[ncann]

> Robyn: To give YouTube a sense of motion, we created a dynamic red-to-magenta gradient. For the second color, orange and yellow were strong contenders, but magenta felt like the most natural pairing with our new red. Interestingly, magenta doesn't often appear in the natural world, so it symbolizes the imagination and evolution that YouTube embodies. We also placed the gradient at a 45-degree angle with magenta on the right, signifying forward movement.

Kinda reminds me of this quote

https://www.usenix.org/system/files/1311_05-08_mickens.pdf

> There will be rich debates about the socioeconomic implications of Helvetica Light, and at some point, you will have to decide whether serifs are daring statements of modernity, or tools of hegemonic oppression that implicitly support feudalism and illiteracy.

[skydhash]

  Bateman:
    [internal monologue] Look at that subtle off-white coloring. The tasteful thickness of it. Oh my God... it even has a watermark.

[BonoboIO]

Perfect

[vunderba]

During the golden age of the Romantic period, it was not uncommon for writers to employ almost ludicrously UV-level prose to the works of famous composers.

I'll leave you with this particular critic's review of a piece of music by Gottschalk (a famous 19th century American composer). They are like "chants of the New World, chants which bring tears to our eyes, so much do they breathe of sadness and simplicity. One transports us to forests. . . another represents faithfully the indolent Creole swinging in his hammock. .. and what shall we say of the third? Does it not seem to be overwhelmed by that solemn silence and that solitude which one feels traversing those vast prairies at the foot of the Rocky Mountains?"

IMHO the reason LLMs are so proficient at these kinds of vapid flights of fantasy is that they must have ingested the entire fanfic library on Wattpad.

[jhbadger]

Also, in the Renaissance, scientists and writers often wrote ridiculous and over the top praises of their patrons who funded their work like Galileo did for Cosmo de Medici. Of course the way scientific funding is going, we might have to go back to that system.

[Klaster_1]

After reading justifications like that, I find it hard not to feel cynical about people who suggest and promote such changes. Am I missing something important, or is this really just a fig leaf covering busywork, promotions, and internal politics? Every time I’ve had to implement a "fresh redesign" as a developer, it always seemed to be about scratching an itch for a higher-up or a designer.

[PoignardAzur]

They mention technical reasons like avoiding screen burn-in.

[Klaster_1]

That's a great point I overlooked, thank you for bringing it up!

[skydhash]

Isn't that something screensavers was created to solve?

[4gotunameagain]

No, you're not missing anything. This is what is colloquially referred to as bullshit.

[SebastianKra]

In my masters, I took a few courses from design degrees.The assignment of the semester was to create a generative display in Cinder. I cobbled something together based on what I thought looked good.

A project partner took the task of retroactively assigning an "intention" to my result. "The lines meeting in the center symbolize a conversation between people...".

To my surprise, the examiner bought this and we ended up with a good grade. I feel like I learned a lot from this course.

I'm not saying that's what happened here, but if it did, we probably couldn't tell.

[DiscourseFan]

Doesn't sound like a good design teacher if they cared at all about intent, or even how long it took you.

I heard an anecdote from someone whose mom went to art school, about how she (the mom) would spend days and days painstakingly processing materials and meticulously conceptualizing and constructing pieces, and always felt sour when a party girl did nothing but get drunk/high for weeks and then just "poured paint on her tits" for her assignment, and got a better grade. But maybe pouring paint on her tits was actually more profound, even if unintentionally, than whatever her mom was up to. Effort, intent, is meaningless in creative practice.

[account42]

The thing though is that neither the intent nor de post-hoc made up intent are relevant in the real world. Neither is he time/effort spend on needlessly elaborate processes. What matters is if the average user thinks it looks good or not.

[bhandziuk]

I noticed this gradient and knew it didn't used to be there. I thought for a long time there was something wrong with my TV. I would walk around the room looking at the TV from different angles and would move the progress bar to different points in the video. I was looking at the color settings and other known-color images. Ultimately I'm glad I saw this article and I can stop thinking I've gone crazy out that my tv is broken!

[moralestapia]

Hehe same here, I thought my monitor burned out.

I like the new colors tbh, but it's a very very very minor update and can't avoid speculating how much that thing cost Google, 5 x 300k/year salaries x ... 2 years maybe? Lol.

[addandsubtract]

Plot twist: your TV hasn't updated YouTube yet.

[dylan604]

any time i read quotes like that, i immediately start rolling my eyes that people actually believe the words being uttered. "symbolizes the imagination and evolution" yeah, that's what a color says to me. these are essentially Rorschach level tests where it says more about the person than anything factual

[BoorishBears]

You just need to learn to embrace the Pepsi Universe: https://www.goldennumber.net/wp-content/uploads/pepsi-arnell...

(For newcomers with limited time, scroll to the last 2 pages)

[crtez]

Is it bad that I kind of find myself almost…respecting how ludicrous it is?

[dylan604]

on no, it's definitely award nomination level for the effort/effect, and we all know it's just an honor to be nominated. i'm not sure if it's a "you really like me" level or not though

[disqard]

This is... genius, or parody? I can't tell.

[BoorishBears]

The same folks (Arnell Group) did a redesign for Tropicana.

Tropicana lost 30 million dollars in sales and had to revert the change.

They also spent 35 million on a campaign to advertise the redesign (also ran by the Arnell Group)

https://www.thebrandingjournal.com/2015/05/what-to-learn-fro...

[imp0cat]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32064324

[benhurmarcel]

I'm not sure whether posting that one https://xkcd.com/915/ or this one https://xkcd.com/1095/

[qingcharles]

"Grandfather, which side of the Helvetica Light wars were you on?"

"Oh, my boy, I fought with the Arial Resistance Corps."