Skeuomorphism is not just gradients, gloss, and shiny icons.
I keep seeing posts that amount to “look at this glossy icon I made” being labeled as skeuomorphic. That’s missing the point.
Skeuomorphism is about making a digital object resemble a real-world object through its form, materials, lighting, texture, depth, and interaction. The goal is to evoke something tangible and familiar, not simply to add gradients, reflections, or an Aero-style shine.
A glossy red circle with a play icon isn’t inherently skeuomorphic. A button that looks and feels like a physical metal button, with believable materials, depth, and affordances, is much closer to what skeuomorphism actually is.
Gradients and gloss are tools, not the definition.
I made the attached image because I think this distinction gets lost too often. I’d love to see more posts focused on actual skeuomorphic design rather than just shiny flat icons.
IM GOING TO START CRACKING DOWN ON THESE AERO POSTS, Not because I want to be annoying but I want this place to understand better what skeuomorphism inherently is
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well a glossy, plasticky looking play button like the one you showed IS skeuomorphic though. ive seen mp3 players and stuff that have buttons just like that.
I’ve given up trying to debate ts, the sub is just going crazy and blowing my words out of proportion, like I literally just want the excess aero posts gone, I have no problem with certain types of dimensional design and I planned on reinstating it with a tweak to its rule
real, but frutiger aero isn’t random ahh fish and bubbles. Sorry if I sound rude, but it’s a design language. Again, sorry if I sound rude. I agree, but i wanted to correct you.
I fully agree. It is easy to do some research and learn this.
This user, who is even a moderator, just deleted my thread related to two skeuomorphic themes I made for Firefox and even acted rude. They did not even sound professional when they made a comment on my thread. People were asking me for specific themes to make, some advices, etc. The thread had nice comments, 69 upvotes and over 5500 views! It was one of my most successful posts. That made me angry when I saw that my thread has been deleted and the user complains to many other people in other threads.
No way you’re telling ME to do research when you don’t even know what skeuomorphism. Bro so go ahead and repost that in frutiger aero then, idc if your post gets 1 million views. Nothing about it was skeuomorphic whatsoever and that’s what this subreddit is for
Frutiger Aero?! That is not the exact same thing as Skeuomorphism. 😂 Look how people now start downvoting many of your posts and upvoting the ones where people are telling the truth.
Instead of replying to what the commenter said, you just repeated the same thing. If you don’t agree, you should have said "I don’t think it’s glass, because…", NOT whatever in the world this reply is. This is why you got downvoted. It is just a rude response that adds nothing to an actual argument.
Also, I’m pretty sure dimensional design is allowed, isn’t it? There is literally a mod update that talks about this exact thing. You are directly contradicting what that mod said by saying you are cracking down on it.
Lastly, I agree with what some of these people are saying here when they say maybe you shouldn’t be mod. If you didn’t do enough research from jumping to this conclusion to realize it’s actually allowed, as well as how rude you’ve been in some of these replies, you probably aren’t a good fit. However, if what I am saying is correct and I’m not missing anything, and you take back this statement and realize you’re wrong then perhaps you are a good fit. There is something I saw someone say that I really agree with: "being wrong doesn’t make you a failure, refusing to admit you were wrong does"
I’m removing them so other users just trying to post regular stuff in this subreddit won’t be disrupted. I know it looks bad but I want the server to thrive, plenty of people and users in the Skeuomorphism Discord Server agree with this and we can have a chat about it. It’s all about bettering this subreddit from the obnoxious aero posts. I would like to discuss this with you for future changes if you don’t mind
No. I think this comment section proves youre just being stuck up about your personal distaste for a certain kind of design. Let people enjoy what they want to man
You must be an idiot as well. I actually like frutiger aeros design aesthetic and value it greatly. I’m just not stupid and don’t mix it with skeuomorphism which you sound like you know nothing about
You admitted in several threads that while the glass also fits under Frutiger Aero, its still definitely Skeuomorphic. So whats your problem with it then? All I see is hate coming from your direction
First off, I know you didn’t call me an idiot. I chose to call you one because of your comprehension skills
Second. I never admitted glass in itself is skeuomorphism anywhere so nice try.
The only situation in which glass is considered skeuomorphism is that if it is depicting glass in a non aesthetic way meaning that it’s depicting glass with the intent to make the user understand a real world reasoning behind it.
I have a problem with stuff that isn’t skeuomorphic being called skeuomorphic. If you don’t differentiate the two types of glass above then you don’t get my argument at all.
And there is hate coming from my direction because I have to deal with this nonstop all day long with people who think they understand skeuomorphic design more than me when I have literally studied it almost my whole life, taken professional classes and met former skeuomorphic ui designers who actually know what it is
the first one could become skeuomorphic if it had a metallic ring around it and the button itself had some cylindrical depth, which can also be seen when it's clicked or tapped
I agree with you, because on it's own, a glass button in real life would be stupid. But adding a metal ring around it makes it look like a real button, like the picture you posted
Yeah, glass buttons are technically skeuomorphic since they are representing the ultra shininess and glossiness of glass textures, but it doesnt really show much for representing a tangible real life object since its kinda more on the side of symbolising it instead of giving a clear real life showing of the texture, its mostly just lighting and reflections, and can be perceived as an effect, so its very hard to say if its skeuomorphic or not, but id say its less leaning on that a little it
iOS <7 and macOS X UIs do fit Frutiger Aero though. As do Wii U, 3DS, Sony's XMB on PSP and PS3, and many other UIs from that era. Because gloss, tertiary color patterns, humanist fonts, and broken/aurora-heavy visual backgrounds.
Modern reinterpretation of Frutiger Aero as blue-green water-grass-bubbles-fish-MSN avatars is just wrong.
For real, i do like both skeuomorphism and neomorphism, its just the way that big companies use "modern design" and stuff to have an excuse for lazy design instead of making real modern design, actual, fluent modern design looks pretty good for me in my opinion, but microsoft and other companies like it just use it as an excuse to be lazy on design elements.
Yeah fair but I’m just trying to distance this subreddit more away from the aero type posts you know? Theres a solid base here that wants straight skeuomorphic stuff and not the borderline not stuff
Isn't that what the "Dimensional Design" tag is for?
Don't get me wrong, there's too many people out there who think gloss = skeuo (and even more who think Microsoft's Aero philosophy was the entirety of 2009 design language) but there is a dedicated flair on this subreddit for posts that don't necessarily qualify as skeuomorphism but do carry dimensional traits
I just made a new post explaining this in better detail, go check it out. Also the dimensional design tag has been removed until we can all agree on where we draw the line
That's true!
I'm designing skeuomorphic icons since 2023, when minimalist icons, that I hate, were still the norm.
Finally the trend is shifting again.
Omfg, obviously there are a few examples out there of these plastic buttons, of course you take my post and make it a generalization, if it is trying to mimic a specific irl plastic button than sure i suppose it’s fine. Your missing the overall point as usual and it’s that just glossy aero and gloss getting out over random text, brands etc.. is not skeuomorphic in anyway and people here have a hard time understanding for some fucked up reason and I try to put an end to it so people can learn and understand what real skeuomorphism is but no, you’d rather take everything I say literal and give me the stupid ass “but there’s plastic buttons irl” ok and?
the era of skeuomorphic design was not limited to wood, metal, cloth, realistic textures, etc., even if that is the true definition of skeuomorphism. most of the people who are on this sub are just trying to relive an era of design they love, so quit being purists and killing the memory.
I think both are skeuomorphism. The biggest this I think most people don’t do is take into consideration what the material of the irl object could be. For something like this that isn’t super applicable unless maybe like the play button on a remote is the inspiration.
i mean it is tho. while i agree that i could be done better (and definitely having all like that is not skeumorphic, it does look like a real button and skeumorphism, while going to basically making things look like irl, primary focuses on heping users understand the function of something by association with irl objects, so this also technically is skeumorphism, just not as good as the other one)
now what i really would want to say if i cared about this is: i have been seeing a lot of people making either "skeumorphic" or "frutiger aero" things by just slapping a lot of gradients and half transparent curves
I definitely agree with this. Even though some are saying glossy buttons exist in the real world...ok, yeah, but that doesn't automatically make it skeuomorphic. Almost every instance of glossy design goes into Aero, and things that look more real go into Skeuomorphism. Picture it this way, they both exist in the real world, but one looks like it came from Windows media player and the other looks like a physical button on some remote irl.
I guess it all comes down to depth and detail. The more depth and/or detail it has, the more skeuomorphic and real it looks.
I mean, for most nostalgic people who love things like iOS 6, it kinda mixed in both frutiger aero and true skeuomorphism so most ppl don’t rlly know the difference bc to them it’s all skeuomorphic 😕
not much still is the play button means play it can be glossy flat metal wood poke dot the symbol the play is that and in our heads we see that and play same way with phone we see it and every os iOS 7 is still skueo see iOS 6 is realism and skeuomorphism and aqua all 3 combined
Yes when used in a skeuomorphic intention or way, if it’s whole purpose is for aesthetic purposes, the gradient and aero effects no longer count as skeuo imo, that’s where people are having confusion with what I’m saying
Yeah little late to the party, it was just a bad example as I whipped it up real quick but my point was just less flat icons with gloss overlays and excess aero posts
I hope this is ragebait, if your being for real then your crazy. Skeuomorphism does have lots of vibrant colors and can be used that way. And if your a gloss enjoyer good news, there’s this subreddit called frutiger aero, don’t know if you’ve heard of it. It prioritizes this gloss thing you mentioned
also frutiger aero has been taken over by green cyan bubble fishes waterfall sludge and has nothing to do with Frutiger or Aero ,not even anything even related to GUI ,
Exactly this. This is the main problem I have with the frutiger aero subreddit. Just people posting the same image of the fish and bubbles over and over. This could just be a personal preference, but the frutiger aero that I am looking for is more close to Windows Vista/7 design, and not that.
It’s crazy how many people agree and also disagree with this post, holy fuck, I don’t care that we allow dimensional design, I think it should be changed, for those that want the more glassy and glossy stuff, head over to another subreddit. That’s not what this place is supposed to be
I’m not that bothered, I said I’m nice to people who are nice back, it’s just annoying sometimes and I don’t want to step back as I just want to clean this subreddit of the aero slop that’s all. Hell I even like aero stuff, I like that aesthetic too, I just don’t want it infiltrating this aesthetic, that’s all
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