> What does that even mean.

Outsider design? It means it’s designed by someone self-taught or not classically trained in the subject. It’s neither insult nor praise, it’s a classification, though often used as a way to express something as being unconventionally interesting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outsider_art

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outsider_music

> It is design produced by the user and maker of the app. If you hire a designer that's neither, doesn't that actually make them the outsider?

No, because “outsider” refers to “outside the world of design” not “outside the world of this product”.

> He's not making a traditional art form as someone who's untrained.

Your parent comment didn’t claim they were making art. But they are designing the app are are clearly untrained in design. Again, that’s not an insult. How many of us here are self-taught programmers?

> He's designing Calibre, and he's the most qualified person in the world in doing that.

That doesn’t necessarily follow. If that were the case there would be no designers, everyone would just do their thing. The point of learning design is to understand what works and why and how to apply it. It is perfectly valid for you to have a vision of what you want the thing to do but to need help in presenting it more effectively.

Outsider art, outsider music refer to art, and even in those practices a lot of celebrated artists are the ones that eschew the established norms.

But design is functional. Grows organically by needs of the user. If so many people swear by Calibre, it is well designed for calibre’s use case. It is not only about the aesthetic design trends. They don’t need to apply a coat of liquid glass and modern icon treatment to make it well designed.

This appeal to authority is why we end up with everything looking like Juicero of software. Shiny, the same components and pricing plan as everything else. But absolutely soulless and often user hostile.

> Outsider art, outsider music refer to art, and even in those practices a lot of celebrated artists are the ones that eschew the established norms.

I don't think many of those artists were celebrated during their lifetime, or at least not until the their form became more widely accepted in the mainstream.

> Outsider art, outsider music refer to art, and even in those practices a lot of celebrated artists are the ones that eschew the established norms.

Which is what I said.

> If so many people swear by Calibre

There’s no true alternative. A lot of people use Calibre despite how it looks, because it does all the things. The world of messing with ebooks outside the vetted stores isn’t that big.

> It is not only about the aesthetic design trends.

I didn’t even so much as hint that. Please don’t straw man.

> They don’t need to apply a coat of liquid glass and modern icon treatment to make it well designed.

Again, no one said that. I personally dislike Liquid Glass.

> toolbox

Again, there’s nothing wrong with that nor have I claimed there is.

> This appeal to authority

There was no appeal to authority. You completely misunderstood the comment, fabricated an argument in your head and are fighting that.

Fucking hell, HN is tiring. Stop being so angry all the time, we’re not on opposing teams. Not every comment is a criticism or disagreement for you to rally against.

Sorry I made you feel like this. There are no shortage of “Calibre but well designed” tools, as long as Calibre has existed. I am just tired of hearing Calibre and other open source apps are badly designed as if that is an objective fact. When can we accept a design stands the test of time and maybe it is in fact well designed?

As far as I was aware, there definitely is a shortage of "Calibre, but well designed" tools. What are these tools?

There are lots of things that do bits of what Calibre does (Kavita, Librum, KOReader, Koodo, etc), but nothing comes close to replacing it.

Your point would make sense if hiring designers wasn't the mainstream.

Hiring designers isn't the mainstream for people who develop a thing for free in their spare time for everyone to use.

Your point would make even more sense if you realized that not everyone cares about capitalist goals when developing software. Some people want software to work for everyone, not just those with money or means.

I also want software to work for anyone. I never said anything about capitalist goals. I pointed out that the person building calibre can still be considered an "outsider" in the art sense, since they are not part of the mainstream who hires designers. Work on your reading comprehension bud.

No, you only want software to work in a specific way that requires more resources than necessary. Just because you don't understand the outcomes of your beliefs doesn't mean others do not.

That is not at all what I said. You're making things up on your own.