[HN Gopher] You Can Be a Great Designer and Be Completely Unknown
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You Can Be a Great Designer and Be Completely Unknown
Author : delaugust
Score : 242 points
Date : 2025-04-24 21:24 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.chrbutler.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.chrbutler.com)
| snappr021 wrote:
| If people did not give credit where credit is due.
| DudeOpotomus wrote:
| This is well written. It also seems to describe society at large,
| especially our current society. So many things work so well, they
| become invisible. After time, people dont even realize how much
| is working behind the scenes to make everything work well and
| they assume we dont need those things.
| setsewerd wrote:
| It's the same logic that's behind the declining vaccination
| rates unfortunately. Things could get pretty bad if that trend
| doesn't reverse.
| abtinf wrote:
| In fact, becoming known takes an enormous amount of energy
| dedicated toward that purpose.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| Yes. And time is zero sum. So you end up with people who see no
| issue with sinking lots of time into audience building.
|
| I'd rather do the thing than talk about it. Or, frankly,
| watch/listen/read others.
| famahar wrote:
| I read an interesting thread about this in relation to game
| dev. Development is ugly, so a lot of audience building and
| investor potential comes from creating visually appealing
| gameplay demos and mechanics. Often they are made separate
| from the core of the game. All that time spent making
| engaging content ends up compromising the development process
| and turning it into more of a show reel, rather than a fully
| functioning holistic game.
| dagw wrote:
| _I'd rather do the thing than talk about it._
|
| That is fine if you're doing it for yourself, but rather
| unhelpful if you hope to make a living out of doing the
| thing. The people I know who make a living off their art are
| those who sink a lot of time into selling their art (and
| themselves). Those who sit and home and just make (often much
| better) art languish in obscurity.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I think that greatness of mind needs to be coupled with ambition,
| a certain level of arrogance and self-absorbtion, and a
| personality that doesn't make you a pariah.
|
| I suspect that combinations like that, are, indeed, as rare as
| hen's teeth.
|
| Many great talents probably couldn't be arsed to play the rat
| race game, and keep their domain humble, or they piss off other
| people so much, that they never get a break.
| handfuloflight wrote:
| Why does it have to be arrogance and self absorption? Why not
| simply confidence and vision?
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| It certainly can be (I'm obviously not the expert on the
| traits), but arrogance (think Steve Jobs) means that there's
| less self-doubt, and less openness to outside counsel, which
| is normally a Very Bad Thing, but, if your own counsel
| [vision?] is very good, then maybe not so bad.
|
| In my time, I've worked with some top-shelf folks, who had
| many -but not enough- of the combination, to be mildly
| successful.
|
| Most of the best were extremely ... er ... _confident_. Some,
| it came across as rudeness, but others, would politely accept
| your counsel, and then instantly feed it to the shredder,
| without you ever knowing.
|
| I preferred the rude ones.
| sublinear wrote:
| > I preferred the rude ones.
|
| Seeking social cues to describe greatness is exactly what
| the grift preys on.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Depends.
|
| I'd rather know, up front, that someone isn't open to my
| PoV, so I don't waste time, trying to give help, where it
| is not wanted.
| ghaff wrote:
| I worked for a CEO once and I really disagreed with a
| decision--admittedly probably too late to take another
| path. He talked about it with me. Obviously neither was
| going to change the other's mind. So we agreed to
| disagree and moved on.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Sounds like a good manager. It's the manager's decision,
| but also, their Accountability.
|
| One thing that I've learned, over the years, is that
| folks don't take me seriously. I'm pretty sure that it's
| my affect. I come across as a bit "goofy," and open,
| which is often interpreted as "naive," or "stupid." Used
| to really bug me, but I've learned to deal with it.
|
| Anyway, I'm pretty good at "playing the tape through to
| the end," and anticipating long-term ramifications. These
| are often unwelcome observations, in the planning phase
| of things.
|
| I've learned to start quietly preparing remediations, for
| when the wheels inevitably come off. I guess that it's
| nice to be a "hero of the day," but it would have been
| even better, if we hadn't gotten to this point in the
| first place. Remediation is not as good as Prevention or
| Mitigation.
| ghaff wrote:
| Yeah, he was basically the guy who hired me. They had
| been small clients in the past and we liked each other.
| Part of me was saying what's done is done but I felt I
| had to give it a shot so I emailed him and we had a
| cordial phone call. Which is more than a lot of CEOs of
| moderately large companies would do. And it says a lot
| about the company culture that I never felt I was risking
| being fired.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> And it says a lot about the company culture that I
| never felt I was risking being fired._
|
| Yes. I feel that insecure upper managers are a pox on the
| tech industry (probably other industries, as well). They
| create a really toxic culture.
|
| I used to work for a Japanese company. My manager didn't
| speak English, and was 7,000 miles away, but was willing
| to listen to me. However, I had to deal with the way my
| interaction developed. Sometimes, the Japanese can be
| quite ... _strident_ ... when they feel as if they are
| not being approached with respect.
|
| They had a consensus-based style, which welcomed input
| from all levels, but would also be pretty brutal, to bad
| input.
|
| Helped me to develop a habit of making sure all my ducks
| were in a row, before opening my mouth.
| ghaff wrote:
| Relationships also matter. I worked directly for people
| who really feared this senior person for reasons I never
| really understood. But I knew how far I could push things
| and tell the exec they were just wrong. Which is probably
| one of the reasons they hired me. To be honest, I was
| probably in a position where if I pushed a bit too far
| I'd probably have been ok.
| vjvjvjvjghv wrote:
| There is a very fine line between all of these. When you look
| at famous people like Jobs, Zuckerberg, Musk or Gates they
| have all these attributes. Another example would be Michael
| Jordan in basketball or Michael Schumacher in racing.
| mylons wrote:
| you can be a great <insert w/e here> and be completely unknown.
| there are a lot of niche opportunities out there. you could be
| helping michelin star restaurant owners with a new booking
| website that just charges customers on their reservation and
| literally be set for life after that interaction.
|
| the last anecdote is a true story. one of the original owners of
| Alinea (Chicago) did just that and the guy who developed the site
| is quite literally set for life if he doesn't do anything else
| but also has this incredible in within the fine dining world now.
| tptacek wrote:
| I feel like the people in key roles at Tock were generally
| pretty high profile to begin with. Last time we talked in depth
| about Tock here on HN, Kokonas showed up.
| motohagiography wrote:
| to me designers are the real architects of history, however, the
| cybertruck example as brash i disagree with for specific reasons.
|
| it is a perfect example of what it does without any deference to
| other design languages. instead of po-mo symbolism, it really is
| just the sufficient metal and glass to do the thing. an essential
| truck is unsentimental working capital. its not a duck, its an
| undecorated shed.
|
| i think the design will age very well because there's nothing to
| add to it.
| codr7 wrote:
| It's hands down the ugliest thing I've ever seen.
| pcmaffey wrote:
| I call it the trash compactor
| BoingBoomTschak wrote:
| But at least it's not boring. I'd even call it audacious.
| Most of today's SUVs, you wouldn't be able to guess the
| brand/model if you took the badges away.
| philipallstar wrote:
| It's true - they are all looking more and more similar.
| codr7 wrote:
| True, the same mindset that lead Microsoft to create the
| Metro UI, which has similar appeal.
| analog31 wrote:
| I don't disagree with you about its utilitarian aesthetics,
| even if it seems ugly to me. But an amusing irony is that most
| customers probably won't ever use it as a truck.
| blt wrote:
| The design shows a fundamental misunderstanding of sheet metal.
| Flat sheet metal is weak. Only curved sheet metal can be
| strong. Designs that lack mechanical sympathy with the
| materials in use don't tend to age well.
| immibis wrote:
| Kei trucks are unsentimental working capital. Cybertrucks have
| been designed to look this way because someone thinks it sells.
| The panels come unglued and fly off because they glued panels
| on because they needed the truck to look that way because they
| thought that attracted customers.
| philipallstar wrote:
| > Cybertrucks have been designed to look this way because
| someone thinks it sells
|
| No, I think it's to get the cost of an electric truck down.
| I've never heard anyone from Tesla say it looks that way
| because it'll sell better. It doesn't look like the other
| Teslas, which all look really nice, but are more expensive.
| immibis wrote:
| You know what's better at getting the cost down better? Not
| adding extra parts for aesthetics. Gluing on extra panels
| costs more than not gluing on extra panels. Also, making
| them smaller makes them cheaper. They're actually too big
| to fit in standard European parking spaces, so clearly they
| have no need to be as big as they are.
|
| Their design is all about aesthetics, but a type of
| aesthetics that is non-conventional in the car industry.
| vonmoltke wrote:
| > It doesn't look like the other Teslas, which all look
| really nice, but are more expensive.
|
| No, they're not. The price of a Cybertruck is in line with
| the price for a Model S or Model X, and significantly
| higher than a Model 3.
| LightBug1 wrote:
| Obviously it's subjective, but no ... the model 3 does not
| look really nice. The new generation with the facelift just
| crosses the borderline of acceptable, as does the newly
| face-lifted model Y. But the countless prior generation 3
| and Y that litter our streets surely must be a marginal
| drag on the Tesla brand ... they're aging terribly. Which
| isn't hard considering my initial impression of them.
|
| The model S is literally the only car they got right.
|
| Let's not even talk about the CT. I can't even bring myself
| to utter that horizontal fridges name ...
| bluGill wrote:
| Cybertruck looks that way because of compromises. They didn't
| think the shape would sell, they thought stainless steel
| would sell. The shape is a function of how hard it is to
| shape stainless steel. Likewise gluing panels on is required
| because stainless steel can't be welded. Because they refused
| to compromise on stainless steel they were forced to
| compromise elsewhere.
| rpnx wrote:
| Stainless steel can be welded... just not easily and
| cheaply.
| spamjavalin wrote:
| Remind me of the statement (I'm paraphrasing) 'No one gets the
| credit for solving a problem that never happened'
| bluGill wrote:
| This is why I hate the end of project awards. Someone always
| get great credit for staying late to save the project - but if
| they had done their job right in the first place the project
| wouldn't have needed saving.
| pelagic_sky wrote:
| As a designer, I know some absolutely amazing artists who just
| hunker down and produce phenomenal art/designs and I am not
| fluffing here. As a climber, I also know of climbers who are at
| the best in the world level, but don't post sends on IG or muck
| about in socially promoting themselves. It's great to know that
| there are extremely talented people doing their thing and it's
| not driven by leaderboards or social clout.
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| reminds me of this video I found the other day
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcjdwSY2AzM&ab_channel=Verit...
|
| if I'm understanding correctly the implications of Emily
| Noether's work, its an absolute travesty that she isn't famous in
| the same breath as Einstein and Feynman. Yet this video was the
| first time I had even heard of her.
| esafak wrote:
| Physicists know her. Einstein was a public intellectual,
| Noether was not.
| MoonGhost wrote:
| There are many great scientists you've never heard about.
| Soviet side of the world was almost as big as western. Yet they
| got only a very few nobel prices. It was absurd when western
| derivative got, but not the original work.
| rablackburn wrote:
| Do you have any recommendations for where we could read more
| about the soviet originals/western derivatives? I've never
| heard that before (born after the collapse) and that sounds
| like a fascinating story.
| bluGill wrote:
| https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/73052/technomagica-
| progres... - it is a fiction story so it might or might not
| be to your taste. The story is a soviet (or just after the
| fall) scientists it reborn in a fantasy/magic world - like
| most such stories there is constant comparisons to the old
| world, but the old world is the soviet one not the western
| one. It probably isn't a comprehensive list, but it is a
| good overview of who the soviets saw as important.
| somenameforme wrote:
| Einstein's discovery explained a centuries old mystery that
| people, including every major mind of the time, were completely
| and fundamentally on the wrong track towards. All without being
| able to find any academic position that would have him - he was
| working as a low ranking patent inspector at the time. And that
| discovery completely reshaped physics, which many at the time
| thought had been mostly 'solved' and was down to a measuring
| game.
|
| I think a parallel would be if some random guy, outside of
| academia, completely and cleanly solved the dark energy/matter
| mystery in his spare time, with a revolutionary way of
| thinking, and it completely reshaped our understanding of not
| only the cosmos but of physics itself.
|
| Becoming well known for advanced works in science requires a
| once in many centuries type level of achievement - which is
| what Einstein was. Feynman is a great example of this. He was
| undoubtedly one of the greatest physicists of all time and made
| many important contributions to science, yet he would probably
| be relatively unknown if not for his excessive public outreach
| and his exceptional ability to explain complex concepts in an
| extremely intuitive and clear fashion. A talent which he put to
| extensive use.
| Wololooo wrote:
| Noether was one of a kind communicator and scientist and she
| should be more widely known because she is a role model for
| everyone.
|
| Einstein was just not a random person doing something, it was
| an academically trained person, still in contact with people
| from academia, with extreme talent and found himself in a
| situation with a lot more free time and in an environment
| that was promoting his thinking. Mind you it does not take
| anything away from the achievements because the overall work
| was astounding, but it is disingenuous to present him as "a
| random outside of academia".
|
| Noether was just not correctly widely recognized outside of
| the field, as much as she should have been at the time,
| because, let's face it, she was a woman. Her achievements are
| on par with Einstein's in term of scope and range. Noether's
| theorem alone is a huge cornerstone of modern physics and
| guiding the design of Quantum Field Theory and pinning
| symmetries as the way to tackle the building of physical
| Lagrangians that lead to the expression of the current
| standard model.
|
| Her work on algebra is so massive, it is hard to wrap your
| head around it, the contributions especially to rings and
| topology are to be mentioned. She has shaped so many parts of
| mathematics that it boggles the mind and her achievements are
| well within the once in a several centuries type of scope.
|
| I will not try to compare people because it is pointless
| because circumstances and "importance of achievements" is a
| difficult to measure metric, especially for people working
| outside of the fields where those achievements have been
| made, but subtly painting Noether as not widely known because
| she has not achieved "once in many centuries type level of
| achievement" or that she was not great at communicating, is
| blatantly false, because she has, in fact, several times over
| done both of those things.
|
| She was known to be gentle and gracious and always there to
| offer help and or advice or explanations, sharing her
| knowledge, and wisdom. She is one of those model scientist
| that any scientist, regardless of gender or ethnicity, should
| look up to as a role model, and she embodies what most of us
| think that science could and should be.
| philipallstar wrote:
| > because, let's face it, she was a woman
|
| I don't think this is at all true. The reason you've heard
| of Grace Hopper or Ada Lovelace is precisely _because_ they
| 're women. No man who achieved similar levels of
| significant work is remembered outside of some niche
| publications.
|
| > subtly painting Noether as not widely known because she
| has not achieved "once in many centuries type level of
| achievement" or that she was not great at communicating, is
| blatantly false, because she has, in fact, several times
| over done both of those things
|
| It just seems unlikely that Noether has several times done
| what Newton and Einstein did and she's so unknown. Why do I
| know about much less prolific women and not her, if sexism
| is the actual reason, and not just a thought-terminating
| word?
| sfn42 wrote:
| Maybe the people who decide which woman to hype haven't
| heard of her yet?
| philipallstar wrote:
| I'd say that's a lot more likely, yes.
| Reefersleep wrote:
| Could it be that her work in pure, abstract mathematics,
| while important and foundational for some fields, remains
| too unrelatable for a wide audience?
|
| Maybe the same could be argued for Einstein's work, but
| knowledgeable people, recognizing its importance, have
| found ways of explaining it in a relatable way... ?
| somenameforme wrote:
| You are mistaken on Einstein's past. He went from taking a
| 4 year teaching program to searching for an academic
| position for [literally] years. Nobody wanted him. He'd
| independently published one paper that he himself would
| describe was rubbish, and that was the extent of his
| academic experience. Even with his position at the patent
| office - he only managed to get that job through a friend,
| and even there was passed up for promotion due to apparent
| lack of competence. If you were to rank people who were
| likely to influence, let alone revolutionize science, he
| absolutely would not have been on the list.
|
| And you can't really compare Einstein's achievement to
| anybody else, literally. The reason is not even because of
| the science itself, which really isn't that complex in
| hindsight, but a mixture of him solving such a pressing
| question that nobody else had "seen" as a possibility,
| alongside with its impact expanding far outside the
| academic world. Before Einstein our understanding of the
| universe was one of relative normality. He made it clear
| that the universe is unimaginably weird.
|
| I do think the comparison with dark energy/matter is
| appropriate. Imagine a complete unknown, outside of
| academia, came out with something that not only completely
| cleanly explained these mysteries, but did so in a way that
| essentially required discarding everything we thought we
| knew about the universe. And by we I don't mean some people
| working in an abstract esoteric field that 99.999% of
| people have no idea even exists, but humanity. That is
| literally the level of what Einstein achieved, and it may
| not even be possible again - because it's sort of a 'right
| time, right place' type combination.
|
| ---
|
| And this gets back to the point. Science, so far as
| persisting in the public mind, isn't about pushing some
| esoteric field forward, but about advancing humanity. If
| Einstein instead lived today, it's entirely possible he'd
| be just another competent academic making some advances,
| mostly of academic value, in some abstract and esoteric
| field. And people in 100 years would be none the wiser he
| even existed. The only way to escape this fate is to engage
| extensively in outreach. E.g. - Carl Sagan lives on not
| because of his achievements, but because of his public
| outreach. To a lesser degree the same is true of Feynman.
| spiritplumber wrote:
| This was my experience in the "maker movement" in the 2010s. You
| may know me from OpenRov, RobotsAnywhere/CellBots, and the NAVCOM
| AI autopilot. But you probably don't.
|
| Who got attention? People who spent 20% of their time making and
| 80% self-promoting.
| forrestthewoods wrote:
| I'll go a step further. If someone is well known it's more likely
| than not that they're a charlatan. Not always of course. But if
| someone gives 6+ conference talks a year it's like 80%+ chance
| they're a dingleberry.
|
| The world is full of amazingly talented and hard working people.
| Almost all of them are not on social media.
| eddieh wrote:
| You can be a great X and be completely unknown
|
| Where X is any vocation, skill, talent, etc...
| wanderingmind wrote:
| One of the reasons I love listening to 99% Invisible podcast[1].
| Not just a great designer is unknown, but the hallmark of a great
| design is that its almost invisible unless you look for it.
|
| [1] https://99percentinvisible.org/
| rglover wrote:
| This is the paradox of the post social media world. I see a lot
| of mid-tier talent--in all sorts of disciplines/industries--being
| elevated, while what I personally consider the "greats" get a
| fraction of the attention (e.g., this designer who I love and
| have bought stuff from but seems to be a relative unknown [1]).
|
| The book "Do the Work" explained it well: "The amateur tweets.
| The pro works." People who fit into the Shell Silverstein "I'm so
| good I don't have to brag" bucket aren't as visible because
| they're working, not talking about working.
|
| Something fairly consistent I've observed: the popular people you
| see tweeting and on every podcast are likely not very good at
| what they're popular _for_.
|
| Sometimes there's overlap, but it's the exception, not the rule.
|
| [1] https://xtian.design/
| pixl97 wrote:
| I mean advertising is advertising. You could have the best
| program in the world but if no one knows about it chances are
| you're not going to get rich.
|
| Now I'm not much for salespeople in general, but I do
| understand their purpose.
| tough wrote:
| This is more true for indie hackers or solo team founders i
| guess, if you're just a designer in a big corp, you don't
| usually handle marketing beyond trying to build/design a
| marketeable product, devrel and other positions are more
| marketing like
| godelski wrote:
| Honestly, that seems like a solvable problem. Certainly not
| easy, certainly tremendously difficult, but I'm not sure it
| is impossible nor that we can't make strides in that
| direction. We're fundamentally talking about a search
| algorithm, with specific criteria.
|
| I doubt there would be good money in creating this, but
| certainly it would create a lot of value and benefit many
| just from the fact that if we channel limited resources to
| those more likely to create better things, then we all
| benefit. I'd imagine that even a poorly defined metric would
| be an improvement upon the current one: visibility. I'm sure
| any new metric will also be hacked but we're grossly
| misaligned right now and so even a poorly aligned system
| _could_ be better. The bar is just really low.
| rf15 wrote:
| > you're not going to get rich
|
| which shouldn't be a goal onto itself, unless you really want
| to get completely detached and insane like every other
| billionaire.
| Mawr wrote:
| Advertising is easy, making the best program is hard. If you
| have the best program already, solving the advertising
| problem is a non issue.
| spondylosaurus wrote:
| There's the old paradox about self-help gurus and how they're
| rarely successful because they take their own advice, but
| because they get paid to _share_ their advice... I feel like
| the "mid-tier creative who's famous on socials" phenomenon is
| similar, although I couldn't exactly say how.
| motorest wrote:
| > There's the old paradox about self-help gurus and how
| they're rarely successful because they take their own advice,
| but because they get paid to share their advice...
|
| That's not a paradox. It's plain old fraud, or to put it
| mildly it's marketing and self-promoting. The self-help gurus
| that get paid are those who convinced people who see help to
| pay them instead of the next guy. What gets the foot in the
| door is not substance, but the illusion and promise of
| substance.
| dustincoates wrote:
| I learned recently that Tony Robbins set out to be a
| motivational speaker in his teens. I was connected to someone
| on LinkedIn who listed himself as a "thought leader" one year
| into his career!
|
| How can you be either of those without any experience under
| your belt?
|
| But, of course, at least for the motivational speaker, a back
| of experience doesn't matter, because that's not what people
| are paying for. They're paying for a few hours where they can
| get pumped up, and give them an energy which will carry them
| until the next session, not requiring them to actually do any
| of the hard work to change their lives.
| jjmarr wrote:
| The Giving Tree (by Shel Silverstein) came out in the same year
| my dad was born. But my parents still read it to me.
|
| I still don't understand why I have such a strong reaction to
| the book. It feels like the message is "take care of your
| parents instead of just taking from them".
| begueradj wrote:
| It's not hard work or talent that brings fame, recognition or
| promotion at any workplace of any industry.
| zombot wrote:
| It happens, but it's rare.
| guappa wrote:
| Surely completely by mistake
| motorest wrote:
| > People who fit into the Shell Silverstein "I'm so good I
| don't have to brag" bucket aren't as visible because they're
| working, not talking about working.
|
| It isn't as much as "talking about working" but putting the
| bulk of their effort in self-promotion.
|
| If you hire someone because they excelled at self-promotion,
| the reason you hired them is because they excelled at self-
| promotion. Not because they are great or even good, but because
| they are good at convincing the likes of you to hire the likes
| of them.
|
| In business settings this sort of problem ends up being a
| vicious cycle. Anyone that hires a self-promoting scrub is
| motivated to make that decision look like a success as well,
| otherwise the scrub's failure will also be their own failure.
| If these scrubs output passable work instead of great or even
| good, that's something you as a manager can work with.
| zombot wrote:
| The majority has exceedingly bad taste, that's why mediocrity
| and bad taste always seem to win.
| marklubi wrote:
| Make Something People Want. Have the poster framed on the wall
| in my office. It's part of the ethos I've lived my life by.
|
| Changed an industry, made a lot of money, and pretty much
| nobody knows who I am (which I'm completely fine with). Not
| looking for fame, don't want it.
| LambdaComplex wrote:
| I like live music. I've seen plenty of famous bands play
| before.
|
| But the best live band I've ever seen was an almost completely
| unknown local band from Florida (that almost never played
| outside that state, as far as I'm aware).
|
| I'm willing to believe that there's an even better band out
| there somewhere that's never even played outside of a garage.
| hellotheretoday wrote:
| Music is subjective, of course, but I know a lot of people
| who dedicated an extreme amount of their lives to it. Went to
| conservatory, practiced for literally hours a day since they
| were young children into their now late 30s, write music
| constantly for decades, etc. Some of the best music I've ever
| heard in my life has come from these people and they're all
| unknown. They teach music, they gig, they work in other
| career paths, some still do part time stuff hoping it will
| eventually pan out, but none of them have any kind of fanbase
| or recognition really. I think the biggest one has like 800
| streams a month on Spotify with 2k listeners? It's nothing,
| like a few dollars a month
| ghaff wrote:
| There's an incredible amount of luck involved in making it
| big in the arts. Some of it is talent. Some of it is hard
| work. But a lot is luck. Almost certainly compared to
| professions where reasonable competence and work mostly
| guarantee a decent living.
| Mawr wrote:
| I want to believe that but I've never seen any compelling
| concrete examples. Got any music that's way better than
| its popularity/recognition would indicate?
| ghaff wrote:
| There are a number of singer/songwriters/folk who I've
| really liked who were pretty obscure like Heather
| Alexander, Kathy Mar, etc. may not be to your taste but
| I've liked and certainly not well known.
| circlefavshape wrote:
| https://open.spotify.com/artist/2aO9679RPKtDZhaVAOvIWZ?si
| =iN...
|
| https://open.spotify.com/artist/4pD0TDma5JQSsb8aVN4Orb?si
| =Fv...
|
| https://open.spotify.com/artist/2Mp29qv5usMDjpbCc5E33w?si
| =p3...
| sp1nningaway wrote:
| I gotta say expected the usual type of "good musicians
| that can't catch a break," talented but can't write a
| song with any sincerity or personality. Instead I loved
| all three! I regret my cynicism and I'm glad I took a
| listen. I went and bought a couple albums on bandcamp.
| Thanks!
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| it depends entirely on your taste but there are some
| genres that actively avoid broad recognition which
| include some of my favorite bands (many metal and punk
| subgenres for example).
| luqtas wrote:
| beyond luck, _lots_ of famous artists have 'non-famous'
| composers arranging/composing after their demo stuff
| brulard wrote:
| We had once an awesome unknown band from Belgium coming to
| play in our local club. I was the only person that came to
| the concert. For an hour they didn't start to wait for more
| listeners and they invited me to their table. No one showed
| up so they played for me and my brother whom I have summoned
| in the meantime. The best concert I have ever attended.
|
| The band was L.T.D.M.S.
| (https://thomasturine.com/bands/ltdms/)
| tfeldmann wrote:
| They have oceansize vibes. Must have been a great evening!
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| The world is filled with brilliant people.
|
| My experience is with sound designers. The nub of the art is
| to remain invisible, unobtrusive. A good sound designer is
| never noticed.
|
| Many created the synth patches for famous music keyboards
| like the Korg M-series or Yamaha DX-series, and they hear
| their sounds on the radio/Spotify every single day attributed
| to someone else... some band name or whatever.
|
| I'm sure there are folks here who designed amazing VFX
| plugins/algorithms and recognise their work in Hollywood
| blockbusters, and know that the VFX "artist" simply used the
| default settings.
|
| So I'd go further: _most_ of the designers whose work forms
| part of our daily lives are people "you've never heard of".
| Like people who design road layouts for traffic safety,
| design road signs, public information. They're hardly
| household names.
|
| If working in human fields of arts, design and entertainment
| has taught me anything it's that even though some extreme
| egos can drive success, self-advancement and skill are on
| absolutely orthogonal axes.
|
| And as the (very good) discussion here yesterday about
| billionaire lottery winners went.... most "successful" tech
| names also are nothing but the arbitrary outcomes of the
| slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and hindsight
| "winner" bias. There were ten other garage computer builders
| who had better products than Woz and Jobs, and a dozen better
| search engine designs than Page rank... But we need a
| narrative that makes a few people "heroes", because that's
| what keeps the show running.
|
| We've yet to design/discover a way of being that celebrates
| the bottom part of the iceberg - the thousands of enablers of
| every "star", often whose work is plundered. "AI stealing
| Art" is the natural outcome of this blindside.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > and a dozen better search engine designs than Page rank
|
| Which search engine was better than Google when Google came
| out?
| -__---____-ZXyw wrote:
| As someone who has played a fair amount of music with
| different people in different places, and who has attended
| quite a few odd little gigs and band practices and playing-
| in-your-friend's-house type things, as well as other types of
| mad musical moments, this is to be expected.
|
| The idea of album sales or concert sales or youtube views or
| whatever being indicitave of music "quality" is a horrid
| historical perversion which is antithetical to the role music
| has played and still could maybe play in human life.
|
| The worst thing about the modern commercial music industry,
| from my perspective, isn't the music that gets produced, but
| rather this made-up binary of professional music-salespeople
| ("musicians") on the one hand, and music-consuming plebs on
| the other.
|
| The professional musician is measured by their album sales
| and ticket sales and spotify/chart success and their views on
| the big platforms, and that's it, end of story. The public is
| allowed an "opinion" on which "superstar" is "better", i.e.,
| they pick kendrick or drake, or one k-pop band or the other,
| and that's it, you vibe to your type of playlist on spotify
| and fork over the money for the big shows and that's your
| musical existence.
|
| I'm not sure how to say it in a way that doesn't sound like
| stale traditionalism or toothless hippie nostalgia, but I
| mean it in a real hard sense: "real music" happens when real
| people express themselves musically, on their own or in a
| communal setting.
|
| It can be a kid doing her fifth piano class and you play two
| chords repeatedly and ask her to pick something in the room
| and say something about it and then you both take turns
| throwing out a melody and see where you end up. It can be
| three people hungover around a kitchen table who swap
| instruments for a few tunes, 5 friends in a garage screaming
| about their feelings, 10 friends in a cacophonous and smoky
| practice studio somewhere.
|
| Your friend who never played any instrument who came along to
| hang out who starts chanting melodically and repetitively
| into a spare microphone at some stage can be the one who
| pushes the thing to some new level no one saw coming, and
| then there you all are, in this new musical moment.
|
| Anyway. I didn't mean to rant there, but maybe you get my
| point.
| adfm wrote:
| Fred Armisen wrote the forward to Jason Lamb's "NoMeansNo:
| From Obscurity to Oblivion: An Oral History" (PM Press 2024)
|
| https://pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=1505
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| At least in my personal experience, the combination of doing
| interesting things and talking about them in a somewhat public
| setting is something almost all really successful people do,
| and what few don't have a friend who is a hype man for them.
|
| While there are charlatans that are all talk, it's extremely
| common among genuinely brilliant people to work too much and
| don't do enough talking about it. Talking about what you're
| doing opens doors. It connects you with other people. It gets
| you funded. Being brilliant in obscurity does not.
|
| Richard Feynman and Julian Schwinger won the nobel prize the
| same year. Both are fairly brilliant theoretical physicists and
| the prize was well deserved, but only one of them was
| charismatic and loved to talk about himself and what he was
| doing, and as a result, is much more of a household name even
| today.
| criddell wrote:
| Maybe you have it backwards. The social media post isn't about
| the work, rather the work _is_ the social media post.
|
| In that context, doing the work would refer to creating social
| media posts and the subject of those posts is secondary.
| slightwinder wrote:
| > This is the paradox of the post social media world. I see a
| lot of mid-tier talent--in all sorts of disciplines/industries
| --being elevated, while what I personally consider the "greats"
| get a fraction of the attention (e.g., this designer who I love
| and have bought stuff from but seems to be a relative unknown
| [1]).
|
| Attention comes mainly from understanding. And all people are
| in the mid to low-tier of understanding things outside their
| own specialization, and too often even within their own
| specialization.
|
| So to understand something great, you have to have enough
| insight into that area to see the greatness. And on the other
| side, there is also the false perception of thinking something
| is great, while you are just too low in your understanding, to
| see why it's just mid. Isn't this also basically what Dunning-
| Kruger-effect is about?
| hammock wrote:
| Bell curve meme
|
| Neanderthal: "I know I'm a great designer but no one
| understands me"
|
| Midwit: "If I tweet enough I'll get well known and become
| great"
|
| Monk: "I know I'm a great designer but no one understands me"
| mclau157 wrote:
| Honestly some of the best content I have been seeing is MIT
| application videos (both accepted and rejected), it is high
| school level but it leads to a lot of interesting discussions
| kens wrote:
| The comments consistently describe the victory of self-
| promotion over real greatness. I had a strange thought: what if
| that applies to da Vinci too, and we don't know who the real
| greats of the Renaissance are. You might say, "What about the
| Mona Lisa?" It turns out that the Mona Lisa wasn't especially
| famous until it was stolen from the Louvre in 1911.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| I don't see it as particularly social media related. That's
| just the cheapest way to get attention these days. I recall
| Benjamin Franklin famously pushing paper around town in a
| wheelbarrow to seem like a hard working young printer:
|
| > I sometimes brought home the paper I purchased at the stores
| thro' the streets on a wheelbarrow. Thus being esteemed an
| industrious, thriving young man, and paying duly for what I
| bought, the merchants who imported stationery solicited my
| custom
|
| He went out of his way to get positive attention, and it
| worked.
| codr7 wrote:
| Fame quickly becomes an obstacle to progress, it's the last thing
| I need in my life.
| ilaksh wrote:
| People just don't know the difference between popularity and
| merit. Similarly, they don't know the difference between someone
| who is successful or good at what they do versus one who makes a
| lot of money.
| bdangubic wrote:
| works for SWEs too - I've had the pleasure working with a bunch
| of amazing SWEs in my almost 3 decades in the industry, 9 out of
| top 10 if I rank them do not have a Github account or blog or
| post sh _t on "X" or wherever... Just do amazing sh_t at work and
| go home to their families :)
| listenallyall wrote:
| Absolutely. And there are plenty of occupations where even a
| Michael Jordan level talent would go totally unknown and
| unappreciated. Accountant. Plumber. Chemist. Many more.
| ghaff wrote:
| And contrarywise fairly mid-level professional athletes in a
| lot of sports are known at some level by a lot of people.
| Likely actors too. I assume if you look at Wikipedia you'll
| find a lot more articles about journeyman actors than you'll
| find about CEOs of major companies.
| econ wrote:
| It's easy. You just compare your thing to everything similar and
| keep at it until you are convinced yours is miles ahead. Other
| opinions are irrelevant.
| jackcosgrove wrote:
| I don't think it's just about doing vs talking.
|
| There are people who are great at something not because they do
| novel work, but because they redo known work that's really hard.
|
| Not everyone has the luxury of knowing where the frontier lies
| and working at it. Many, many people reinvent the wheel simply
| because they don't know that what they're trying has already been
| done. And they can redo the work in a great way.
|
| Of course they'll never get credit for this.
| Mathnerd314 wrote:
| Hot take but you can be a terrible designer and be completely
| unknown too. I've been getting into music and there are a lot of
| wannabes and very few "gems hidden in the dirt" or whatever - if
| your music is good you'll at least be able to get some decent
| bookings.
| alissa_v wrote:
| Butler's piece is spot on. It reminds me of those core open-
| source tools we all depend on daily but rarely think about the
| people behind them. Like, who actually knows the name of the
| person who maintains requests in Python? Probably very few, yet
| their work is fundamental. That quiet contribution feels like the
| real definition of impactful design, way beyond the noise of
| social media.
| tasuki wrote:
| This is almost too obvious to write a blog post, no?
|
| Many great artists died in complete obscurity (eg van Gogh). Some
| have found their fame posthumously (eg van Gogh). I'm sure many
| who were even more ahead of their time remain in obscurity.
| yeyeyeyeyeyeyee wrote:
| so who would be the great unknown artists of today ?
| lordnacho wrote:
| In fact, part of the reason for the current cacophony is that
| everyone has discovered this fact. Better to invest your time
| being seen than being good.
|
| It's a kind of tragedy of the commons. Instead of our attention
| being taken up by creatives who are mostly competent, it is taken
| up by everyone who wants to short circuit the system. (This would
| be even more interesting if I could find that article that
| suggests our taste in music is actually created by exposure.)
|
| There used to be editors of various sorts, whether it be in
| writing, art, or music, who would be the arbiters of taste. You
| could indeed take issue with who they decided to elevate, but
| they definitely provided a useful function.
| ghaff wrote:
| They probably did recognize diamonds in the rough. I'll also
| say that the one time I did a book through a publisher it was
| because I happened to be seated next to the managing director
| and followed up with the acquisitions editor over coffee in
| London. Would probably never have happened had I sent in a
| proposal cold. Didn't make me much money but was a nice
| addition to the resume.
| ofrzeta wrote:
| You can be a great X and be completely unknown. The history is
| full of people who only got famous after they were dead.
| Arisaka1 wrote:
| I had a similar train of thought like the author has, but it
| happened while I was playing Expedition 33, which is a game made
| by former Ubisoft developers who decided to go indie, and made
| something that is really cool.
|
| It made me realize that there's an innumerable amount of talented
| people out there, who are most definitely capable enough or
| willing to grow enough, that can produce something that makes you
| think that Ubisoft could have made it, because those people were
| always right there!
|
| And if they weren't motivated enough to risk it all, because
| you're only starting from a mere idea, we would never have seen
| the fruits of their labor.
|
| I'm not claiming that they're comparable with the greatest
| artists of our time but, the probability of someone out there
| becoming great will be silenced and squashed before it even has a
| chance to show up, either because they must conform to the job
| market to survive day to day, or because of office politics, or
| out of their own temperament avoiding risks. Especially if that
| risk is unemployment and homelessness.
|
| As a fan of John Carmack, for example, I have to wonder if he
| would've ever hit the status he achieved if Doom wasn't this fun
| to play, or if he kept shipping monthly video games by mail
| instead. I'm not talking about whether he would be this
| intelligent or not, but whether he would be known.
| hipinspire wrote:
| I 100% agree. e.g. https://hipfolio.co
| nelblu wrote:
| This is a life fact, I realized this early on. I grew up in part
| of India which is close to the famous Ajanta caves. There are
| several local artists there, who literally carve a stone into an
| absolutely beautiful images of Buddha. A lot of times the tools
| they used were so crude, imagine what they would do if they had
| access to modern tools. Similarly, when we look at some of the
| most beautiful ancient artifacts we can hardly say with
| confidence who actually built them and whether they were truly
| the greatest of their times. Personally, I find this very
| satisfying, there is no need of recognition, all one needs is to
| enjoy what they do.
| thomastraum wrote:
| "the correlation between quality and fame is weak at best, and
| that we should be suspicious of any definition of design
| excellence that depends on visibility."
|
| everyone needs to internalize this. its similar to the "Gell-Mann
| Amnesia effect." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-
| Mann_amnesia_effect) if someone in your domain is famous but
| their "quality" is weak, assume by default this is true for all
| other type of famous.
| FrameworkFred wrote:
| I love this line in the post: "The next time you use something
| that works so well you barely notice it, remember that somewhere,
| a designer solved a problem so thoroughly that both the problem
| and its solution became invisible."
|
| There a things that I immediately replace when they break or get
| lost: bolt cutters, dremel, leatherman. There's software like
| IDEs, Zim, Inkscape.
|
| It's very much like losing a limb when any of it is unavailable
| and it's absolutely true that there are folks out there who did
| their job so well as to make them indispensable.
|
| Great post.
| amai wrote:
| "What, so young and already unknown?"
|
| -- Wolfgang Pauli
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