This is Signal vs. Noise, a weblog by 37signals about design, business, experience, simplicity, the web, culture, and more. Established 1999 in Chicago. Follow us on Twitter for more information on our products.

Watch out web world, “beautiful” is now the top contender for the most overused word among the design crowd. C’mon, this is beautiful? And “absolutely” at that? Yikes.

You guys are driving the word “beautiful” into the ground, just like everybody did with the word “love”. I love Big Macs, for example.

@tim – who stole the jam out of your donut?

Very cool. I love the lines on it.

Nicholas Henry ( @@): Tim is right. Jesus christ these people need to get ahold of themselves. SvN/37s is devaluing language at a faster rate than the DJIA is falling!

Beautiful code, code as poetry, beautiful skippy racers… At what point does that kind of rhetoric become tedious?

But hey, keep it up. It’s fodder for much joking in my office.

Actually, the one thing this is is ‘absolutely beautiful’.

I was also thinking ‘amazing’.

Its that too.

I can hear you (naysayers) in 20 years:

“Get off my damn lawn!”

It IS beautiful.

At least we know what kind of dipstick sits around and snipes on others creativity and willingness to put themselves out there.

His name is Tim. Tim the dipstick. Tim is a critic, and coincidentally not a great critic at that. Go Timmeh!

Personally I thought the Skippy Racer was a pretty cool find.

How we differ.

I agree it’s beautiful. It literally took my breath away.

Hyperbole is the defining characteristic of all successful blogging, as I see it. Also, the skippy racer doesn’t seem very 37signals… contrived style over function?

It is beautiful! Streamline moderne still looks fresh, I love it.

Wish I had time to mock-up what a 2008 model could look like in aluminum with a maple veneer board!

It’s very stylish and futuristic looking for its’ time, i’m sure it was a break through and the skippy racer WAS beautiful back than, but i would not consider it very functional or user friendly by modern standarts. On the other hand it was a marvel back then no doubt.

Way to go, Bill! If somebody disagrees, pound ‘em down. Let’s just have one stream of thought out here. That makes it SO much more interesting. Fawning only, please.

Contrived style? Devaluing the language? :-/ Get a grip.

so much depends upon

a red wheel barrow

glazed with rain water

it’s not a wheelbarrow obviously, but the poem popped into my head when looking at the picture so I posted it :)

so much depends upon
a red wheel barrow
glazed with rain water
beside the white chickens.

it’s not a wheelbarrow obviously, but the poem popped into my head when looking at the picture so I posted it :)

Sorry, not really seeing it. Those skinny handlebars tapering upwards from the chubby wheel cover – to me it looks gross and disproportionate, like a piece of stretched Silly Putty or something.

It’s an interesting design to be sure. It’s super Art Deco looking. The little white accents in particular.

The one critique I have is that the white stripe on the back wheel cover should have met back up with the red stripe on the wheel since the start of that line meets the red stripe. It doesn’t have to be the same angle, but it would have been more balanced looking!

Thanks Jason – Do you know who took this photograph? Where is this gorgeous object?

Nice! Has a very nice Wabi-Sabi feel to it.

Beautifully worn out.

Agreed. Incredible.

Tucker: At least one of them is in the collection of Frederic W. Strobel. This here was designed in my hometown and I did see one in person when this show came through a few years back.