Design Theory examines how the modern design landscape has shifted toward a sterile, homogeneous aesthetic driven by algorithmic influence rather than genuine human emotion. By analyzing cars, consumer technology, and urban planning, the exploration reveals how this trend impacts our connection to products and the future, challenging the necessity of sacrificing soul for efficiency.
Kinda makes me sad.
Not like the lack of fancy car designs, but just colour and personality.
I’ve been told our choices for paint will drive away future home buyers, except I’m looking to live not sell.
One data point: I got told the same thing. Just sold my house with bright bold paint to a neighborhood guy who “always loved that house.”
I feel like going for bland looks is like all the specialized TV channels turning to generic mainstream content — your potential audience is bigger when you leave a market niche but you also lose all the people who wanted that niche
I hate how all the houses by me that are original and have charm get bought by flippers who do heinous things like paint multicolored brick with latex gray paint and the siding black. There was one house that I literally considered buying, a house flipper came in, repainted everything to look like shit, added the ugliest fence I have ever seen, and sold it. Tragedy. Don’t even get me started on the mistakes they made to the inside.
the wonders of “Swiss Coffee” …
Paint it for you - you live there now. You can always re-paint when you’re selling.
Yeah, I’m just annoyed at some family constantly telling me not to invest in making my house better. I love this house, it’s good, but it’s acquired some jank and needs love.
We’re redoing the kitchen this year and they keep telling us repeatedly that we won’t ever get that investment out, nobody pays for a renovated kitchen.
Which is annoying because we’re not flipping the house, we have no intention of leaving. I’m not worried about the exit liquidity of my home.
…house flippers renovate kitchens. Who is telling you this, and is everything else they say categorically wrong, or just this?
They’re friends with a realtor and it gives them all sorts of ideas.
We’re spending more than a flipper would on a surface level kitchen because I use it every day, but we never tell them the amounts because they’re incredibly annoying about money.
You can always re-paint when you’re selling.
a proper paint job on a car is $12,000-$20,000.
Hi, I would love to paint your car. Anytime any place. At that rate I can afford to fly anywhere and rent a booth and still come out way ahead.
I said proper paint job, not a Maaco special respray, which still costs $2500-3500.
I have been painting cars since the early 90s. I know what I’m talking about.
Have I done a 20k paint job? hell yeah! Is that what it costs to do a normal high-quality paint job? Hell no!
I can prep, mask, and spray a car (without body work), in two days. I can rent a booth in most metro areas for ~200/day.
The sprayables will run me between 400 (commercial white and clear) to ~1200 (metallic red and clear) including catalysts and filters. Maybe add another 40 bucks for a can of thinners if the shop won’t provide a gun cleaner (they almost always do)
Disposables like sandpaper, wall filters, and finishing compound will add another 50-100 if I have to buy the whole pack myself, but usally a rental booth will provide wall filters at no extra charge, and a couple of fine sanding discs for a few bucks a piece.
So let’s assume it is a candy red CUV and we have to buy everything we touch.we are looking at up-front costs of 400+1200+40+100. ~1740
I am on the Eastern side of Canada, so let’s assume a return flight to San jose at about 1200 and add that.
We are now at almost 3000 bucks. If you will let me have dinner at your place both nights and I only have to deal with a burger and some morning coffees myself… I can charge you 5k and still be home smiling with 2000 bucks profit after a working vacation to somewhere nice and warm and doing something I enjoy doing.
What, there is no way a paint job costs that much unless you are doing something really fancy.
Typical Lemmy. Even Maaco charges $3500 and it will look like shit.
The cost to paint one vintage car properly one color is $12000-20,000. Properly done it takes over 100 hours of labor.
Don’t be rude to people when you are being confidently incorrect. It is a bad look.
I’ve always heard that you shouldn’t repaint before selling because potential buyers are more likely to buy if they can see an easy mark they can make on the space.
I’m so confused by this statement. Wall paint is the most readily changeable element in a house! And: we just bought a house with an absolutely hideous combo of dark greys and pink-beige. It absolutely didn’t influence my decision. It was by far the smallest of renovations we wanted to do. While shopping for houses, it never factored in either. And we are planning to paint it up in the colors we like, future buyers be damned.
This is the first image that came up when I searched ‘1970 parking lot,’About a hundred times as colorful as any modern lot.
We need more designs that feel like this
I’m gonna be honest, maybe it’s a good thing people stop seeing cars as cool.
Not the point. He also talks about how all coffee shops ends up looking the same, how house decor all adopt the same bland style, etc
Speaking g of house decor and same bland style… I was in a Crate & Barrel this past weekend and apparently the current trend is…. Colorless. Everything was shades of cream with maybe some light woods. It didn’t look too bad, but there was no soul or emotion to it. Like you said, it’s just sterile.
Sad beige toys for sad beige children.
Genuine human emotion - has be exploited and abused by capitalism and now for so many people taste or preference has been replaced by some kind of determination.
I used to work in a high rise next to a Toyota repair center, the % of white and medium in the car park, was crazy but given the the toyota user base of practical reliability it makes sense (despite it being a repair center). I always wanted to work next to a different brand. I know this is anecdotal but Try looking for a second hand sofa and count how many are grey.
IMO capitalism and marketing has bred so much uniformity people are almost scared to have their own style or step out of line, buying a purple car is seen as maverick. On the other hand they watch capitalist influencers peacocking as extreme individualists who make an effort to seem unique, seem being the operative word here, as that’s what it is an operation. It is a bizarre balance that people seem mesmorised by.
Clean design is beautiful when we want to find out where we are going at a train station or an airport. Not so much for us that want joy in our homes and lifestyle.
Toyota has a colour that’s reminiscent of baby poop after certain diets.
At least it’s a color. I can’t fault anyone for wanting something more interesting than primer grey, black, white, red, grey-blue.
white, silver, beige, red, steel-blue, black - there was a reason VW’s “harlequin” colorway on the new bug was so popular - we’re tired of the same-old-same-old
I want luminesce and saturation. I want richness and depth. I want candy cherry red that is so deep it looks almost translucent.
But no, I get semi gloss muted tones regardless of “color.”
Best I can offer is off white metallic finish from the premium line for $500.
then get your car custom painted or wrapped.
it costs about 2-4K minimum, a lot more if you want fancy colors with effects.
It’s available to you, you just have to be willing to pay for it. Some folks do.
YouTube really wants me to watch this video but I find it too ironic that it has a thumbnail with Ferrari EV that the internet hated but ended up selling above expectations.
Watch the video, and you see he argues that being a commercial success does not mean it is cool. Quite the opposite: it means that the companies are only creating products that are “safe” and follow a formula that has been proven to work.
I wouldn’t go that far even if I believe that large companies are usually data driven to a fault. My guess is that Ferrari as a business cares only about taste of people who can afford their products. These people are disconnected from reality enough not to care about what Reddit thinks of their sports car.
My guess is that Ferrari as a business cares only about taste of people who can afford their products.
The people who can afford and actually buying the Luce are not doing because the car is sexy or a unquestionable example of “cool”. They are buying it to signal status. They don’t care about “taste”.
Status symbols not having a common appeal is something upper class uses to distinguish themselves. Eventually those tastes trickle down to those who want to LARP being rich and then to the rest of society.
Status symbols not having a common appeal
You really should watch the video instead of arguing past the point. The main thing about the car is not that is lacks a “common appeal”, but exactly the opposite. It takes no risks, it ends up lacking any distinguishing feature and becomes a regular consumer product. “Common appeal” is all it has.
My point is that I’m not really convinced about the premise when the thumbnail fits internet outrage more than actual sales. Ferrari does things primarily to sell cars, because it’s a company, a for-profit organisation. According to data they seem to be doing fine in that regard. Why would they care about opinions of people who won’t buy their cars? Why should anyone care if the answer is seemingly an uninspired “stop liking things I don’t like”?
Ferrari does things primarily to sell cars, because it’s a company, a for-profit organisation.
Toyota sells more cars than Ferrari. Do you think that if Ferrari should starts building more cars like Toyota it will be good for them long-term?
Are you familiar with the doorman fallacy?
According to data they seem to be doing fine
So is McDonald’s.
The argument is not that things stopped being popular. It’s that they are becoming uniformly similar in a bland way.
Why should anyone care if the answer is seemingly an uninspired “stop liking things I don’t like”?
If you actually watch the video, perhaps you can understand why. But it seems you are more interested in sticking to your preconceived notions than listening to someone with opinions of their own.
500 units is sales above expectation? Given the legendary Ferrari transparency, I’m guessing any numbers sold would’ve been called ‘above expectation’ and you wouldn’t be able to do anything about it.
I think much of the problem with design goes back to wealth disparity. Not enough consumers have the disposable income to make real choices in what they buy and instead have to go with cost as the largest or only factor. Sometimes you see articles on how efficient america is but its a dollar cost efficiency. Style and quality are not allowed to flourish.
In the 60s-90s, Italy had a dozen design houses working for manufacturing worldwide. ItalDesign designed a huge number of practical cars that stood the test of time. Car shows had exciting prototypes.
In the 90s, car design got enshittified by the California design school. Manufacturers cheaped out and bought grads who all designed cars exactly the same way, instead of using Italy. The Italian design houses all died out. Ferrari went from Pininfarina to an Apple designer to pinch out the Luce turd. So now everything is a bloated SUV in red, black, white, or grey. And we have the recurring problem of white paint peeling off cars left in the sun because of the amount of titanium oxide used in white paints. Japanese cars are all designed by committees now, and boring to look it. They are just utility designs, like a toilet.
Hot take. I don’t need my stuff to look cool. But to be good and functional.
Be careful what you wish for.
By valuing only efficiency and utility, you end up creating a world where everything follows the same bland cookie-cutter style, where every city looks the same and where corporations can easily shape and control our needs and wants.
what is wrong with that?
aesthetics is largely a province of the wealthy and privileged anyway.
most normal folks never had the option of luxury and aesthetic uniqueness. they don’t have the money to afford those products.
i live in a neighborhood with gorgeous Victorian homes. they all cost 5-10 million dollars. new construction that’s cookie-cutter costs a 1 million. i know a lot more people who can afford 1 million dollar home than a 10 million dollar one… and all the younger folks with kids are living in the cookie cutter boxes. The giant old beautiful homes are all owned by retirees.
I would like a yellow car, but I’m not willing to pay an extra $5000 for it, and that’s what it would cost. I have way more useful stuff to spend my money on than changing the color of my car.
What a miserable way to live it must be to go around associating “cost” with “worth”.
aesthetics is largely a province of the wealthy and privileged anyway.
Take a look at any popular festival (Diwali in India, Carnival in Brazil, Oktoberfest in Germany, Cherry Blossom in Japan) and you will quickly see that every one of these has its own unique style, and that by definition is not something for the wealthy and privileged.
what the hell are you talking about? those are distinct cultures. you’re moving the goalposts now, culture festivals have nothing to do with the topic in the video. also those aren’t your culture, to people inside Japan those things are likely boring and bland.
it’s not miserable, it’s called live in economic reality. i’m sorry it offends you so much that most people can’t afford beautiful unique cars and homes.
You said
aesthetics is largely a province of the wealthy and privileged anyway.
And I provided a counterpoint to your statement: there are obvious examples where aesthetics are different, valued and not exclusive to the “wealthy and privileged”.
i’m sorry it offends you so much that most people can’t afford beautiful unique cars and homes.
This has nothing to do with what people can afford and everything with what people value. Just as a silly example: take a look at the type of things that the guy on DIYPerks has done. I think what he does is insanely cool, and nothing he’s done requires anything absurdly expensive. It requires skill, effort and taste.
a cultural festival has nothing to do with automotive/industrial design.
Having skill effort and taste takes time and money… things that wealthy people have that working people don’t…
It sounds like you’re just angry other people don’t share your aesthetics tastes, and want to shit all over them for not being as ‘sophisticated’ as you are. Without understanding the fact that you ahve such tastes… and the time and energy to agonize over them… makes you already part of the social elite.
You remind me of a lot of people I went to school with. Would shit on people for not being fashionable and cool and if you pointed out not everyone had the time and money they did, they would just get angrier and claim that even the poorest of the poor could be fashionable and cool if they just ‘made the effort’. Yeah, that single mother of 3 really is a piece of shit loser because she can’t spend her weekends thrifting for cool finds…
You are taking a 30+ minute video that uses the Ferrari Luce as one way to illustrate a larger point. You don’t even have to watch the video: the summary right below it says
modern design landscape has shifted toward a sterile, homogeneous aesthetic driven by algorithmic influence rather than genuine human emotion. By analyzing cars, consumer technology, and urban planning, the exploration reveals how this trend impacts our connection to products and the future
This is not about personal tastes or “sense of fashion”, or anything like that. This is simply a video essay from a designer making the argument that a worldview of efficiency-maxing and extreme utlitarianism is making everything converge to a lowest-common denominator design.
I was with you until the last one
What I’m hearing is Crumbl cookies
Hot take, I think my newish purple Avalon looks hot AF! The hood has subtle curves, and the sides have lines that are subtle but beautiful. The back is ugly af, but I don’t look at it often.
Really cool video. One reason I don’t think was explicitly mentioned but didn’t really need to be is the capitalist society we’re in now where everything must make more and more money so companies are rewarded for building things that all are safe and look the same to an extent, hence why the Luce sold so many units. No more are we getting stories about companies making something exciting and new to save their brand or make a statement it’s just whatever will sell and it works for that purpose.
The upper middle class drives the market. They have all the money and buy all the new things when it comes to houses, cars, etc.
They value conformity above all else. They don’t like uniqueness, it upsets them.
The broader public, the bottom 90-80% can’t afford new homes or new cars.
Capitalism : it’s not a bug, it’s a feature.
