#Vladimir Yourkevitch

[listen-to-the-inner-walrus]

what is it about cruise ships that you find ugly? like are there any specific ones you hate or is it just all of them?

okay so ive been puzzling over to how to answer this for A While™ because:

theres so many ugly cruise ships i would love to roast, and theres a part of me that wants to make a sideblog about it a la @mcmansionhell but for cruise ships

i am autistic and this is my special interest and i also want to infodump about ship design conventions

theres also really pretty oceanliners like the ss france that got converted into cruise ships where the magical girl transformation sequence malfunctioned badly.

its not always just like the exterior thats badly designed, theres both Awful design inside the ship like the disney wish, and Awful business plans and conduct like the epirotiki lines

...but, thats a lot.

so instead, ive settled on four exterior design issues that i think you can see in a lot of cruise ships even if you dont know shit about ships.

this is by no means an exhaustive list but just some common observations that you will see in 97% of cruise ships.

im also gonna include an example ship for each and also further examples when needed.

so without further ado:

1. your ship looks like a bus and a ferry had an unholy love affair that ended with a baby neither wanted.

as an example of this anchor-christ, may i introduce you to the celebrity edge

something about the stern (back) just reminds me of diamond busses here in the uk while the bow (front) has a distinctly ferry-like look.

the super-structure that you see peaking above the spaceship-bridge on the bow is giving me double-decker bus energy.

the orange viewing box elevator thingy gives construction site energy, but also gives me public transport vibes? like i can just see something similar being added on buses with no explanation and we'd all just be like i guess buses are getting the budget silicon valley treatment.

further, celebrity edge has relatively sharp angles at the stern and bow. if you look at a lot of ocean liners, youll see shallower sweeping angles curving down, while a lot of cruise ships will have these sharper angles (though by angles, i mean curves still) or just will stop at the stern:

[Image ID: collage with five ships. In the top left corner, there are two images with the profiles of the SS France and the SS Andrea Doria. In the top right, there is the stern of the MSC Meraviglia. Bottom left: the stern of the Costa Deliziosa. Bottom right: stern of the Norwegian Epic]

though not pictured above, the rms queen mary actually earned her title at the miss pacific ocean competition where a cruise ship will never win because theyre just too ugly.

but my point is that the abrupt ending of superstructure and ship at the stern looks like a bus. it just does.

there is also like "this is just a block of flats" energy with the costa deliziosa, but thats getting into the next point:

-

2. oh no gang, billy bear misplaced his msc seaside hotel and now its floating out to sea on a barge! can you help him?

yes this is a butlins reference, what are you gonna do about it? call a red coat on me?

the msc seaside is one of many cruise ships where it looks like someone put a hotel on a barge... which is what a cruise ship actually is.

like, they are barely ships. anyone who says theyre going on a cruise to explore the ocean is trying to buff out their tinder bio. while cruise ships technically can sail across oceans, they dont. their journeys are incredibly short they sail very close to land, avoid any rough weather and its mandatory for all of their captains to have a north american blue grouse fursona.

and thats all because a cruise ship is hotel complex on a barge. its purpose is not to sail far because its just a hotel. there are multiple swimming pools and restaurants and night clubs and fucking rollercoasters on some of them. you can buy souvenirs, you can go do yoga, you can get a massage and as long as your surname doesnt end with a double n, you can put your kid into the available childcare.

forget sending the british army to pontins during covid, lets send them to pontoons!

hotels on barges are the most common version youll see, but there are other variations which include:

chopping mall 2: carnivore cruises

the 2006 remake of the anchor-christ: abargements/if youre renting in a block of flats on a barge, do you pay rent to a waterlord or is your landlord firmly stood on ground?

the happiest place on earth: disneywater!

the entire shenanigans going on with the freedom ship which i do not have time or energy to get into right now, so lets all just calm and down and take a breath and...

-

...3. close your eyes, imagine, feel it. youre on a cruise ship, the ovation of the seas; its an early august night and petrichor deluges the air. the skies above you glisten, a whirlpool of colour illuminated by hundreds of tiny flecks of light. youre alone on the deck, standing at the stern with your arms precariously balanced on the barrier as you turn your attention to the ocean below. its dark, the gentle waves nearly imperceptible yet bar the bone-white crests against the hull. you watch, captivated, listening to the ocean sing its terrible song. yet then somewhere behind you, the mellow thud of hoofs on the wooden deck weaves between the waves and the melody. you look up, lock eyes, feel a hurricane surround you as he stares back, do you remember to count his fingers?

so, you might have noticed that a lot of modern cruise ships, especially the bigger ones, look like some check-mark tech-bro on the bird app used an ai to steal the work of naval architects, photographers, artists, etc. to generate "their own design" for a cruise ship.

the example i chose for this was the ovation of the seas:

the super-structure has copy and paste vibes. the ship also looks like its lurching forward to attack me but thats beside the point.

one of the issues the designers for these ships - i would say naval architects but cruise lines sometimes choose someone for head of design who is not a naval architect and has never been on a ship before for shits, giggles and profits- run into is that its really difficult to make a long blank wall look good.

if youve ever made a house in the sims, youve probably ran into this yourself. youre happily building your house and it looks really good at the front and the back, but the side of it is just a wall and adding windows is giving copy and paste vibes.

my trick for this is either fake chimney, add an extra small popout, vines everywhere or hide it with trees, but these are not viable options for a cruise ship.

trust me, i checked:

hence, we end up with very long ships where its just ctrl c ctrl v for 300+ metres.

so how do you fix this?

well, idk maybe you could take notes from any of the longer ocean liners built in recent history.

you know, like the ss united states or the rms queen mary 2 or the ss michelangelo or the ss normandie or the mv kungsholm or the ss principe perfeito:

now im not saying all of these liners are the most beautiful boats ever; theyre not. as much as i adore her, queen mary 2 is a little ugly. most of them even have an element of copy and paste.

but none of them feel ai-generated. and a lot of them look really really pretty. you can tell that they were designed by human beings.

because the naval architects and naval designers who knew what they were doing. weve got clever use of colours, gorgeous use of curves and sweeping lines that balance out all the design elements. the sameness is broken up when possible, and the ship has focal points designed within to catch your eye.

and all of them have beautiful bows. most ocean liners had/have noticeable bows due to functionality; they needed sharp bows to cut through waves because they were crossing the ocean every week. and so extra care would be taken to both make the bow work for its function and also, look really fucking cool.

the ss normandie specifically has a unique bow shape and structure designed by vladimir yourkevitch, a russian naval architect who had emigrated to france after the russian revolution.

the bow is slanted and looks almost clipper-like. theres this clear bulbous bulb (thats the wrong term but the bit at the bottom) beneath the waterline. this design is matched with a slim hull designed to be hydrodynamic, which made her a very fast ship.

she and the rms queen mary fought over the blue ribband for several years before ww2 broke out. [x][x]

its a little wibbly-wobbly-looking but it gives her a very distinct profile and she just looks really cool. you dont notice the repeating pattern of windows on the super structure because of how striking her entire design is.

and well, there has been attempts to capture this with cruise ships.

they run into problems with it though because their bows are not designed the way ocean liners' bows were because a cruise ship does not need to cut through waves. itd be really weird if you were in a fancy restaurant and you were giving a steak knife for your caesar salad.

so what else can you do to make your bow look so beautiful her kissing booth would be sold out all weekend?

-

4. your bow art is ugly. it is ugly. it is really ugly. please stop putting art on your bow. it is all ugly.

yeah.

take a moment .

.

its okay.

i promise

,

.

shes not real.

.

you can breathe.

take another breath.

.

.

youre okay.

.

.

.

are you scrolled far down enough that you cant see her anymore?

yeah so that was the aidanova. probably the worst bow art i have ever encountered but im yet to encounter any bow art that isnt awful.

pride of america is terrible; caribbean princess' is just completely out of place; norwegian prima is the epitome of "what the fuck?"; majestic princess' makes the ship look naked somehow.

now i will concede that a lot of bow art is probably aimed at children because family cruises are a thing, but i wont concede that it changes anything.

the bow art is still ugly and i struggle to see how it would be appealing to a child. like engaging children is more than just throwing some bright colours and patterns on a canvas? children are smarter than that and even in my joking post making fun of cruise ships, im not gonna stand for the way we invalidate the personhood of children. theyre not things to be distracted with simple solutions.

weirdly the aidanovas is the one id be less harsh about in terms of engaging children because there is more to dig into like a boat version of thomas the tank engine or like how do boat body work? the art isnt surface level.

but its still just ugly. the shape of the bow does not compliment the face and the change in colour in the eyes is very distracting.

tbh, if youre gonna do bow art, youve got two options that arent awful:

actually aim it at kids in a way thats not just surface level look at bright colour braxter. have focus groups with kids, gets their feedback, have kids contribute. respect the intelligence and personhood of kids.

just go all out. balls to the fucking wall, just break every damn rule in the book and apply every technique your art teacher hated. the ship is gonna be ugly anyway, make it fun ugly. camp is in. pantomime it up in this bitch!

-

and anyway, that concludes my "brief" answer to this question 👍

btw if you would follow a blog that just trashes cruise ships because of how ugly they are, please tell me because like, if enough people would enjoy it to make the effort worth it, i Will do it.

[alightinthelantern]

February 9, 1942: The French ocean liner Normandie, docked beside pier 88 in Manhattan, NYC, catches fire while being converted into the troopship USS Lafayette. A pile of highly flammable kapok life preservers were improperly stored near a working acetylene torch in the ship's grand salon, and a stray spark caused a blaze quickly got out of control. The ship's onboard telephone system had been disabled days prior along with most of the ship's advanced fire suppression system, and the sprinkler system was improperly activated at all of its control stations simultaneously, dropping the water pressure within it to useless levels. It took twelve minutes for the NY Fire Department to respond to the emergency, by which time the fire had been fanned by a strong wind to become an inferno sweeping through the Normandie's upper decks, and 2,000 Navy men and civilians working aboard were streaming out of the ship through a limited number of entry points, preventing firefighters from getting aboard the vessel. When they finally could get aboard, they found their hoses incompatible with the firefighting inlets on the French ship, meaning they could only fight the fire from outside the ship.

For several hours firetrucks on land shot water on the Normandie's starboard landside while fireboats poured water onto the Normandie's seaward port side, but the fireboats poured significantly more water into the giant ship than the trucks did, causing an imbalance of water in the ship's upper decks and a dangerous list to port. The Normandie's designer ‎Vladimir Yourkevitch was in NYC, and when he heard his ship was on fire he rushed to the site and begged to be let aboard so he could open the . "I designed the ship!" he said, "I can find my way through it with my eyes closed! I'll open the sea-cocks [valves], the ship's belly will fill with water, the ship will sink six inches and settle on the bottom, and it will be safe!" The Navy administrators at the conversion site were unmoved. "This is a Navy job," they said brusquely.

By evening the fire had been brought under control, but the ship was listing about thirty degrees to its seaward side. Thinking the Normandie no longer in danger, the Navy and Fire Department abandoned the ship for the night, not realizing only the ship's mooring ropes were keeping it from capsizing. In the night the ropes snapped, and the ship rolled over onto its side, wallowing in the mud at the bottom of the river. There the ship lay for eighteen months, no one sure what to do with the wreck.

In August 1943 it was decided to raise the ship and convert it into an aircraft carrier. The superstructure was cut away and then the hull was pumped free of water, and it slowly emerged from the river and returned to an even keel. But it was found the fire had damaged the hull too severely and the ship's machinery had deteriorated too much for the ship to be of further use. The hulk sat idly until the end of the war, when it was decided to scrap it after both the US Navy and the French Line expressed no interest in salvaging the ship. The remains of the Normandie were scrapped in Newark, New Jersey in 1946.

Photo taken by Harry Warnecke for the New York Daily News. It is unclear if this photo is a real color photo or a digital colorization. I found this photo on a Facebook group dedicated to the Normandie claiming the color photo is real. This photo has been published before only in black-and-white, and Getty Images features the photo in B&W, but Getty's version of the photo is slightly cropped on the right edge compared to the color photo (look closely and you'll see the space between the second funnel and the right edge of the photo is wider in the color image), meaning Getty's version of the photo is not necessarily from the original negatives, but could be an early reproduction. Interestingly, Harry Warnecke actually owned a color film studio and took color press photos of celebrities for the NY Daily News during this time period, so it's indeed possible that this is a genuine color photo. If anyone can provide any information one way or the other, I would be quite grateful.

[ajl1963]

The Normandie arrives at Pier 88 North River for the first time. June 3, 1935

  Jean Vernon bronze medallion for the maiden voyage.

  Of all the famous ocean liners to sail the North Atlantic, the most elegant and the one to epitomize the 1930’s the best was the French Line’s S.S. Normandie. Built to compete with the North German-Lloyd  record-breaking liners, Bremen and Europa and the unfinished Cunard-White Star superliner, Queen Mary, the Normandie was the first ocean liner to excede 1,000 feet in length. Originally the French Line envisioned the new ship as a larger version of their current flagship, the Il de France, a ship with a conservative hull and very modern interiors. During the early planning stage of the new ship, the French Line was approached by a Russian expatriate living in France since the revolution, Vladimir Yourkevitch. He had already proposed to the Cunard Line the idea of using a clipper bow and a bulbous forefoot beneath the water line for their new ship (the future Queen Mary). But the Cunard Line was too conservative and rejected these innovated ideas. The French Line embraced Yourkevitch’s designs and as a result the Normandie would be the most powerful steam turbo-electric propelled ship ever built and one of the fastest.

      Originally known as T6, she was constructed at the Penhoet Shipyard at St. Nazaire on a 1017 foot slipway. The first sections of the keel were laid down in May of 1931. On October 29, 1932 T6, renamed Normandie, was launched. This was the French Line’s entry to the superliner realm and her attempt to win the Blue Riband as the fastest passenger ship on the North Atlantic. As stylish and modern as the Normandie’s exterior was, her interiors were a showcase for the finest, modern, French decor.

  The Grand Salon

  The rear of the Grand Salon.

The Grand Salon featured a huge mural by Jean Dupas, entitled “The History of Navigation and tall illuminated glass pillars by Lalique.

  Portion of Jean Dupas “The History of Navigation”

  The first class dining room was capable of seating 700 at a time. Illumination came from 12 Lalique columns and wall panels, plus two very large chandeliers on either end of the room. It is easy to see why the Normandie was nick named “the ship of light”.

  The First Class dining hall. 305 feet long, 46 feet wide and three decks high.

  Painting of the first class dining room, from the original brochure.

  One of the most popular public spaces on board was the Cafe Grill, which also served as a nightclub after hours. I love the chrome tube chairs that were in the Cafe Grill, I wish I had one of them in my collection.

  The Normandie was the first ship to feature a full-sized theatre for shows and movies. Before this, movies were shown in the lounge and from this point on, all the major liners had theatres. With plush seats and indirect lighting, the Normandie’s theatre was almost the size of a legitimate theatre in a large city.

  Here is a gallery of some of the other interior spaces –

      And some of the Normandie’s staterooms –

  The Normandie left it’s home port of Le Harve on May 29th, beginning her maiden voyage. After a brief stop in South Hampton, she began sailing across the Atlantic on May 31st. The Normandie won the Blue Riband, as the fastest ship on the North Atlantic, making the crossing from Bishop Rock, off the Cornish coast (the eastern most point of the North Atlantic shipping lanes) to Ambrose Light (the western most point and the entrance to lower New York Bay) in 4 days, 3 hours and 2 minutes. The Normandie took the Blue Riband away from the Rex of the Italian Line and arrived in Manhattan on June 3, 1935.  30,000 people were waiting at Battery Park, with another 5,000 on Bedloe’s Island, to greet her.

      The Normandie in the North River on June 3, 1935. Image courtesy of Moviing Image Department-George Eastman House

    As great a ship as the Normandie was, her class intimidated all but the most confident of travlers and as a result she often sailed below passenger capacity. In 1936 she was joined on the North Atlantic by Cunard-White Star’s, Queen Mary. The two great ships would trade the Blue Riband between them for the next several years as the fastest ships in the world. During the summer of 1939 as Europe prepared for the next war, the Normandie sailed from its home port of Le Harve on August 25th. She arrived in New York on August 28th and planned to sail back to France two days later. With Germany set to invade Poland at any moment, the French Line cancelled the August 30th sailing. Passengers waiting to sail on the Normandie were transferred to Cunard-White Star’s Aquitania. What no one knew at the time was that the Normandie would never sail again. With the outbreak of war in early September the French Line felt it safer to keep the ship in New York with a skeleton crew, rather than risk having her torpedoed.

  The Normandie stuck in New York.

  After the fall of France in June of 1940,  the Treasury Department detailed 150 Coast Guard men on her and Pier 88 to protect her against potential sabotage. The week after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Coast Guard took possession of the ship and on December 20, 1941 control of the ship passed to the Navy. Conversion to a troop ship began a week later and on January 1, 1942 she was renamed U.S.S. Lafayette.  On February 9th during the retrofit,  a spark from a workman’s welding torch set some life jackets on fire. The flames spread fast and by the middle of the afternoon the ship was ablaze. Trying to extinguish the fire so much water was poured into the ship that it began to list badly to port. Early the next morning the tugs holding the Normandie upright were ordered away and at 2:45 A.M. she capsized into the Hudson.

  The capsized Normandie.

    Salvage operations began in June and once the superstructure was removed the hull of the Normandie was raised. Floated to the Brooklyn Navy Yard in September of 1943, she was declared a total loss. Decommissioned after the war, she was sold for scrap in 1946 and was completely gone by 1947.

    The salvage operation to right the U.S.S. Lafayette.

    Leaving the Normandie as a capsized, burned hull, lying on her side at her Manhattan pier, is not the way that she should be remembered. Below is part of a French documentary about a 1938 voyage of the great ship. It features the best color film footage I’ve ever seen of the Normandie, including the magnificent interiors. Enjoy and imagine you are passenger sailing to New York like a 1930’s movie star.

        Chris & Anthony (“The Freakin’ ‘Tiquen Guys”)

The S.S. Normandie’s 80th Anniversary.

[unmovinggreatlibrary]

By request, today's ships are non-Communist Russian ships

Given THAT latitude, I have selected the Borodino-class battlecruisers to fill this request.

These ships were designed for the Imperial Russian Navy, but never entered service.

They were designed by Vladimir Yourkevitch, who would later design that wonder of wonders, the SS Normandie, and then have to watch helplessly as his creation was destroyed by fire and the New York Fire Department.

[your-resident-boat-person]

Hard agree. Cruise ships make me incredibly depressed.

what is it about cruise ships that you find ugly? like are there any specific ones you hate or is it just all of them?

okay so ive been puzzling over to how to answer this for A While™ because:

theres so many ugly cruise ships i would love to roast, and theres a part of me that wants to make a sideblog about it a la @mcmansionhell but for cruise ships

i am autistic and this is my special interest and i also want to infodump about ship design conventions

theres also really pretty oceanliners like the ss france that got converted into cruise ships where the magical girl transformation sequence malfunctioned badly.

its not always just like the exterior thats badly designed, theres both Awful design inside the ship like the disney wish, and Awful business plans and conduct like the epirotiki lines

...but, thats a lot.

so instead, ive settled on four exterior design issues that i think you can see in a lot of cruise ships even if you dont know shit about ships.

this is by no means an exhaustive list but just some common observations that you will see in 97% of cruise ships.

im also gonna include an example ship for each and also further examples when needed.

so without further ado:

1. your ship looks like a bus and a ferry had an unholy love affair that ended with a baby neither wanted.

as an example of this anchor-christ, may i introduce you to the celebrity edge

something about the stern (back) just reminds me of diamond busses here in the uk while the bow (front) has a distinctly ferry-like look.

the super-structure that you see peaking above the spaceship-bridge on the bow is giving me double-decker bus energy.

the orange viewing box elevator thingy gives construction site energy, but also gives me public transport vibes? like i can just see something similar being added on buses with no explanation and we'd all just be like i guess buses are getting the budget silicon valley treatment.

further, celebrity edge has relatively sharp angles at the stern and bow. if you look at a lot of ocean liners, youll see shallower sweeping angles curving down, while a lot of cruise ships will have these sharper angles (though by angles, i mean curves still) or just will stop at the stern:

[Image ID: collage with five ships. In the top left corner, there are two images with the profiles of the SS France and the SS Andrea Doria. In the top right, there is the stern of the MSC Meraviglia. Bottom left: the stern of the Costa Deliziosa. Bottom right: stern of the Norwegian Epic]

though not pictured above, the rms queen mary actually earned her title at the miss pacific ocean competition where a cruise ship will never win because theyre just too ugly.

but my point is that the abrupt ending of superstructure and ship at the stern looks like a bus. it just does.

there is also like "this is just a block of flats" energy with the costa deliziosa, but thats getting into the next point:

-

2. oh no gang, billy bear misplaced his msc seaside hotel and now its floating out to sea on a barge! can you help him?

yes this is a butlins reference, what are you gonna do about it? call a red coat on me?

the msc seaside is one of many cruise ships where it looks like someone put a hotel on a barge... which is what a cruise ship actually is.

like, they are barely ships. anyone who says theyre going on a cruise to explore the ocean is trying to buff out their tinder bio. while cruise ships technically can sail across oceans, they dont. their journeys are incredibly short they sail very close to land, avoid any rough weather and its mandatory for all of their captains to have a north american blue grouse fursona.

and thats all because a cruise ship is hotel complex on a barge. its purpose is not to sail far because its just a hotel. there are multiple swimming pools and restaurants and night clubs and fucking rollercoasters on some of them. you can buy souvenirs, you can go do yoga, you can get a massage and as long as your surname doesnt end with a double n, you can put your kid into the available childcare.

forget sending the british army to pontins during covid, lets send them to pontoons!

hotels on barges are the most common version youll see, but there are other variations which include:

chopping mall 2: carnivore cruises

the 2006 remake of the anchor-christ: abargements/if youre renting in a block of flats on a barge, do you pay rent to a waterlord or is your landlord firmly stood on ground?

the happiest place on earth: disneywater!

the entire shenanigans going on with the freedom ship which i do not have time or energy to get into right now, so lets all just calm and down and take a breath and...

-

...3. close your eyes, imagine, feel it. youre on a cruise ship, the ovation of the seas; its an early august night and petrichor deluges the air. the skies above you glisten, a whirlpool of colour illuminated by hundreds of tiny flecks of light. youre alone on the deck, standing at the stern with your arms precariously balanced on the barrier as you turn your attention to the ocean below. its dark, the gentle waves nearly imperceptible yet bar the bone-white crests against the hull. you watch, captivated, listening to the ocean sing its terrible song. yet then somewhere behind you, the mellow thud of hoofs on the wooden deck weaves between the waves and the melody. you look up, lock eyes, feel a hurricane surround you as he stares back, do you remember to count his fingers?

so, you might have noticed that a lot of modern cruise ships, especially the bigger ones, look like some check-mark tech-bro on the bird app used an ai to steal the work of naval architects, photographers, artists, etc. to generate "their own design" for a cruise ship.

the example i chose for this was the ovation of the seas:

the super-structure has copy and paste vibes. the ship also looks like its lurching forward to attack me but thats beside the point.

one of the issues the designers for these ships - i would say naval architects but cruise lines sometimes choose someone for head of design who is not a naval architect and has never been on a ship before for shits, giggles and profits- run into is that its really difficult to make a long blank wall look good.

if youve ever made a house in the sims, youve probably ran into this yourself. youre happily building your house and it looks really good at the front and the back, but the side of it is just a wall and adding windows is giving copy and paste vibes.

my trick for this is either fake chimney, add an extra small popout, vines everywhere or hide it with trees, but these are not viable options for a cruise ship.

trust me, i checked:

hence, we end up with very long ships where its just ctrl c ctrl v for 300+ metres.

so how do you fix this?

well, idk maybe you could take notes from any of the longer ocean liners built in recent history.

you know, like the ss united states or the rms queen mary 2 or the ss michelangelo or the ss normandie or the mv kungsholm or the ss principe perfeito:

now im not saying all of these liners are the most beautiful boats ever; theyre not. as much as i adore her, queen mary 2 is a little ugly. most of them even have an element of copy and paste.

but none of them feel ai-generated. and a lot of them look really really pretty. you can tell that they were designed by human beings.

because the naval architects and naval designers who knew what they were doing. weve got clever use of colours, gorgeous use of curves and sweeping lines that balance out all the design elements. the sameness is broken up when possible, and the ship has focal points designed within to catch your eye.

and all of them have beautiful bows. most ocean liners had/have noticeable bows due to functionality; they needed sharp bows to cut through waves because they were crossing the ocean every week. and so extra care would be taken to both make the bow work for its function and also, look really fucking cool.

the ss normandie specifically has a unique bow shape and structure designed by vladimir yourkevitch, a russian naval architect who had emigrated to france after the russian revolution.

the bow is slanted and looks almost clipper-like. theres this clear bulbous bulb (thats the wrong term but the bit at the bottom) beneath the waterline. this design is matched with a slim hull designed to be hydrodynamic, which made her a very fast ship.

she and the rms queen mary fought over the blue ribband for several years before ww2 broke out. [x][x]

its a little wibbly-wobbly-looking but it gives her a very distinct profile and she just looks really cool. you dont notice the repeating pattern of windows on the super structure because of how striking her entire design is.

and well, there has been attempts to capture this with cruise ships.

they run into problems with it though because their bows are not designed the way ocean liners' bows were because a cruise ship does not need to cut through waves. itd be really weird if you were in a fancy restaurant and you were giving a steak knife for your caesar salad.

so what else can you do to make your bow look so beautiful her kissing booth would be sold out all weekend?

-

4. your bow art is ugly. it is ugly. it is really ugly. please stop putting art on your bow. it is all ugly.

yeah.

take a moment .

.

its okay.

i promise

,

.

shes not real.

.

you can breathe.

take another breath.

.

.

youre okay.

.

.

.

are you scrolled far down enough that you cant see her anymore?

yeah so that was the aidanova. probably the worst bow art i have ever encountered but im yet to encounter any bow art that isnt awful.

pride of america is terrible; caribbean princess' is just completely out of place; norwegian prima is the epitome of "what the fuck?"; majestic princess' makes the ship look naked somehow.

now i will concede that a lot of bow art is probably aimed at children because family cruises are a thing, but i wont concede that it changes anything.

the bow art is still ugly and i struggle to see how it would be appealing to a child. like engaging children is more than just throwing some bright colours and patterns on a canvas? children are smarter than that and even in my joking post making fun of cruise ships, im not gonna stand for the way we invalidate the personhood of children. theyre not things to be distracted with simple solutions.

weirdly the aidanovas is the one id be less harsh about in terms of engaging children because there is more to dig into like a boat version of thomas the tank engine or like how do boat body work? the art isnt surface level.

but its still just ugly. the shape of the bow does not compliment the face and the change in colour in the eyes is very distracting.

tbh, if youre gonna do bow art, youve got two options that arent awful:

actually aim it at kids in a way thats not just surface level look at bright colour braxter. have focus groups with kids, gets their feedback, have kids contribute. respect the intelligence and personhood of kids.

just go all out. balls to the fucking wall, just break every damn rule in the book and apply every technique your art teacher hated. the ship is gonna be ugly anyway, make it fun ugly. camp is in. pantomime it up in this bitch!

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and anyway, that concludes my "brief" answer to this question 👍

btw if you would follow a blog that just trashes cruise ships because of how ugly they are, please tell me because like, if enough people would enjoy it to make the effort worth it, i Will do it.