New realism

Design trends come and go and I have always been trying to avoid them whenever possible. After all, the basic principles of good design still apply, no matter what the design might look like on the surface. It’s a bit like making music. A good song is a good song, whether it’s being played on an acoustic guitar in your own bedroom or as a techno version on the dance floor. One might prefer one version over another, but the important thing to remember is the foundation is and will always be the song. No wonder some of the most successful tracks today are cover versions – some artists simply can’t write good enough songs, but they can beef up old ones. But that’s a different rant…

Back in the old days everyone was playing with Alien Skin and Flaming Pear Photoshop filters, and after I did my fair share of experimenting, I left these things behind me to create things with a wee bit more substance. I found out I rarely needed to create a lightning or make something burn. And I got a bit fed up with seeing glows and drop shadows everywhere, so I turned to a more simplistic approach.

[Abstract High Definition Wallpaper by bebflightmed]

A few years later people from my generation began creating these very technical, sci-fi inspired, three-dimensional objects and started uploading them to their websites (or deviantART, for that matter). Not only did I not know how to make these, I wasn’t really interested. I could see myself using some of the more impressive ones as desktop pictures, but that was about it. Luckily, that craze has been on its way out for a while now.

Now, a couple years and even more fads later, there’s a new trend emerging, and this one is rather interesting. Actually, it’s been around for while now, but it’s just now that I’m really noticing it. For lack of a better term, I’m calling it “new realism”.

[left: much cleaner switch by Micah Rich / right: rocker switch v2 by Mike Bernardo]

Looking back it seems it all really took off when the iPhone was released. Apple had always had a thing for elegant (although not necessarily consistent) interface design, but they had outdone themselves with the iPhone (and even more so with its larger sibling, the iPad). Everything looked really slick and thoroughly designed. And since the device was touch-based, buttons looked like real buttons (not just rectangles with text in it) and switches looked like switches in the real world. Apple did a pretty good job showing what could be done, and the App developers all over the world took it to the next level. Nowadays, these high standards and an enormous amount of competition lead to the fact that most of the time it’s not sufficient for an App to just work, it has to look good doing it if it wants to succeed. And these days, “looking good” means “looking like the real thing”. If you examine some of the most popular shots on graphic designers’ community sites like dribbble, forrst, lovedsgn or drawar you’ll immediately see how that type of interface design has spilled over into web and even print design. And I think I like that.

[left: Sick Rockers by sickdesigner / right: Vintage USB by Notorious USB]

Yes, we’re back to using drop shadows, glows and gradients. But this time, they have a purpose. They’re not there because we can, but because they’re supposed to create the illusion of a digitally created piece looking (and even feeling) like something in the real world. A drop shadow is nothing more than the shadow of one object falling onto another one below it, and a gradient indicates that something reacts to light in a certain way. Random noise is another effect which makes things look less flat, unnatural and digital. And in that regard, it’s the opposite of some of the trends that came before it, which often emphasised the aspect that something was created digitally.

And there’s more to like about this new trend: people are rediscovering their enthusiasm for good typography and attention to detail. And that can’t possibly be a bad thing.