Apple's aesthetic dichotomy
When one talks about Apple's design, one immediately thinks of Jony Ive's modernist, rational industrial designs for computers, peripherals, and of course the iPad and iPhone.
These devices have become increasingly simple and pared down, even as the power contained in them has increased. There is very little, if anything, extraneous on the Magic Trackpad or the MacBook Air. And of course the iPhones 4 and 4S are radically simple, yet well-constructed masterpieces of industrial design.
But there's something I've puzzled about for a long time in Apple's aesthetic. Inside these unsentimental, rational, economic designs, Apple has delivered an increasingly sacchirine series of software releases.
When Steve Jobs first introduced the iPhone - perhaps his greatest product presentation - he joked that the iPhone was an iPod with a rotary dialing system on the front. It was deliberately absurd, and the audience duely delivered the anticipated laugh. (I'm reliably informed that an early prototype of the phone actually did feature such an interface.)
But no one laughs when Apple delivers a calendar application for the iPad that tries its hardest to look like a real-word desktop calendar pad, complete with fake leather and "torn" pages.
Still fewer have a chuckle when they see the new Address Book app on Mac OS X Lion, or the even more recent Find My Friends iPhone app.
These apps, and many more besides, all stem from a completely different, and I would say opposite aesthetic sensibility than the plain devices they run on.
It should probably be obvious that my own preference is for design without ornamentation, certainly without a hint of sentimentality, and that I detest these new apps. Why?
Simply put: it's because they are lies. They attempt to comfort us (to patronise us) by trying to show how they relate to physical objects in the real world when there is no need. How are we helped to understand what Find My Friends does by the addition of "leather" trim? And how difficult can it be for someone, even a relative digital newcomer, to understand a list of books? Difficult enough that the only possible way they could understand it is to present them in a "wooden" bookshelf format?
They are an expression of purest kitsch, sentimentality, and ornamentation for its own sake. In Milan Kundera's brilliant defintion, kitsch is "the absolute denial of shit". These are Disney-like apps, sinister in their mendacity.
The newly popular word for this type of design is "skeuomorphism". Strictly speaking it means retaining design features from earlier designs when those features previously had a specific reason for being that way, but do not any longer. A good example would be iPad synthesizer apps that include "knobs" that you can "turn", or "cables" that you can "plug in".
Note that this is not the same thing as metaphor in interface design. Making a fountain pen with a feather on the end, or a car that responded to commands to "giddy up" would be skeuomorphic.
An icon on the computer desktop in Lion is not skeuomorphic; it's just a metaphorical use of the word icon rather than any attempt to replicate the features of one. If they appeared in a wooden gilded frame, they would have tipped over into skeuo-land.
The distinction is perhaps a subtle one, but it's important. Icons on a computer are the way they are because they're a good way to represent the concept of a block of bytes on the disc, a concept that many users do not want to have to engage with. But a calendar is an abstract concept that people already have an accurate mental model of, and therefore it doesn't have to look any particular way at all, especially now that we're just using a bunch of pixels to do the presentation.
These designs are not the only evidence of an infantile aesthetic at Apple. Jobs mentioned "emotion" when launching iAd (he meant "sentimentality"), and Apple's own advertising regularly features sickly-sweet "stories" containing grandparents talking long-distance to their grandchildren on their iPhones and so forth. I understand: many people like these things, they like emotion, however fake (these are adverts they're scripted and acted; they are the opposite of authentic; the emotion is false, corrupt, a lie) and they help to shift vast numbers of devices.
The locus of the infantilist aesthetic seemed to be Steve Jobs himself, if his pronouncements at keynote presentations were an accurate representation. The default book in iBooks? Winnie the Pooh. The trailers he used to demonstrate the video capabilities of the device? Pixar movies. The music choices? Resolutely mainstream, conservative and sentimental. At his recent memorial service on the Apple campus, Coldplay and Norah Jones played. Can you imagine these artists playing at a Dieter Rams memorial?
Of course Apple products need to appeal to the mainstream, no matter how much the company pretends that they are somehow different from the competition, so the use of mainstream popular culture is understandable. My theory is that this is much more than a carefully considered marketing strategy though. The addiction to skeumorphism seems to say that it's a deeply held aesthetic position.
My question is: why does this approach not extend to the devices themselves? Why not make a wooden case for the iMac, like those hideous Sony TVs from my childhood? Or why not a case that makes the computer look like a typewriter?
And why, when we have these beautiful, clean, efficient devices, do we put up with this horrific, dishonest and childish crap?
For me, the most interesting software interface design is being done at Microsoft with Metro on Windows Phone 7 and Windows 8. Here there is no effort to offer spurious concordance with the legacy technologies the software replaces. It is digitally native design.
I can't wait for Apple to turn its back on this regressive aesthetic infantilism.
91 comments
I totally agree with you.
Apple app designers should go back read Rams’ principles.
If you’re looking for a good (designed) agenda app, I would recommend getappsavvy.com/agenda/
I completely disagree. The use of realism in Apple apps is entertaining and comforting.
I do hope they don’t lose this edge as it accounts for the differentiating factor we look forward too in their product.
You might as well ask Mecerdes Benz to discontinue the inclusion of analogue gauges on the Maybach….
@fodewunmi but why the contradiction? If this is “entertaining and comforting” in the software, why is it not in the devices themselves?
There is no contradiction. There is a bias from your perspective. It’s all about this:
www.markboulton.co.uk/journal/comments/aesthetic-usability-effect
Googling the topic provides lots on the spectrum.
@alexhorse I am biased, and I declared the bias in the post. But you can’t argue that the two aesthetics are from the same stable (sorry about the pun). Gropius or van der Rohe would never have allowed such ornamentation in one of their buildings, for example.
One is modernist, the exact opposite of kitsch, and one is kitsch. They’re opposites. Personal preference doesn’t come into it; you’re free to dislike modernist designs, skeuomorphic designs, or both. But it’s meaningless to argue that they’re not contradictions.
I believe the sweetener is saccharine?
I’m not sure you’re entirely right about ornament and Gropius; at times, the postwar Gropius (like Sullivan) did enjoy a bit of comforting frivolity,
But the central point is that Apple isn’t Modernist at all. It’s working in a postmodern pastiche that embraces high modernism and simultaneously subverts it. Design minimalism with ragged edges and cordobra leather.
The difference between the hardware and software is that the minimalist hardware is merely a frame for the software to live inside. You seem to be taking your assumptions of other people’s reasoning to an extreme. I believe this is most likely just a bad overuse of aesthetic usability. I think the designers need to dial back their metaphors a bit (emulating my leather-bound friend-finding journal are they?) but I doubt their motivations are as insidious as you are implying here.
Regarding “They attempt to comfort us (to patronise us) by trying to show how they relate to physical objects in the real world when there is no need.”, does this not also apply to this website’s “hand-written” logo and sketched profile images?
@eastgate do you consider the more recent devices themselves post-modernist?
I’d agree that the original iMac, with its exposed workings, was but I can’t see how you can make that argument about the MacBook or or the iPhone 4. Rams himself has a great deal of respect for Ive, as he’s said frequently, so I’m not convinced that it really is ironic or post-modern in the case of the devices. Absolutely agree that it is in the software.
@subcide how is a drawing of someone patronising? The logo isn’t “hand-written” it’s actually handwritten. What’s wrong with that?
Interesting, and agreed. (Find my Friends is particularly objectionable).
Like you say, I think it’s a deeply held position, but only because of touch. Touch, technology and maturing markets have made for wafer thin devices that no longer express the same amount of tactility on their surface as something like an iMac v1, so it seems Apple believe in trying to reincarnate some of that ‘desire to touch’ into the software itself.
It’s not all working, but this iOS cheese is (so far) only a smattering of ugly skins and hopefully will be rationalised. But then I don’t think I’d want all my standard iPad apps running in the same chrome.
I think you’re right about the qualities of the style, but I disagree with your analysis.
Would a leather bound journal or a wooden pencil have been banned from the Bauhaus? Were its instructors disallowed from wearing traditional old three piece suits? How about a pocket watch?
Apple has been explicit and outspoken about how they want to de-emphasize the system in favor of the content, and to them, particularly on iOS, Apps are the ultimate form of content. They want to encourage app-makers to express themselves with emotion, and they are leading by example
Saccharine they may be, but the claim of dishonesty holds no weight. It is the claim that there is an authentically digital aesthetic that is absurd. Bits have no aesthetic. We paint with them what we imagine, and what we imagine is drawn from our cultural heritage. The so-called authentically digital aesthetic is just a style based on pop-culture images of what a ‘futuristic’ computer interface would look like which themselves are ironic references to the technical limitations of the past (green screens, black backgrounds, text-only displays, etc.). Digital authenticity is a regression.
I didn’t realize how much I disliked the leather on the lion calendar until I used a snow leopard machine yesterday, and I hope they improve their taste – but I would rather they move forward from the rich graphical forms that they are exploring today, than that they trap themselves in a delusional manifesto of an authenticity that can never exist.
Really great post, James. I wrote about this the other day – I think it’s easy to defend the argument that it eases our parents’ generation into using new technology; not the design aesthetic I like at all, but I can grudgingly accept that. The odd wooden texture isn’t the end of the world, even if I can see Müller-Brockmann rolling in his grave right now.
The problem is locking ourselves into inconsistent metaphors; paper doesn’t scroll whilst a tablet can – either you’re locked into a centuries old metaphor that isn’t necessary now, or you jankily break the metaphor (the ‘scrolling paper’ in Contacts/Calendar/etc).
The other problem is Apple using their position of power to foster a generation of aspiring designers not knowing why Apple do things the way they do. If the talented designers at Apple create things we’re not so keen on, imagine what is going to follow.
Skeuomorphism will, ultimately, break when the metaphors aren’t referencing anything anymore. When we don’t have magazines or Filofaxes – when our children have never heard of them. And then we can write it off as another regrettable moment in our visual history – like David Carson or Web 2.0
My post, if anyone fancies more of the same
designedbygold.com/2011/10/the-metaphors-breaking-the-future/
@Robin Barooah Interesting points. Leather bound journals and wooden pencils are not skeuomorphic. A propelling pencil styled to look like a graphite pencil is.
You’re right to say that bits have no aesthetic. That’s precisely what is so jarring about using them to evoke real-world objects in my opinion.
I hope I didn’t give the impression that I want computer interfaces to look like “futuristic” things – that’s just a different form of sentimentalism. I want digital design to ask “if we had invented the idea of a calendar after the advent of the computer, what would it be like?” That’s what I mean by digitally native design.
Agreed, James. Wrote this back in September. tumblr.com/Zq4Kby9U91kF
@James Higgs – I think that’s an important question that will help us to see new possibilities. However not only did we invent calendars before the advent of the computer, we did so literally thousands of years ago, and they are embedded in our culture.
The iPad calendar for example, is something that you can show to people who have never seen an iPad before, and they don’t see a computer interface. They see a calendar. The iPad is inherently an inter-personal computer, and this is a use case where the instant recognition triggered by skeuomorphism causes the interface to disappear. Without this property, it would be bested by paper on this very basic dimension of utility.
I agree that we can do better. The digital medium enables new possibilities that we have barely begun to explore. Are you aware of an avant-garde digital calendar that is a true classic in the making?
Only people who know the definition of the word “Skeuomorphic” care about this.
This has been an ongoing discussion about Apple for years- the sense that Apple is moving away from its supposed core user base and spending too much time appealing to the masses. How many people bitched about a pink iPod mini that only held 4gb? It was populist, they said, it was frilly– iPods should have 80gb, not 4gb! Stop wasting our time, Apple!
Went on to be their top selling product.
People are attracted to the iPad because it is accessible. Likewise, iCal’s visual style isn’t for people who use computers all day. It’s not for people who have blogs and it’s certainly not for people who blog about the design of apps. It’s for people who use the calendar once every month, and for them, they don’t want to take the time to learn interface conventions (even thought they’ve been forced to on Windows), for them it’s about the FEELING of gliding right into an app and immediately understanding how it works.
Many times feelings are mysterious and don’t follow convention. Feelings are hard for lots of hard core developer and interface wonks to talk about and process.We feel a revulsion from these apps because they’re so goddamned dripping wet with ushy-gushy feelings.
But they sell products and subsidize the development of faster MacBooks for us geeks. So we should just smile and nod and install Calvetica, because we’re geeks and customize our own shit anyway.
All that being said, and I’m saying this as a huge fan of sdw, I don’t know W the flipping F that Find my Friends app is supposed to be.
Dear James,
I can’t believe you don’t like sappy interface design. Next you’ll be criticizing the Windows “talking paperclip” character.
I enjoyed yer article a great deal. I like the image of the iphone prototype having a rotary display.
Sincerely, Speak N. Spell
@nrose the pink iPods are a good example of where populist (sentimental) taste has made an appearance in the devices themselves; I should have remembered that. But, and here’s the question I was trying to ask: why no pink MacBook Airs? Why no pink iPads? Why no iPads in a wooden case?
It’s not that I don’t understand why they have made these sentimental interfaces – it’s that I don’t understand why they only do it in the software. That’s where I see the dichotomy.
The most sensible answer I’ve had so far is that the devices “become” the apps, but the disparity in the two aesthetics is so marked that I’m not sure I can believe that that’s the reason.
Why juxtapose two aesthetics that have been at war for 50 years? Is that really necessary to “make the device become the app”?
Microsoft design has always been cold, corporate and unapproachable- that’s why Clippy and the "My"disease was so incongrous with the rest of the Windows experience. But I think Apple get away with it: I remember how long it took to teach my mother the concept of “files”- that they could contain anything, be accessed from several places, from anywhere, by any app, and be searched and indexed.
Apple seem to want to get rid of this flawed mental model of a generic digital “thing” for the majority of users, and make files parts of the unseen nuts and bolts of the system. What matters to most people are not “files” and “folders”, but “songs” and “playlists”,"books"and “libraries”.
The difficulty curve is so steep with computers that Apple have allowed compromise in their pristine aesthetic to benefit the user experience. That’s probably not something that Microsoft will be able to to with Metro by the looks of things, even though as a visual designer, I much prefer the aesthetic!
On the device level, I think Apple sees the device (and to a certain extent, the OS, as a neutral “window” onto content and task-driven function, and only sacrifice aesthetics when it will accelerate the learning curve.
- Andy Birchwood
I think Apple hardware stays minimalist so it won’t clash horribly with all the different aesthetic styles apps can have. The pixels can turn into anything, therefore the frame must not call attention to itself in any way. However, if the apps all looked like the new Windows mobile/Calvetica interface, it might call so much attention to the minimalism of the frame that it would be intimidating to most casual users, implying on some level “I’m from the artsy, exclusive future, and I’m better than you and all the objects you’re used to interacting with—if you touch me, you’d better know what you’re doing.” Even if the actual UI were super clear, it’s still a bit unfamiliar, and that unfamiliarity is one extra notch of intimidation. To casuals, seeing familiar materials that look the way you expect them to is a down-home-country backpat of relief. You can do this, you know what this is, don’t you WANT to touch it? It’ll be ok.
That being said, that light beige leather is HORRENDOUS. The reason for this, though, is that it’s the wrong stuff; it’s incredibly localized and evocative of the wrong thing: it’s the color of crappy souvenirs from a particular region of the US, and nothing else. The reasoning may have gone like this: We want it to look soft, to beg for a touch and make the user forget the glass in between. Soft calendar material=leather. Dark leather is for executives. What’s left…?
You are so wrong
‘regressive aesthetic infantilism’ – Dont forget you write this as a top 1% design-douche. I can say that without insulting you as I’m a douchebag too ;-) The view from the botom however is very different…
As far as MS goes – they’ve over specified the design to the extreme, this will restrict them in terms of innovation. But yes, its a nice UI if typography’s your thing
The Dieter Rams aesthetic of their hardware is to make desirable, to sell. (I heart Rams btw)
The ‘regressive aesthetic infantilism’ on the inside is actually why Apple is the worlds most valuable brand – they make technology usable, human, familiar…. democratised. So anyone, ie not just douchebags, can do amazing shit.
ps sorry to call you a douchebag…. but hopefully you get my point ;-)
You are so RIGHT. We were talking in the halls at work yesterday and brought up this very fact. You completely nailed the issue with this post. However, it is a subtle point, one which the nay saying commenters clearly are failing to understand.
Your key point is that Apple does BOTH and can’t make up it’s mind. That is the problem, not that skeuomorphic design is in itself bad. Well, actually, it is bad but that’s likely more of a personal design aesthetic and a harder topic to be definitive about.
@nathanwilliams you flatter me: I’m no design-douche. For the record, I’m a tech-douche (a tech-douche trying to stand at the intersection of liberal arts and technology).
@scottjenson yes, that’s what I was trying to say. I personally dislike skeuomorphic design, and I don’t think it has the properties that some commenters are claiming for it, but that’s not easily provable.
What does seem to be undeniable (to me) is that these are conflicting aesthetics. I’m interested in the idea that the devices are modernist so that they can become a window on an app, a window that effectively disappears such is its modesty. But I’m not convinced by that argument because it also works equally for apps like Mail or Safari which don’t have the slightest trace of skeuomorphism.
The Ap Store may be a good indication that Apple does not have an interest in default apps. The strategy is for consumers to customize the devices according to personal aesthetics.
In total disagreement. Why in the world would Apple need to decide that "it’s either one or the other, on look and feel issues. One design involves the look and feel of hardware devices, that must look "modern"for a very simple and obvious reason.
The other design decision has to do with software. Except to troll for comments, or Apple-bash, I can’t see a single reason for even taking up this issue. Software that places a user in the context of a familiar “look and feel” is an excellent practice.
Apple didn’t design Mac hardware to look like a desktop, they put that into the software design, where it made so much sense, and felt so natural, because it put things in a familiar context, it changed the entire world of computing, forever.
@scottjensen Q: Why SHOULD they make their mind up? It’s not actually a PROBLEM – it’s just a matter of taste – which is what @jameshiggs is saying
There is no issue here
Oh – and the app in question – wasn’t actually designed by Apple if you look closely ;-)
James Higgs – Mail and Safari don’t have the lightest trace of skeuomorphism, because those Apps didn’t even exist in the design period that you use as a basis for all of your previous arguments.
Those Apps have not been in existence long enough to be “derivative objects that retains ornamental design cues to a structure that was necessary in the original.”
All you have to do is look at the way TV was not accepted and an Internet experience, until engineers and designers began realizing that the experience had to be “more TV-like”, in order to gain widespread acceptance and adoption.
@gary etie – you say that the hardware has to “look modern for a very simple and obvious reason” but don’t say what that reason is. I’m genuinely intrigued to know what you think that reason is, when it isn’t true of the software. That was the entire point of my post.
I’d also be interested in how you feel Find My Friends makes so much sense and feels so natural when there is no real world alternative for it to mimic. And also why, say, Mail is not skeuomorphic when iCal is.
(I should perhaps point out that I love Apple products and use them every day – I’m in no way suggesting that they aren’t on top of things, or trying to “bash” them. It’s just that I’m intrigued by what I see as a fascinating dichotomy in taste.)
@gary etie – sorry those comments crossed in the ether. Surely Mail very definitely did exist in the world before email was invented?
James. I do find it an interesting question actually even if the blogosphere has been busy on the topic for well over a year bit.ly/bOu5pK bit.ly/tqtP5n. There IS a disconnect between the aesthetic sensibility that combines haptic surfaces so skilfully in the iPod and iPad. Possibly one could say there’s a 1000 year old tradition to draw on in arranging physical materials to be aesthetically pleasing and fit for purpose. The design of interfaces is a mere 30 or 40 years old and technology is moving so rapidly (touchscreen and mobile for example) that aesthetic decision making has very little time to become usefully enculturated, take on the kind of patina of use-bahaviour and emotional resonance that we associate with for example ,reflective surfaces or brushed metal.
You undermine your own argument (but not fatally) by including so much subjective assessment in there and of course whether one prefers Appel or Microsoft, modernism or post-modernism is entirely a matter of individual distinction and somewhat irrelevant to the argument. The Bauhaus as a building is full of lovely resonant decorative touches (such as the light fixtures) and don’t get me started on the decorative effects of the Barcelona Pavilion. Schlemmer, Feininger, Anni Albers, Kandinsky?
I think the problem lies somewhere in the use context of these hyper modern objects. As Dane Petersen notes, affordance depends on some level of coherence between function and representation. My reading of your post is that the coherence has come dramatically adrift. Why? because design isn’t an organised system, it includes regressive and awkward looking conflicts. Aesthetic function constantly evolves as society and context transform while new uses and behaviours emerge.
Certainly wouldn’t agree that a desktop icon is a metaphorical use of the word icon by the way. I think you’re talking more about cultural signifiers than design metaphors where icons are concerned. Although the use of files and folders is certainly metaphorical…
I have a wood case for my iPhone, and it is quite awesome.
James, nice post.
You did miss an angle. Apple has historically updated the look and feel of its operating system prior to a major shift in hardware. Remember the Macs with the translucent plastic around the screens? And the first renditions of the Mac OS that had translucent windows? At some point, the edge of the windows all changed to a steel hue … and about a year later, all the Macs killed clear plastic and went aluminum.
You could be right, and this may be a design gaffe by Apple. But I wonder with the recent (incredibly popular) leather cover on the iPad 2, if the intrusion of wood- and leather-feeling imagery in the OS signals that Apple hardware may be redesigned soon with more hardware elements? After all, how much further can the design company push glass screens, because eventually all that is left is a pane of glass.
If so, it’s not a design flaw, but a design integration. Here’s me, awaiting a new MacBook pro with a comfy leather back.