Publication:: Poster recreate 02 _ Hiroshima (1953)

The poster I chose to recreate in a comment on European and Japanese style is a poster for a movie called Hiroshima, released in 1953. Which in itself I find fascinating as the tone of voice is so informal and dismissive of a horrible catastrophe that happened only 8 years prior.



Original

European recreation

This style is more reminscent of war-time poster design, with it's heavy use of black and white renders with simple colourways and use of space and stock. The tone of voice is loud and informal already so I felt it worked well for a poster of this type, modernism is a progression and acceptance of technology so I took the idea of showing off technology, in this case plans and turning them upside down, to me they almost look like bombs themselves being dropped which is a commentary on my part regarding Hiroshima and the concept of rejecting and communicating terror in a lighthearted way as the original poster does.

Japanese recreation

Again here I've taken Japanese sensibilities by designers such as Shigeo Fukuda with brightly coloured stock plus a simple ink coverage of black and/or white. There is again a large emphasis on image and to be anti-war and peace. From close attention you can see atomic bombs are being dropped but they're attached to helium balloons, so they are infact being carried away from the ground instead of onto it. It's my attempt at creating a tongue-in cheek and again fairly abstract image to downplay and overcome the tragedy of Hiroshima as so many Japanese designers often aimed to do through design.

Both of these posters along with breakdown of the theories and aims of the posters, along with original artwork will be included in the publication.

Tomorrow - I will bind and photograph! Exciting times.

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BBC: Moving Image

At the moment me and Eve plan on working on the boards first and then doing the video, rather than the other way round so the video is more of an extra luxury which we can put our all into without worrying about running out of time.

Some of these videos especially the HTC Hero advert and Apple advert have given us early conceptual ideas for our first impact board

We really want to emphasise the notion of being able to swipe through each BBC page and the idea of consistency in design and big on horizontal movement. Obviously looking at existing adverts for similar gadgets is a good idea, here are some we discussed and analysed:

We like how the ipod's have an effect of being layered and interchangeable  maybe we could have the BBC pages (News, Sport, Weather etc) in 'layers' and you swipe them away

This is a bit more relevant to us with a swipey swipey horizontal movement. This applies to our potential video and definitely to our first impact board me and Eve are going to sketch up tonight showing the concept and redesign in almost one go.

This is exactly what we aim to achieve with our BBC video, we don't need any hands or to actually make the app for real, we'll make the boards first and hope to make this using After Effects, I feel this proposal is the most directly related to our vision.

Myspace redesign. Love the new Myspace redesign, it's been one of our inspirations for the BBC brief, again it's a purely digital proposal with no hands or backgrounds it's purely the website moving around and telling a story, which is very important for a video as viewers need to relate.

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UI: Facebook redesign

"A conceptional and systematic design approach encouraging user behaviour and a greater control of data within a responsive grid."

This redesign of Facebook by designer Fred Nerby is very relevant to the BBC brief me and Eve are working on, I love how, again, as we're trying to achieve, a full screen and flexible experience with a grid like aesthetic style merging app sensibilities with web. 







Facebook Prototype - Conceptional Approach from Fred Nerby on Vimeo.

This is very reassuring for us as we want to submit a proposal in video form just like this, it's good to see submissions where you don't even need to see hands and an iPad, or even music, this sells the redesign very well and the transitions are simple but effective, I feel we can come to grips with digital indesign publications and animations to a point where we can create something like this.

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Windows 8: The Boldest, Biggest Redesign In Microsoft’s History

Microsoft has received pretty unanimous praise for its synchronisation between UI's, and mobile, to tablet to desktop. It's UI ditches old elements such as a desktop in favour of a fully digital METRO design. no bevels and leather textures, it's all sharp lines and grids and I feel this is definitely the way forward for the BBC rebrand and the industry opinion is on the digital side too.

The grid like design and type almost extends across Bauhaus like print sensibilities which is one of our aims with this BBC redesign.



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Windows 8: The Boldest, Biggest Redesign In Microsoft’s History

GOOD DESIGN IS GOOD BUSINESS
THIS FALL, A BILLION PC USERS WILL WAKE UP TO A NEW DESKTOP--WINDOWS 8. COULD IT SIGNAL A DESIGN REVOLUTION AT MICROSOFT?




A pair of leggy, lipsticked models stop short outside a casting call at Milk Studios, a cavernous space in Hollywood known for art shows and photo shoots. They edge forward in 4-inch heels, intrigued by the sidewalk scene: a snaking line of balding reporters and backpacked bloggers sweating in the June afternoon heat. Not exactly the red carpet at Fashion Week. "It’s for Microsoft," an attendee mumbles when asked about the commotion. Thick-framed Ray-Bans do nothing to hide the models’ puzzled looks.

A good 40 minutes after the crowd began to form, the doors open and more than a hundred reporters shuffle into the space and take their seats. The room darkens, the caffeinated stares of live-bloggers lit only by the glow of MacBook Airs. (Not for crew members, who joke that their instructions are "No fruit allowed"; Microsoft higher-ups had forbidden them from bringing iGadgets to the event.) A bass-heavy pop song blasts over the speakers as CEO Steve Ballmer stomps out in front of the crowd, his Shrek-like stature dominating the stage, to unveil the star of the show: the Surface tablet, the first PC device that Microsoft has manufactured in its 30-year history.

In the center is Sam Moreau, who led the Windows user experience team.
The buzz, the secrecy, the horde of reporters--one might expect this from Apple, not the corporate giant responsible for Clippy and blue screens of death. The attention was warranted, too. The Surface, with its ultrathin magnesium casing and integrated kickstand, might be the iPad’s most compelling competitor yet.

But what was really revolutionary at Milk Studios that day was the software driving the Surface: Windows 8, which aims to change the way we’ve been interacting with computers for the past three decades. Windows 8 could also transform the nature of the software giant’s competition with home-run king Apple, potentially reversing a string of embarrassing defeats, especially in the mobile market. Even more improbably, Microsoft is building this comeback attempt not on its traditional strength--engineering--but on, of all things, design.

IT’S NOT ABOUT ADORNMENTS. IT’S ABOUT TYPOGRAPHY, COLOR, MOTION. THAT’S THE PIXEL.
Microsoft has united around a set of design principles that it dubbed Metro, a slick, intuitive, and playful visual language that is seeping into the company’s product portfolio, from Office to Bing to Windows Phone to Xbox, creating a common platform for hardware of all types. You won’t be seeing the word Metro in Microsoft’s branding because of a reported last-minute naming conflict with a European partner. But as manifested in Windows 8, these principles embody what the company has called an "authentically digital" experience. Gone are the icon-studded toolbars and drop-down menus and artificial glassy reflections; Windows 8 emphasizes a stripped-down user interface that’s flat and without flourish. "It’s not about adornments," says Sam Moreau, the director of user experience for Windows. "It’s about typography, color, motion. That’s the pixel."

NOTE
The Innovation by Design Awards on October 16 will celebrate the controversial ideas, new products, business ventures, and wild ideas highlighted every day on Co.Design. Award Winners in nine categories will be unveiled at the event. Register today.


With 1 billion users of its operating system, Microsoft’s novel approach to interface design could cause tectonic shifts in the way software of all sorts is conceived. And therein lies the risk. Windows has long been Microsoft’s bread and butter: 336 million Windows PCs were sold in 2011--roughly 10 per second--a large chunk of which went to corporate customers, who are constitutionally resistant to change. The Surface could add to the disruption, as third-party hardware makers will soon be in the awkward position of having to compete with the company they support. But Microsoft has no choice other than to bet on its new software design. For if Apple has proved anything, it’s that design has become big business in the technology world.

"It’s the ultimate design challenge," Moreau says. "You’ve got 25 years of Windows behind you. There’s a responsibility to preserve it but also to evolve--knowing that when you change something, you’re changing how computing works."

Live tiles display real-time updates for email, weather, and more, giving immediate context without having to dive into a web page or widget.
Visually, at least, Windows 8 is the simplest version of the operating system ever. For years, software has followed the same formula: The user interface mimics a real-life desktop, with documents filed in folders and pictographic icons that act as visual metaphors of a software program’s function. It’s a legacy of the graphical user interface (GUI) popularized in the 1980s by Apple. Operating systems have largely seen only incremental innovations since Windows 1.0 and the original Macintosh. They do many more tricks than before, but the underlying blueprint is the same.

METRO HAS A NOBLE PROVENANCE: THE BAUHAUS SCHOOL, THE GERMAN MODERNIST MOVEMENT OF THE 1920S AND 1930S.
Windows 8 rips that blueprint to shreds. The new face of Windows is a Mondrianesque grid of tiles colored like Skittles. Clicking on a tile will bring up your news or your inbox or your documents. Within these Metro-style apps are no toolbars or framed windows--just an immersive full-screen experience. The UI is minimal, featuring only clean typography, basic icons, and intermittent animations that provide real-time updates for, say, a new email or calendar appointment. Even the famous start button--the icon occupying the lower left corner since Windows 95--is gone. (Users can still access the old desktop-based UI if they wish, but it’s been relegated to an application within Windows 8.)

Metro has a noble provenance: the Bauhaus school, the German modernist movement of the 1920s and 1930s. Its central ethos was that materials must be treated in ways that speak to their essential nature. "Reducing down to the most beautiful form and function--that’s what the Bauhaus was all about," Moreau says. Fashioning metal to look like wood, for example, was tantamount to a crime. These standards have driven architects and graphic designers ever since.

The Bauhaus ideal came to permeate life in all sorts of everyday objects--chairs, lamps, teapots--and by the 1960s, utilitarian design was helping passengers navigate city streets, highways, and transit hubs. Indeed, the language of Metro was initially sparked by way-finding systems in subways and airports. Jeff Fong, principal design lead for Windows Phone and a founder of the Metro principles, cites among his inspirations the signage at Heathrow’s 1961 Oceanic Terminal (now Terminal 3) for its crisp typography and no-fuss iconography, and Italian designer Massimo Vignelli’s 1972 New York City subway map. "That structure, that order, that grid system--there’s something so clear and direct about it," he says of the lucidity of both. "Before we called it Metro, we actually called it Airport."


EDITOR’S NOTE
For a harsh critique of Apple’s reliance on skeuomorphism, voiced by former Apple designers, click here.


As in Bauhaus design, with its fidelity to the essence of materials, the most innovative element of Metro is its shift away from visual metaphors. That imitative system, called skeuomorphism, is another legacy of GUI. Before users were accustomed to working with computers, designers had to make on-screen applications legible--for example, a digital Rolodex to denote where contacts were stored. Skeuomorphism has since flooded into all areas of UI design--most prevalently (and jarringly, to some) in Apple’s software, where digital calendars have faux-leather stitching and bookshelves an Ikea-like veneer. "We think stuff like leather stitching is just a useless distraction," says Moreau, who seems genuinely repulsed by excessive GUI, as if it were actually gooey and not just pronounced that way. Team Microsoft believes consumers have developed a fluency for digital interfaces and no longer need those kitschy translations. In Bauhaus-speak, software designers can finally let the pixel be a pixel.

That Microsoft would come to invoke the Bauhaus is an unlikely turn of events. The impetus isn’t coming from a Ministry of Design or an aesthetics-obsessed CEO. "Unlike other companies that maybe have one person at the top, we don’t have a [design] czar at Microsoft," says Julie Larson-Green, VP of program management for Windows. Of Metro, she adds, "It’s not like Steve [Ballmer] decreed it." One former longtime Microsoft manager put it bluntly: "I don’t think Steve could even spell the word design." And unlike Steve Jobs, who was infamous for meddling in every detail of Apple’s product launches, Ballmer didn’t go to any of the rehearsals at Milk Studios for the unveiling of the Surface; his part was played by a stand-in till he arrived on the day.

So if the brass were so indifferent to design, how did this thinking emerge at Microsoft at all?

In May 2009, Julie Larson-Green corralled 150 thought leaders from various Microsoft groups (Office, Phone, Bing, Xbox) in the Redmond, Washington, campus conference center to kick off planning for Windows 8. MC Hammer’s "2 Legit 2 Quit" boomed throughout the auditorium, and the crowd watched as Sam Moreau and fellow Windows designer Jensen Harris rifled through then-and-now pictures of Jodie Foster. They wanted to demonstrate how much the world had changed since 1992, when baggy pants and The Silence of the Lambs were in and the first memo circulated at Microsoft about a new kind of UI that would go into Windows 95.

The new social app corrals your fragmented networks--Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn--into one simple hub of status updates.

But the PowerPoint presentation took a serious turn when Moreau and Harris, self-described partners in crime, began displaying images of revolutionary products followed by their disruptive successors: Sony’s PlayStation 2 controller replaced by Nintendo’s Wii remote, Yahoo’s home page supplanted by Google’s search box. They didn’t want to wait for Windows to be shunted aside. As Larson-Green says, "It’s a risk to do something new, but it’s also a risk to sit where we are. There’s always an opportunity to think different."
SO IF THE BRASS WERE SO INDIFFERENT TO DESIGN, HOW DID THIS THINKING EMERGE AT MICROSOFT AT ALL?
Call it a Freudian slip that Larson-Green would invoke Apple’s famous slogan to describe the innovator’s dilemma faced by Microsoft. If anything, the warning came late; the company had already become the complacent incumbent and fallen behind in music players, e-readers, and smartphones. The PowerPoint presentation did include a slide for the iPhone (conveniently compared to a BlackBerry), the perfect symbol of the disruption Microsoft suffered in mobile operating systems, where it once owned a 42% market share. Apple’s iPad now generates more revenue than Windows does; iPhone sales alone eclipsed Microsoft’s total revenue of about $74 billion for the fiscal year ending in June.

So Microsoft embraced design not because Ballmer suddenly discovered beauty or started futzing around with typefaces, but because Apple showed that good design can be obscenely profitable. "We have recognized the value of [design]," says P.J. Hough, head of Microsoft’s Office division, "and we have decided to make it a much higher priority." A former senior-level Microsoft source who advised Ballmer puts it a touch more tartly: "They’re placing an emphasis on design because the dollars sit there. They’re looking at Apple’s market cap."

Still, the Windows 8 designers can’t quite pinpoint the origins of the company’s new religion, not least because they have worked without attention from top management. According to insiders, Ballmer offered no direction to the Windows 8 team on the features of the new user interface. Windows president Steven Sinofsky kept him abreast of the team’s progress, but Ballmer met with Larson-Green only twice during the development process, and he never got together with the team to green-light the design.

Now, after a long, hard slog, the company’s top designers have a wider field of play. At 41, Moreau is young for Microsoft’s leadership team; he joined the company only in 2006. ("Internally, that’s code for 'Vista isn’t my fault,' " he has joked.) With a boyish grin, he speaks eagerly but unpretentiously about Swiss graphic design and Josef Mueller-Brockmann, its exemplar; you imagine the documentary Helvetica sitting atop his Netflix queue. Moreau has teamed up with veterans such as Windows Phone SVP Joe Belfiore, who joined Microsoft in 1990 as an engineer, to provide downfield blocking for designers. Sources praise the pair for "lowering barriers" and "putting a lot on the line and really battling with management."

Their work has let Microsoft steal a beat on Apple, winning the company some unfamiliar praise. "I think Microsoft is ahead of everyone else," argues Gadi Amit, founder of design agency NewDealDesign. "They’re no longer chasing Apple; they’re actually making Apple look old. That’s a really unexpected turn of events in design and the competition between these two powerhouses."

Microsoft and Apple have long been at odds over software design. If any company has exemplified skeuomorphism, it’s Apple. As Microsoft flattens its interface, Apple continues to push its software toward more glossiness, more 3-D, more bevel. Apple recently demonstrated a feature in iOS 6, the next version of its mobile operating system, that will delete used e-tickets and coupons with an animated paper shredder.

Inside Apple, tension has built up between supporters and detractors of these digital trompe l’oeils. Scott Forstall, Apple’s SVP of iOS, is a big supporter of the skeuomorphic approach. But industrial design SVP Jonathan Ive and other top Apple staff are said to despise the trend, according to several former senior Apple designers who wished not to be identified. "You could tell who did the product based on how much glitz was in the UI," says one source familiar with Apple’s design process.

One former senior UI designer who worked closely with Jobs traces skeuomorphism back to the Apple cofounder himself. "Steve pushed it hard," the source says. "The iCal’s leather stitching was taken directly from a texture in his Gulfstream jet. There was lots of internal email among UI designers at Apple saying this was just embarrassing, just terrible." Apple declined to comment for this story.

Much of the criticism of Apple’s software design hasn’t made its way into the mainstream consciousness partly because, as industrial designer Yves Behar puts it, "People think that everything Apple does is sent from God." But its software, once as widely praised for its polish as Microsoft’s was (and still is) derided for its glitches, clunkiness, and vulnerability to malware, now faces a legitimate rival in Windows. "My teenage daughter has never seen some of these GUI metaphors," says Amit. "She doesn’t use a Rolodex or the calendar my grandmother used 50 years ago. Microsoft finally broke through this paradigm."

Behar agrees and is surprised that Apple, so renowned for its Bauhaus approach to hardware and the beauty of its devices, would tolerate such embellishments in its software. "It’s distasteful because it’s inherently confusing," he says. "The digital bookshelf doesn’t really work like a bookshelf. Microsoft is showing the way to higher, cleaner, more functional design."


Even so, it may be too early to declare that Microsoft has turned over a new leaf, especially in terms of commitment from its leadership. "If the importance and value and DNA of design aren’t trickling down, they sure as hell are going to have a hard time trickling up," says Ian Sands, the former senior director of Microsoft’s product long-term vision and strategy, who left the company in 2010. Louis Danziger, an independent graphic designer who has consulted with Microsoft since 1995 and taught many of its top designers, also has doubts. "The software engineers and product managers there often think of design as lipstick," he writes via email, "something applied at the end to enhance appearance rather than an enabler of their activity, which it is."

NO MATTER HOW LOVELY THE NEW FACE OF WINDOWS 8, THE SUSPICION IS THAT THE OLD MICROSOFT IS HIDDEN ONE LAYER BENEATH.
At Apple, by contrast, design is embedded in the culture. One former top designer who has worked at both Apple and Microsoft recalls visiting the Apple shipping unit and discovering workers carefully loading boxes so the logos all faced the same direction. "I asked why and one guy explained that he loved the look on people’s faces when he threw open the truck doors and revealed all the boxes perfectly aligned," the director says. "They weren’t instructed to do that. I know that’s just a simple example, but I mean, it’s the guys in shipping and receiving!"

It was 2010 when Moreau and Larson-Green laid eyes on the first mock-up of Windows 8, named "Pocahontas" to reflect their journey into a new world of design. Since then, Metro has worked its way into other products and software applications. The Xbox features a dashboard of tiles branded with modern typography. Bing touts a Spartan design that fuses social networking with search. And in the next version of Office, blue, green, and red ribbons will slide out from the left side of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint when users, say, print or save a document, providing a simplified interface for navigation. Most menus will seamlessly refresh rather than disgorge clunky pop-up boxes, and all files will be stored in the cloud by default. Much of the clutter will be gone--fewer buttons, no drop shadows--and, like Windows 8, Office will be touch-screen ready.

On October 26, Microsoft will release Windows 8 to the world, and the company will finally learn if its bet on design has paid off. Microsoft knows that it faces a stern test in the market, especially with corporate customers, for whom elegant design has never been a decisive factor, as Apple could tell you. But whether or not users love Windows 8, Moreau and his team have done something new; they have taken it to Apple; they have won a little respect.

And yet… inside Windows 8, past its novel and beautiful skin, lie many elements of the past. Just one click away, in the desktop app, is the old world of Microsoft--toolbars, task bars, drop-down menus, cluttered folder systems. Even the company’s flagship browser, Internet Explorer, once a key to Microsoft’s future on the web, remains a symbol for the addiction to this bygone era. Two versions of Explorer come installed on Windows 8, one pre- and one post-Metro. No matter how lovely the new face of Windows 8, the suspicion is that the old Microsoft is hidden one layer beneath--all you have to do is scratch the surface.

In late March, I spoke with Moreau about this legacy on a visit to Soho House, a pricey, members-only club in Manhattan’s meatpacking district. In the fifth-floor library, framed by elements he banished from Windows--leather-bound books, wood paneling--I asked him whether Windows would ever be free of all the cobwebs.

"I have no idea," he says, swirling the ice in his glass. "We haven’t even started thinking about what’s after this. It’s enough just to build this thing." He adds, "It’s true that people don’t like change. But we don’t do things frivolously. I don’t want someone to be frustrated or mad--that hurts my heart."

And who knew Microsoft had a heart?

A version of this article appears in the October 2012 issue of Fast Company.

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Will Apple’s Tacky Software-Design Philosophy Cause A Revolt?

It's interesting to read existing views such as this article about Skeumorphism in UI and web design this is I,portent for us to consider or stay away from as nowadays everyone is a smartphone and web user and everyone has an opinion, Skeumorphism in my opinion is a dying out trend and purely digital is the way forward.

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Will Apple’s Tacky Software-Design Philosophy Cause A Revolt?

FAST COMPANY'S AUSTIN CARR SPEAKS WITH INDUSTRY INSIDERS AND EX-APPLE DESIGNERS WHO HAVE SOURED ON THE FAKE LEATHER, GLASS, AND WOOD THAT RUNS THROUGH OS X AND IOS.


By now it’s almost inevitable given the company’s track record: No matter what Apple unveils tomorrow at the Yerba Buena Center (an iPad Mini? iPhone 5?), pundits will herald the company for its innovative thinking and bold hardware design. But the elephant in the room will be Apple’s software, which many inside the company believe has evolved for the worse in the last few years.

EDITOR’S NOTE
Click here for our feature on the redesign of Windows.

Despite consistently glowing reviews from critics and consumers alike, iOS and OS X, Apple’s operating systems which tie Macs and iPads and iPhones together, have rubbed some the wrong way in recent years with their design directions. During my reporting for Fast Company's feature on design at Microsoft, which was part of our October design issue, I spoke with a number of designers, Apple veterans, and industry insiders hostile towards Apple’s approach to software design. Equally eye opening was the number who genuinely praise Microsoft for its novel approach for Windows 8, the most radical redesign to date of the world’s most ubiquitous operating system. The criticism and controversy, much of it revolving around a trend called skeuomorphism, reveal chinks in Apple’s armor rarely visible to those outside One Infinite Loop.


"VISUAL MASTURBATION"
What’s skeuomorphism? If you’ve ever used an Apple product, you’ve experienced digital skeuomorphic design: calendars with faux leather-stitching, bookshelves with wood veneers, fake glass and paper and brushed chrome. Skeuomorphism is a catch-all term for when objects retain ornamental elements of past, derivative iterations--elements that are no longer necessary to the current objects’ functions.

ICAL’S LEATHER-STITCHING WAS BASED ON A TEXTURE IN JOBS’S GULFSTREAM JET.
In software, skeuomorphism can be traced back to the visual metaphors designers created to translate on-screen applications before users were accustomed to interacting with computer software: virtual folders to store your documents, virtual Rolodexes to store contacts. But over time, skeuomorphism has seeped into all areas of UI design, especially in Apple’s software, where text documents, for example, are made to look like yellow legal pads.

"It’s visual masturbation," says one former senior UI designer at Apple who worked closely with Steve Jobs. "It’s like the designers are flexing their muscles to show you how good of a visual rendering they can do of a physical object. Who cares?"

Inside Apple, tension has brewed for years over the issue. Apple iOS SVP Scott Forstall is said to push for skeuomorphic design, while industrial designer Jony Ive and other Apple higher-ups are said to oppose the direction. "You could tell who did the product based on how much glitz was in the UI," says one source intimately familiar with Apple’s design process.

But before Forstall, it was Steve Jobs who encouraged the skeuomorphic approach, some say. "iCal’s leather-stitching was literally based on a texture in his Gulfstream jet," says the former senior UI designer. "There was lots of internal email among UI designers at Apple saying this was just embarrassing, just terrible."

YOU COULD TELL WHO DID THE PRODUCT BASED ON HOW MUCH GLITZ WAS IN THE UI.
Perhaps the most infamous culprit of this design direction is Apple’s Game Center, the social-gaming app that’s dressed in a lacquered wood and green felt that lends it the feel of a casino. "Steve pushed very hard to have everything--the felt-cloth table, the game chips--look like they would in real life," says another former Apple designer. "Internally, a lot of people were shocked by the richness. Many think it’s gone too far."


WHY IS SKEUOMORPHISM BAD?
Some may wonder why designers would harbor such harsh feelings toward seemingly minor flourishes in UI design. But at Apple, where pixel-perfect standards are the norm, many designers believe skeuomorphism has significantly degraded the user experience.

The issue is two-fold: first, that traditional visual metaphors no longer translate to modern users; and second, that excessive digital imitation of real-world objects creates confusion among users. "I’ve come to absolutely dislike this trend in user interface toward skeuomorphism," says designer Yves Béhar, the founder of fuseproject, which is best known for designing the Jawbone and original One Laptop Per Child PC. "Using reality as a visual metaphor for the user interface rather than make the UI function on its own terms is something that has irked me for quite a while."

Béhar cites the example of Apple’s wooden digital bookshelves. "The digital bookshelf doesn’t really work like a bookshelf," he says. "You’re throwing all this extraneous visual noise at me and it’s confusing. My brain, which is used to the physical bookshelf, is confused because of the differences in usability. It’s cute, but not particularly useful."

THERE’S NO NEED TO ADD GLITTER IF THE PRODUCT CAN STAND ON ITS OWN.
In addition to being unhelpfully ostentatious, the visual metaphors are also outmoded in the eyes of many. Designer Gadi Amit, whose firm, NewDealDesign, designed the Lytro camera and Fitbit, points to the common use of the digital Rolodex to denote where contacts are stored. "I’m old enough, sure, but some of the guys in my office have never seen a Rolodex in real life," Amit says. "So these metaphors that were, in the early days of the computing revolution, relevant to assisting people in bridging the gap between the physical and digital worlds, are no longer necessary. Our culture has changed. We don’t need translation of the digital medium in mechanical real-life terms. It’s an old-fashioned paradigm."

Says the former senior UI designer at Apple, "I feel like [Apple] has concentrated too much on mimicking the visual skeuomorphic approach rather than concentrating on the actual functionality." For example, in iOS 6, the latest version of Apple’s mobile operating system, Forstall recently demoed an animated paper shredder, which will be used to delete e-tickets and coupons. How many iPhone users have ever actually seen a paper shredder in real life? Is it necessary? Or just visual masturbation? "To me, it’s lipstick on a pig," says the source intimately familiar with Apple’s design process. "There’s no need to add glitter if the product can stand on its own."

And even in the mobile world, where touch-screen smartphones and tablets are relativity new compared to the PC interfaces we’ve become accustomed to, the source believes we’ve moved beyond skeuomorphism. "Things have changed since the widespread use of iPhones and Androids," the source says. "Years ago, you’d need a manual to know how to use a smartphone. Those days are long over."


WHAT’S THE ALTERNATIVE?
It’s important to note that not all visual metaphors are bad. Rather, it’s the excessive UI adornments of these visual metaphors that many insiders I’ve spoken with find distasteful and inherently confusing.

It’s also why many industry leaders are excited for Windows 8. For the design of its new operating system, Microsoft took a surprisingly refreshing approach, distancing itself from skeuomorphism while emphasizing a flat user interface that’s minimalist to the core. Sure, real-life visual metaphors still exist in the UI--an envelope to represent the mail app, a camera to denote the photo app--but the icons are without embellishments: no bevel, no 3-D flourishes, no glossiness and no drop shadow. It’s Microsoft’s stripped-down UI that many find appealing--a welcome alternative to Apple’s approach to software design.

MANY FIND MICROSOFT’S STRIPPED-DOWN UI APPEALING, AND A WELCOME ALTERNATIVE TO APPLE’S APPROACH.
In our feature story on Microsoft, you’ll learn how design is changing Redmond for the better. And you’ll also learn why designers from Gadi Amit to Yves Béhar to former Apple insiders are praising the company’s newfound design DNA. As Dan Kraemer, creative director of design firm IA Collaborative, told me of Microsoft’s and Apple’s software design, "These are two different approaches to creating great experiences, and I can’t necessarily say one is better than the other."

But many of Kraemer’s colleagues, as you’ll soon read in our feature story, are not as diplomatic when describing Apple’s approach to software design. Stay tuned.

[Image: Jose AS Reyes/Shutterstock]


AUSTIN CARR
Austin Carr writes about design and technology for Fast Company. CONTINUED
TwitterGoogle+acarr@fastcompany.com

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SECRET 7" - JESSIE WARE - STILL LOVE ME

Working on a super quick turnaround for the Secret 7" live brief competition to design 7" artwork for her single "Still Love Me", it must not contain the song name or any suggestion of the song and artist, so I thought this could be quite a good route conceptually.

A good place to start is the song itself....


Song lyrics

"Still Love Me"

[Verse]
See it in your eyes,
See it in your face
In your look, see it in you
If I make myself understood.
Will you treat me like you know you should?!
Uuuh uh

[Chorus]
Still love me, still love me
(Do you love me?)
Still love me, still love me
(Do you love me?)
Still love me, still love me.

[Verse]
See, it’s been a while
Looking through your eyes
I was taken in, taken by surprise.
Why did you want me, why’d you stayed so close?
You’re still not leaving?
Was I enough?
If I make myself understood.
Will you treat me like you know you should?!
Uuuh uh

[Chorus]
Still love me, still love me
(Do you love me?)
Still love me, still love me
(Do you love me?)
Still love me, still love me.
Still love me, still love me.
Do you love, do you
Do you love ,do you love,
Do you still love me.

[Verse]
You’re the one that’s more easy to adore
I don’t ever have to leave if you still want me.
If I make myself understood.
Will you treat me like you know you should?!
[Chorus]
(Do you love me?)
Still love me, still love me
(Do you love me?)
Still love me, still love me.
(Do you love me?)
Still love me, still love me.
(Do you love me?)
Still love me, still love me.
Do you love me?
Still love me, still love me.
Do you, do you, do you love me?
Still love me, still love me.
(If I make myself understood.)
Still love me, still love me.
Will you treat me like you know you should?!
Still love me, still love me.
Still love me, still love me.
Still love me, still love me.
If I make myself understood.
Still love me, still love me.
Will you treat me like you know you should?!
Still love me, still love me.
Do you love me?
Still love me.

Abbas' expert analysis: The song's about her partner or ex-lover basically playing games with her, she has a feeling of being wanted and he's messing with her heart. I thought why don't I take this literally?

How can I literally and visually show a heart breaking, or playing games with a heart in a literal and eye-catching way.

Taking playing games literally, following on from really enjoying a 16bit brief I've previously worked on, which also links to gaming here are some examples of gaming which I thought were interesting:

Pong

Tetris

Space Invaders

I like the idea of deterioration and construction, space invaders is about the aliens destructing your line of defense, and with tetris it's about constructing so the simple concept I had was to maybe have a heart, made of blocks with a pong style player literally breaking the heart, playing games with her heart

Jessie Ware imagery

Black and white and quite stark contrast is used throughout Jessie Ware's promotional imagery, a record sleeve would be promotional imagery in some form too, so I want to somehow reference the colour palette used throughout her work and not be too unrelated

Performances of Still Love Me

Existing Jessie Ware artwork

Heavy use of monotone throughout her artwork for her currently released album. Definitely an initial consideration for my own artwork.

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Little White Lies Brief: Tron & 16 bit imagery

I'm currently working on creating a video game start-up screen image in a 8bit style for a live brief competition held by LWLies for the upcoming release of Wreck-It Ralph, an animated family movie based around videogames.

The obvious challenge is creating 8 bit pixel art! Here are creative and interesting examples of existing start-up screens for 8 bit video games, popular 8 bit consoles were the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and the Sega Master System among others, featuring many classics such as Mario and Sonic.


The Disney movie I'm going to create a start-up screen for is Tron, I'm undecided if it'll be the original 80's Tron or the remake from 2010, although the 80's Tron would be more feasible for an 8bit video game, I like the sci-fi premise and the potential imagery and colours mainly.

Another exciting prospect is 'gifs. Games often have animated start-upscreens, such as the examples in this post.



##Tron Imagery

The following images are valuable references for Tron

Original 80s poster. I like the gradient effect on the type and the iconic Tron typeface which remained pretty intact even for the remake so this is definitely going in there

Light cycle thing. I want to incorporate movement somehow through the animated gif so a light cycle makes sense. Orange is evil, blue is good, which is great visually as both colours contrast on the colour wheel and so work together in a weird contrasting way,

##8 bit/16 bit start screens

As you can see you can pack a surprising amount of detail into the pixelated grid. You are just limited to colours because of technological limitations. Looking at existing examples is also useful to see how pixelated my effort needs to look so I can prepare the correct grid along with what kind of information and elements are commonly visible on a title/start-screen

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