#design

Liquid Glass. Why?

Craig Hockenberry, seineszeichens Entwickler bei der Iconfactory, fragt sich, warum es Apples neue Designsprache, Liquid Glass, überhaupt braucht:

I’m unaware of anyone outside of Apple who’s thinking “we really need to have more fluid glass in our designs”. Of particular note during the introduction is how much time they spend showing off glass blocks and talking about the physical effect itself. While not addressing the most important question: “why do we need this?”

And I’m pretty sure the answer is “we don’t”. The answer is “Apple does.”

Seine Vermutung: Apple braucht es, weil künftige Hardware besser damit funktionieren und harmonieren wird. Etwa weil die Bezels immer kleiner werden und Flexible OLEDs den Übergang zwischen Rahmen und Software weiter verschwinden lassen werden.

Da ist sicher – auch in Anbetracht des iPhone 17 Air – einiges dran. Hauptsächlich liegt Liquid Glass aber meines Erachtens in einem vergangenen, bereits releasten Produkt. Nämlich der Apple Vision Pro, die vor über anderthalb Jahr erschien, aber nicht annähernd so abgehoben ist wie Apple das antizipiert hat. Dennoch wurde hier die Designrichtung bereits in die Wege geleitet, und kommende Virtual- oder Augmented-Reality-Produkte von Apple werden – im Formfaktor einer regulären Brille –, wie gemacht für flüssiges Glas sein. Mehr in your face geht es eigentlich nicht. Literally.

Liquid Glass. Why? • furbo.org | OpenGraph Preview Image
furbo.org

Liquid Glass. Why? • furbo.org

Whether you love it or hate it, there is no shortage of opinion on Liquid Glass. I have thoughts about what it is, but today I want to focus on why it exists. Apple’s public rationale for the new design language is that it offers a universal solution across platforms that takes advantage of rec...

Proposal For A New Finder Icon

Apple could very easily keep the icon’s historical appearance without compromising the Liquid Glass aesthetic by just… flipping the color palette.

Viel besser.

Update, 24.06.: macOS Tahoe Beta 2 macht es dem hiesigen Finder-Entwurf nach und entschärft die Liquid-Glass-ificiation™ dadurch natürlich, hat aber dennoch einige Probleme.

Proposal For A New Finder Icon | OpenGraph Preview Image
dgriffinjones.com

Proposal For A New Finder Icon

I would like to present, in response to the widely criticized Finder icon in macOS Tahoe Developer Beta 1, the icon I created in literally fifteen minutes.

Why do AI company logos look like buttholes?

If you pay attention to AI company branding, you’ll notice a pattern:

1. Circular shape (often with a gradient)
2. Central opening or focal point
3. Radiating elements from the center
4. Soft, organic curves

Sound familiar? It should, because it’s also an apt description of… well, you know.

A butthole.

The article is much more profound than the premise would initially lead you to believe.

Why do AI company logos look like buttholes? | OpenGraph Preview Image
velvetshark.com

Why do AI company logos look like buttholes?

A humorous exploration of the uncanny resemblance between AI company logos and human anatomy. Discover why circular, gradient-based designs dominate the AI industry, and what this design convergence tells us about branding in tech.

Last year when I switched to Pocket Casts for all my (cross-platform) podcast needs, I released a purple version of the official app icon, because, well, thanks to Apple Podcasts my brain is hardwired to think of podcasts as purple.

The image displays three app icons: two for “Pocket Casts” in purple and black themes, and one for “Podcasts” with a purple circular design.

When iOS 18 came out on Monday with support for alternative dark app icons, I quickly realized that my purple Pocket Casts icon wasn’t really working there. So I went back to the Apple Podcasts app, which now only shows a purple icon on a dark gradient for dark mode. And so I updated my icon with the same style – here’s my purple Pocket Casts icon for dark mode.

The image shows two app icons for “Reeder”, both featuring a star on a dark, striped background, but with slightly different shades.

And while I was creating the icon, I noticed that the alternative „Reeder 4“ icon, that I have always used as the icon for Reeder 5 (now „Reeder Classic“), didn’t quite match the dark mode either. So I just changed it, here is the slightly darker Reeder 4 icon.

“We propose the symbol ⁂ to represent the fediverse”

⁂ is a typographical character, not an icon that needs to be inserted as an image. Unique-looking, but standardised. This means it’s very easy to copy-paste around! […]

⁂ is called an asterism. In astronomy, it refers to groups of stars in the sky, akin to constellations. We suggest that it’s a very fitting symbol for the fediverse, a galaxy of interconnected spaces which is decentralised and has an astronomically-themed name. It represents several stars coming together, connecting but each their own, without a centre.

Nice idea. I just followed @liaizon’s example and set the iOS/macOS text replacement feature to expand *** into ⁂.

Pentagram hat eine neue Brand Identity für Reddit entworfen.

Ich bin vor allem gespannt, wie die neuen, visuellen Subreddit-Chatbubbles eingesetzt werden – und ob sie den offiziellen Client – nachdem sie Apollo & Co. gekillt haben – im Zuge dessen endlich aufhübschen.1

  1. Eigentlich auch spannend, welche Parallelen es zu Twitter/X gibt: Man kauft den besten Third-Party Client (bei Twitter war es Tweetie, hier Alien Blue), verhunzt diesen und killt dann den API-Zugang für andere, bessere Clients… []