default anytime soon.

[prepend]

I had a das keyboard blank face for a few years and really liked it.

I ended up getting rid of it because my org’s password rules were annoying and I struggled to touch type symbols and numbers that weren’t in a word. And whenever I had “guests” it was uncomfortable to them and me so I would have to keep a guest keyboard anyway.

[izacus]

> If you want to live in a world without choice, where everyone and everything looks the same (the inevitable endpoint of form follows function), be my guest, but at the end of your sad life you will remember all the times you looked back over the fence at all the people enjoying life in all its diverse forms, shapes, textures, activities and regret some choices you made along the way.

Are you implying that the same gray macbook, paired with the same iPhone, that everyone else at your company, in your social circle and every coffee shop of your town is not the PINNACLE of social existence?

[kevinventullo]

Almost every iPhone user I know has a distinct unique case. Some cases are designed specifically for wireless charging, some have pop sockets which make it easier to hold, some have clear cases with a photograph inserted between the phone and the back of the case.

[benj111]

Plus they all seem to have their own unique crack along the screen.

Or maybe that's just my iPhone owning friends.

[MisterBastahrd]

I don't see how buying something that is mass produced is a form of self-expression outside of the idea that you're an adherent of basic capitalism. Expression is what happens AFTER you buy it.

Personally speaking after growing up in the 80s and having to be a slave to multiple brands from year to year lest I be labeled a lesser child for not having whatever was chic, I'm happy if everyone wears non-descript but functional items that they then modify how they want. Most children in 1987 were walking Coca-cola billboards who wouldn't be caught dead without Guess, Girbaud, or Z Cavaricci jeans. It's one of the outlying reasons that most public schools have dress codes nowadays.

[dav_Oz]

There is certainly a grey zone, here. I personally think a more long lasting enjoyment and satisfaction comes from the possibility of putting some work in e.g. modifying (self-expression)/modularity and not some highly polished "finished" product which barely holds itself:

>Their design should therefore be both neutral and restrained, to leave room for the user's self-expression.

But I also have nothing against highly volatile treats from time to time reminding myself that in the end one must be also able to let go and enjoy the moment.

In keeping with the golden mean (μεσότης) these two things pushed too far are of course ugly, indeed, but the beauty of it very much depends from which side you need a steering direction.

For me for example the tension between the aesthetic choice (ornament) camouflaged by caricaturing multi-functionality (usefulness) of the packaging of an ordinary product is an artistic expression of the state of affair we find ourselves: instant technical obsolescence the moment you have the product in your hands becoming an artifact in its own right. Is art ever useful? Is its value ultimately not just based on a fundamental impotency? I guess nowadays the most talented pool of artists express themselves through marketing. /s

[andsoitis]

> everything looks the same (the inevitable endpoint of form follows function)

Optimizing for different tradeoffs (i.e. utility) tells us that sameness is not the end-state of form follows function.