Bringing Back Skeuomorphic Design
Last thursday I posted some recent work to dribbble— 10.000+ views later and we could be starting a revival movement. The reaction to this particular work was so strong that I felt I had to share some thoughts.
See, I was recently commissioned to come up with a redesign of the calendar and note-taking app Opus One and I was excited to share this particular bit of work— not only because I really liked how it came out, but because it represented the sort of work I have always loved doing: Themed UI carefully crafted to create a memorable experience through textures, lighting and dimensionality. A UI that is fun, takes cues from the real world for context and aims to be delightful, simply for the sake of invoking a feeling in the user.
In other words; a skeuomorphic design.
1730 days
It’s been 1730 days since iOS 7 was announced at WWDC in 2013. That’s 1730 days since the design community first reeled from what they saw on stage and then collectively changed direction in how we create digital interfaces. The reaction, as all reactionary trends, was to throw out everything that came before and fully embrace this new direction of minimalist ui, white space layouts and magazine typesetting. Some argue that it was a timely change to meet the demands of the increasing complexities of the interface. That we had grown out of the need to include real world cues in our digital analogies. Evolved the interface.
With this simplification of solid coloured blocks and text-style buttons we could focus on all function and little form. It made design more accessible as most people could put coloured blocks together and make it look clean. Indeed it was the great democratisation of design. A good interface no longer required a photoshop wizard with 10.000 hours of digital woodworking experience.
New vector based tools rose up to meet the challenges of the new designer. With the marginalisation of visual design, UX became a thing (even though it had always been a thing) and a generation of designers came of age that held minimalism in high regard. No interface was the best interface at all.
To a large extend I believe the design industry was better off for this shake-up. The green felt and the linen, oh the linen, had probably all become too much. Besides, as in all areas, we sometimes need a good paradigm shift to make us think differently.
But I’d argue that the great simplification of the visual interface had an air of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Hold your pitchforks and let me explain.
“Skeuomorphic” became one of the nastiest things you could say about a design. A swear word, almost. A hilarious dig at the designers who relied on real world follies to communicate abstract concepts and the silly users who enjoyed them. The word Skeuomorphic itself got slammed on to anything that had the slightest air of a theme, too heavy a gradient or too thick a drop shadow— stretching the definition to cover almost anything that wasn’t flat. Now it’s a word we’re stuck with even though most designers probably prefer more descriptive (and accurate) terms. You can be absolutely sure that I’m going to get more than one smug comment about the headline of this post. That’s the state of people’s feelings towards this word and everything it has been made to stand for.
It’s easy to see skeuomorphic design pieces as dated— most of them are because we collectively stopped doing them. Most visual designers of that time moved on to make simpler UI’s and, like myself, found their playful-fix in game interface design, icon design and other places where you weren’t laughed out of the room for playing with gradients and lighting.
But something is changing.
Google made gradients and shadows less of a design offence with their Material Design and I’m seeing more and more tactility make it’s way into interfaces around me. Buttons have started to stand out. Whimsy has started to be a differentiating factor— not just in animation and interaction (where whimsy was banished to live under the rule of minimalism) but also in visual design. It’s been a slow march back towards bringing fun into UI design again— but I finally feel like we’re close.
Project requests like the Opus One is a blip on the radar of this type of thinking. We are coming out of a period in interface design where “design for designs sake” has been ridiculed for years and we’re now starting to see clients ask for some of that fun back. If only as a differentiating factor. But maybe an even better indicator that things are changing is the design community’s response. It’s 2018 and that Opus One shot made it to the front-page of dribbble. A decidedly skeuomorphic design made it to the popular page of dribbble between flat ui and illustrations. That, to me, is the biggest endorsement and an open opportunity for alternative thinking in interface design.
It’s prohibition and the ban has been lifted on fun.
And don’t get too caught up in my specific rendering of that calendar. Like any design, it would be all too easy to find fault with one example. The comeback of fun in interface design is not predated on you liking one particular solution— that would be missing the point. And sure, many of us are just being nostalgic. That’s a fair argument too, accounting for some of the responses.
Yet still, I have this feeling that things are shifting.
I am not advocating a full comeback of the linen or the stitched leather-wrapped Find Your Friends or the green felt-embellished Gamecenter. I am not saying we should go back in time.
What I am saying, and what I have always said, is that design can be anything we want it to be. We should strive to make fun and memorable experiences that are appropriate to the context, but not arbitrarily restricted.
There’s a great deal of sameness in design these days and I think we can challenge that if we’re willing to let go some of the minimalist ideals and start thinking about how we can infuse our designs with fun. Start thinking about form instead of just function. Allow ourselves to embellish in the name of orchestrating an experience. Delight as a differentiating factor. If we have to call it Skeuomorphic, then so be it. Let’s own it then.
If you’re a client, ask your designer to veer off the path of minimalism. If you’re a designer, don’t be afraid to use whatever tool you feel is appropriate in giving the experience you want the user to have.
Let’s throw off the shackles of minimalism and make UI fun again 🎉
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Michael is a Danish designer, entrepreneur & keynote speaker. He runs entertainment development studio Northplay, Pixelresort and design resource platform Apply Pixels.
