Hasta La Ideas

Ten years ago Malcolm Garrett attempted to suggest to Jonathan Ive that it might be time to ditch skeumorphic design. With the release of iOS7 he appears to have had that wish granted. We asked the digital pioneer for his creative assessment of the recent OS upgrade…

It is already ten years since Jonathan Ive was named Designer of the Year by the Design Museum. It is therefore ten years since Creative Review first asked me to talk to him to coincide with that award.

The brief was to speak ‘designer to designer’, with some discussion of his growing portfolio of groundbreaking products, and to hopefully elicit some informed insight into his personal approach to design.

He had just presented the sleek new range of G4 Titanium PowerBooks but, of course, the iPhone, whose touch screen interface would change computing forever, was not yet so much as a twinkle in his eye.

I brought up the subject of the then relatively new OSX interface. This was an important issue for me. I felt there was a major disconnect between the efficient simplicity and beauty of his hardware design and what users encountered on their screens.

I had only recently upgraded to OSX and I was not yet a fan, despite its functional superiority over OS9. I had been put off from the outset just by the way it looked, a sad confession that aesthetics were blinding me to improved usability.

My thinking was that the visual tone was far too ‘Walt Disney’, with a cartoon-like pursuit of visual realism in the drawing of icons with shadows, bevels and fake three-dimensionality. The term ‘skeumorphic’ had been around since the 19th century, but it had never seemed more appropriately applied than in the world of software, which has few physical parallels with ‘real’ tools and machinery.

I voiced a concern about the loss of what had always been a clear, easy-to-use interface – one that graphic designers loved – to be replaced with a brighter, more colourful, dumbed-down array of big buttons and ‘friendly’ picture-driven screen tools.

This was such an irony given that graphic designers had been a core market for Apple products since the launch of the Mac 20 years previously.

Jonathan Ive’s response was not what I expected. He refused to comment at all, simply stating that he was not the person to talk to about it.

Ten years later, now that he has publicly criticised the older interface and replaced it with this fresh review, I now get some hint that he may well have been thinking along the same lines as me back then. He was far too smart, and professionally constrained of course, to engage in any ‘loose talk’ at the wrong moment.

Naturally then, I see this new iPhone operating system as a welcome progression, as it dramatically reverses the trend towards excessive skeumorphism.

It’s been a long time coming, but the difference is evident right from the first screen. The typography is lighter and has a refreshing clarity, and all unnecessary frames, bevels and shadows around buttons, panels or onscreen instructions (such as ‘slide to unlock’) have been omitted to pleasing effect.

At first glance some aspects do seem a bit rushed, but for the most part I really like it. Some screens really are very pleasing – the compass (above) is a technical delight for instance. Some of the top level things, funnily enough the ones you would notice first, work less well.

Thankfully iOS7 hasn’t pursued the wholly squared-off look of the latest Windows OS, and has retained the rounded corners of the iOS6 desktop icons.

I do think, though, that these would have benefited from a reduction of corner radius to complement the sharpness of the illustrations that adorn them. My first impression is that they tend to feel a bit too flat, the colours a little garish, and the detail and typography too thin.

The more I use it, however, the more I come to appreciate and enjoy it.

I had never noticed before that the letters on the keyboard keys are all in caps, even when typing in lower case. It has always been that way, but it jumped out at me as ‘mistake’ when I first saw it here. I’m not sure that is a good thing.

Going back to check its predecessor again, I now see though that those keys are just too blobby and already feel old fashioned. The new keys are much clearer, they even seem bigger.

Whether Helvetica is the right font to be really forward looking and an ‘honest’ choice for a really contemporary interface is debatable. Given its modernist origins, and the way that for many designers it has come to suggest the best in ‘information design’, it too is arguably skeumorphic in its own subtle way.

After I’ve had more time to explore, I will hopefully come back with a more considered critique. In the same way that I found effortless joy, and unanticipated pleasure in small details when using the first generation iPhone screen, I am hoping to find much more below the surface of this one.

I hope it is more than a cosmetic upgrade, but for now at least it is a welcome cosmetic upgrade.

Malcolm Garrett (RDI) is creative director at communications consultancy, Images&Co. See malcolmgarrett.com.

Tesco has launched Hudl, a low cost Android tablt, sorry, tablet, computer with a visual identity, name, packaging, point of sale and more from SomeOne

It’s an intriguing move from Tesco. The retailer has apparently had the device built to its own specs (based on shopper feedback). As much as it represents a fascinating new challenger at the bottom end of the hardware market, the Hudl also provides Tesco with its own portal into its existing online services such as Clubcard TV and both film and ebook offerings. No doubt it will also provide very valuable consumer data in the process.

The branding has, therefore, had to look both ways. On the one hand, its competing against the likes of Nexus as a technology brand

On the other, it sits alongside the parent Tesco brand in mainstream, mass retail.

SomeOne’s co-founder Gary Holt sheds some light on the studio’s thinking here: “It’s important that the Hudl has a brand and personality all its own, yet brought to you by Tesco. It’s what Tesco refer to as a ‘brand by Tesco’. Just as they have F&F for fashion. This means that the brand, look and feel and tone can be crafted and delivered for the specific area and target audience”.

Pick up a Hudl and you would be hard-pressed to realise that it was a Tesco product at all. On the front, the only Tesco presence is a subtle T button bottom left via which the user accesses the various Tesco services.

On the back, the Hudl name is applied subtly, the Tesco logo sitting at the bottom

That star comes from SomeOne’s over-arching idea for the brand – that “the tablet is becoming an important device in people’s lives, notably family lives, ideal for online shopping, digital entertainment and social networking and as such they are emerging as a ‘retail portal’ of the future”. So the star “is a solar system metaphor that reflects Hudl being at the centre of a digital orbit, and of family life”.

A more explicit evocation of that idea can be seen in this treatment which is being used on the Tesco homepage.

The word mark uses Neutraface No 2 from House Industries, which is also used on the packaging

and on collateral

“The Hudl has its own separate iconography, notably designed to help you set up and use the tablet, as well as helping deliver the Tesco branded services,” Holt explains. “These have been specifically designed for Hudl, yet clearly consider the user experience and relationship that they have with the Android platform – which also has functional iconography all its own. This did mean that a number of the icons for Hudl could be warm in tone. Like the Magician’s top hat icon for ‘Tips & Tricks’. We also created a special Getting Started App (represented by another icon of ours ‘123’) to ensure new users get the help and support they need.”

Here’s a selection of the icons, some of which add the Hudl star to standard Android designs

And the Guardian’s hands-on review of the device which explains a litle bit about the relationship between the Hudl bits of the interface and the standard Android experience and in which you can see some of them in use (if you look very closely)

According to SomeOne, one of the key parts of the brief for the product was to try to, as partner and creative director Laura Hussey says, “inject warmth into a category that can often be overly technical.” Their idea, she says, was to “help to soften what can often be stark and technologically-led communications”.

This is very much a ‘family’ product. Without having used the device it’s very hard to assess how well this ‘warmth’ comes across. I’m not a particular fan of the icons as they appear in the stills above, for example (just a bit too cutesy for me), but they may well be more succesful in context. They also embody a particular challenge for this project. Kids intuitively get technology and are probably far more expert in its use than their parents and grandparents. There’s no need to ‘dumb down’ or soften edges for them. So the ‘friendliness’ here is far more likely to be aimed at older users who may otherwise find technology forbidding. It’s very much the ITV of tablets.

Is there, rather like pre-iOS7 Apple, a disconnect between the slickness of the branding on the hardware compared to the approach of the interface? Again, it’s hard to tell how that plays out without having used one but, if so, it makes some sense. There are almost two messages being put out here – firsty to convince consumers that the device is credible as a piece of kit, and then to provide all the family with a user experience that is appropriate to the brand and gets neophytes comfortable with using all those lucrative digital services and products. That’s quite a tought trick but one that the Hudl appears to have pulled off. And for a Tesco product, that mark – in particular as it appears on the back of the product – is really very nice.

Oh mia bela madunina…Questa è la capsule collection dei ragazzi di Iuter dedicata al Duomo di Milano. Già disponibili sullo store online e presso i migliori rivenditori.

If you live within striking distance of Rochester, in upstate New York, you can visit a design treasure. The incredibly prolific Lella and Massimo Vignelli donated their entire archive of design work, a collection spanning nearly half a century, to the Rochester Institute of Technology several years ago; the resultant Vignelli Center for Design Studies opened shortly thereafter.

For the rest of us, come October we’ll be able to see Design is One, an upcoming documentary on the design duo by First Run Features. Peep the trailer:

Two of the world’s most influential designers, Lella and Massimo Vignelli’s work covers such a broad spectrum that one could say they are known by everyone, even by those who don’t know their names. Adhering to self-proclaimed motto, “If you can’t find it, design it,” their achievements in industrial and product design, graphic and publication design, corporate identity, architectural graphics, and exhibition, interior, and furniture design have earned worldwide respect and numerous international awards for over 40 years.

After Massimo brought the Helvetica typeface to America in 1965, he and Lella moved on to a diverse array of projects, including New York’s subway signage and maps; the interior of Saint Peter’s Church at Citicorp Center; Venini lamps; Heller dinnerware; furniture for Poltrona Frau; and branding for Knoll International, Bloomingdales, Saks Fifth Avenue, Ford and American Airlines.

…The film features extensive personal conversations with Lella and Massimo themselves, who reveal for the viewer their intensely collaborative creative process and the inner workings of their deceptively linear genius that has defined contemporary design as we have come to know it.

The film will have a theatrical release in “select cities”, to be followed by a DVD release.

(more…)

Gecko makes your smartphone just a little smarter with motion sensor and GPS technology that makes it possible to track and secure everything from your pet to your home! The device, no bigger than a quarter, can be adhered to any object to track its whereabouts via the smartphone app. Its unique motion detection feature will even alert the user when a door or window at home is opened!

Designer: Wizardry Designs

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(Take Security Into Your Own Hands! was originally posted on Yanko Design)

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