I recently read three books: one on the Kindle iOS app, archive.org's PDF scan of a real book, and finally, a real, printed-on-paper book.
I used to dislike skeuomorphism as exemplified by Apple faux leather. So it came as a surprise when I found I enjoyed the PDF scan much more than the Kindle version. (The paper version came out way on top, because it was an old book much enjoyed by bookworms of human and insect types, and was a pleasure to hold and smell as well as read)
I now appreciate that natural variations and noise inherent in paper and other real-world materials have a calming aesthetic effect, while ultra-Spartan black-on-white is perhaps _too_ antiseptic for comfortable human consumption.
The design tension then, is between
- being true to the medium, in the sense that the design should do its job within the abilities and limitations of the medium, rather than gratuitously imitating and importing look/feel from previous mediums just for the sake of familiarity.
- being human, respecting the human aesthetic sense, honed over millenia of exposure to fractal and noisy nature.
Extreme skeuomorphism results in campy, tacky faux leather. Extreme minimalism results in bland, "inhuman" interfaces. At the golden mean lie things like "noisy" linen backgrounds, subtle shadows, which assuage the human need for variation without imitation of real objects and grandfathering in their functional limitations.
I agree with the author - Google has found its design feet, and they're not bad!
I recently read three books: one on the Kindle iOS app, archive.org's PDF scan of a real book, and finally, a real, printed-on-paper book.
I used to dislike skeuomorphism as exemplified by Apple faux leather. So it came as a surprise when I found I enjoyed the PDF scan much more than the Kindle version. (The paper version came out way on top, because it was an old book much enjoyed by bookworms of human and insect types, and was a pleasure to hold and smell as well as read)
I now appreciate that natural variations and noise inherent in paper and other real-world materials have a calming aesthetic effect, while ultra-Spartan black-on-white is perhaps _too_ antiseptic for comfortable human consumption.
The design tension then, is between
- being true to the medium, in the sense that the design should do its job within the abilities and limitations of the medium, rather than gratuitously imitating and importing look/feel from previous mediums just for the sake of familiarity.
- being human, respecting the human aesthetic sense, honed over millenia of exposure to fractal and noisy nature.
Extreme skeuomorphism results in campy, tacky faux leather. Extreme minimalism results in bland, "inhuman" interfaces. At the golden mean lie things like "noisy" linen backgrounds, subtle shadows, which assuage the human need for variation without imitation of real objects and grandfathering in their functional limitations.
I agree with the author - Google has found its design feet, and they're not bad!