Functional Haircut
I finally got a summer haircut. I cut my hair above my eyebrows when summer arrives, and I repeat that process after a year when it grows down past my chin. It gave me a sense of time during my “working years” after my first grad school, since I no longer had the academic calendar to rely on.
I hate how my hair looks when I cut it that short. It looks just like the picture above. Total helmet-head. It’s a functional hair cut, since hair doesn’t get in the way and it just feels good. Usually I choose aesthetics over function, but every summer when the sticky disgusting tropical storm weather comes along, I opt for the functional.
This is the same with web applications. There are so many web applications out now, but most of them are purely functional and completely ugly. Google’s numerous services are good examples of where function dominates over aesthetics. Just look at the mess they call froogle.
The thing I like about all the Web 2.0 hype is that there is a concious effort to make things look good (and to make things move fluid and smooth.) For instance, Burak showed me Vimeo, which is basically the same thing as YouTube, except unlike YouTube, it doesn’t look like vomit. Also, they use Prototype.js, so they get a thumbs up just for that. The more I compare the two sites, the more I wonder why anyone will tolerate YouTube’s complete lack of aesthetics. I thought consumers where much more demanding of visual goodness ever since the iPod craze, but it still doesn’t translate over to the web world.
Maybe function always wins over aesthetics…I think I like my haircut now.
July 25th, 2006 at 9:44 pm
all i can say is… MySpace. its popularity is totally illogical with respect to any web design rule at all. i try to minimize any contact with that site (and feeling very old when i do so). plus, what is up with audio that automatically loads?
did you see this? logos done up all web 2.0 style. it’s pretty crazy.
i dont think function always wins over aesthetics — women’s clothing, for example. though it depends how you define function. it can be not freezing to death in a blizzard. it can also mean looking hot with gold strappy heels. sometimes the lack of function strengthens the aesthetic itself.
July 26th, 2006 at 7:32 pm
Tak’s illustration doesn’t do his haircut justice. I think that Tak’s haircut looks “post Modern bowl.” If I were brave enough to have hair, I’d certainly go there.
July 29th, 2006 at 9:52 am
Christine: I have serious issues with MySpace. With all the social, privacy and political issues aside, MySpace as a website is a total mess. It’s an eyesore, not just because users have the control over the views, but the UI and the site pages are built by people who got beat by the bad design stick too many times. I wrote about MySpace before.
I never really thought about women’s clothes. For me clothing has to be functional. I would never wear pocketless pants, and it’s a fashion design no-no. I learned that from last season’s Project Runway when Nick made that suit. It was pretty ugly too. Talk about a bad combo.
July 29th, 2006 at 10:01 am
Thanks John. I’ll tell others that my hair is a post modern bowl, instead of “Jim Carrey’s haircut in Dumb and Dumber with faux sideburns.
August 2nd, 2006 at 1:09 pm
MySpace is just about non-existent back in Switzerland. People actually had to explain it to me, after I started working in NYC. But apart from all the fuglyness, what’s the point in having 371 MySpace-friends?
utterly pointless sidenote: your post has a very “maeda-esque” feel to it, structure-wise.