I’m so tired of neck beards assuming that any spacing in a design is a waste, as if a good design packs every milimeter with stuff. Proper application of negative space is common in art and throughout design.

You are among the first people I’ve seen online who hasn’t circlejerked about any level padding/spacing being too much padding.

People on Reddit/Lemmy always talk about how unusably shit any modern design is, and how UX/UI from 20+ years ago was so much better.

Yet do they use ancient copies of the software that broadly still performs the tasks people need of them? No.

Do they theme their system to look like the oh-so-superior Win98? No.

Don’t get me wrong, sometimes I see a design change I dislike. But as a general rule, UI has definitely got better over the years.

I look at 20 year old Linux DE screenshots, and they look bad. Cluttered, inconsistent, ugly. I look at them now and they look beautiful. Nostalgia goggles are a powerful thing.

Yet do they use ancient copies of the software that broadly still performs the tasks people need of them? No.

Yes, actually—I have a VM reserved mostly for 16-bit software.

Do they theme their system to look like the oh-so-superior Win98? No.

Yes, actually—the Windows machine I’m forced to use for work restores as much of that aesthetic as practical, sometimes with the help of third-party software. My main home machine features a Linux DE whose appearance is largely the same as it was circa 2005 and whose development team is dedicated to keeping that look and feel.

Some of us do put our money where our mouths are, although I admit that isn’t universal.

It’s true that some level of padding is necessary in a UI, but the amount present in contemporary design is way too large for a system using a traditional mouse or laptop touchpad, which are capable of small, precise movements. Touchscreen-friendly design is best saved for touchscreens, but people don’t want to do the work involved to create multiple styles of UI for different hardware. I’ve never encountered anything touted as “one size fits all”, whether it be a UI or a piece of clothing, that actually does fit everyone. At best, it’s “one size fits most”, and I’m usually outside the range of “most” the designers had in mind. At worst, it’s “lowest common denominator”, and that seems to be the best description for contemporary UI design.