While browsing this forum and reddit I noticed a lot more people posting their website creations. From entire new servers to board recognition or sgf-editors.
I guess new AI coding tools enable more people to create bigger projects.
But I also notice many of these have a similar look with colorful buttons, emojis and boring styles.
Do you notice the same and do you actually use some of these new services?
I do not use those other services, but I check them out, out of curiosity.
They certainly do tend to have a “uniform look”, but I attribute it more to the current trend of “mobile/web App” design, so I do not think that it is an issue.
If you go to DGS which is old it does have a “certain look” which would have made it very “trendy” back in 2001-2002 when it was made/designed (I checked with web archive, DGS looked like that from 2002 and seems unchanged) and it certainly follows what was considered “top notch” for its time.
So, it is probably an issue of all those services being made within a close time frame of 2-3 years where the design trends are similar.
The AI’s have their default styles. If you don’t design something specific, Claude often uses bright, colorful, soft colors, and ChatGPT often uses dark blue to purple gradients. Both make bland flat paneled sections with rounded edges and rounded buttons.
It’s not so much a conscious choice by vibe coders. As they create a first concept, this default style creates a base. They then modify it but mostly incrementally (better colors / fonts / sizes), so that default style stays strongly visible.
Styling a web site using modern technological standards is indeed a lot of work, and making it visually appealing on top of that is even harder.
But nowadays, there are several librairies or frameworks that help take care of the visual apparence of a website, across all sort of devices (computers, smartphone, tablets) and across various web browser (Firefox, chrome, edge).
The most famous is, I think, Bootstrap: https://getbootstrap.com/
It offers some options for visual customization, and there are themes available, but in the end, it still has the same feel.
When a project is supported by only one person, it makes sense for the person to use such framework, as it instantly gives a good looking visual to your project (while somewhat boring) and allows that person to focus on its area of expertise instead (Go, AI, computer vision…).