Frutiger Aero

What does lain think about the frutiger aero aesthetic? >Frutiger Aero, also referred to as Web 2.0 Gloss, was a widespread design style that dominated various fields, including advertising, media, stock imagery, and technology, from approximately 2004 to 2013. Emerging after the Y2K aesthetic, Frutiger Aero is distinguished by its extensive use of skeuomorphism, glossy textures, vibrant color palettes (especially greens and blues), and nature-inspired elements such as cloudy skies, tropical fish, water, and bubbles. The aesthetic also features lens flares, bokeh effects, Abstract Tech patterns, aurora-inspired gradients, and the frequent use of the Frutiger typeface. Personally, I believe that it's the most beautiful design aesthetic to date. It's so fresh I can almost taste it. The current mainstream design paradigms (glassmorphism/fluent design) is directly inspired by it but fails to capture the same feeling. A few examples of designs that fit the aesthetic include Windows Vista/XP/7, iOS 6, OS X Snow Leopard, the PS3, the Wii and the DS. Does lain know of some other (maybe more recent) uses of the aesthetic?

I always liked it except when a program icon designer just overused the icon in a sphere thing which that kind of was overdone. Though I prefer more adjacent designs of the later 90s and early 2000s that is a little more on the darker side. Regardless I miss things looking like objects instead of symbols and brought together by vibe instead of shape and flatness. I think old skins should be brought back. i heard it was kind of standardized so shouldnt be too hard. Could try to incorporate them into Strawberry music player and a fork of Winamp since they removed their original code unless someone archived it? I found out there is an archive of old Sonique skins this one is one I like a lot. https://web.archive.org/web/20040430032016/http://sonique.lycos.com/customize/archive.php?type=skin&view=detail&record=20001222170142 There also is some WMP skins here https://wmpskinsarchive.neocities.org/

>>11881 Back in the day I hated everything about it. It looked cheesy and cheap, gave off the vibes of a philippinean massage salon, made my computer slower, and all of those effects were the first thing I disabled on every windows installation I had since windows xp. It did not make me feel fresh or inspired about the coming techno-utopian era. I saw it as one more corporate iteration of making computers more appealing to even dumber morans, an evolution of the colorful windows xp themes and silly gradients. I felt the corporate machine behind this calculated design language, heard it scooping the bottom of the barrel of consumers - they constructed this glossy language to speak to those last computer-resistant layers of humanity, those ones who were spooked by sharp corners, precise fonts and lack of animations, those who will instinctively salivate when looking at the candy-shaped icons. The computers felt like they were made for "them", and the only good thing about it all was that it was just an annoying default setting that I could run away from, by switching to the classic theme, and using total commander and what not.

>>11883 It looked and function well on Mac OS X Snow Leopard.

>>11881 A lot of the original frutager aero nostalgia came from people who hated flat UI/touch-centric design and missed when things were made for computers. then it got popular on sites like tiktok where it became this nebulous "this is the future they took from us" movement. Personally I could care less about that but I do see where they're coming from, flat UI/minimalism has been getting ridiculous and is more associated with slow applications/websites funnily enough. >widgets Loved those when I was younger, even though KDE has them they're not the same as the win7 widgets.

>>11882 Understandable. 90s-2000s probably were the most creative in terms of design. I feel like FA was the last design paradigm that added some originality to the field. After, everyone's been just copying whatever Apple is doing. >>11883 Interesting. Do you feel any differently about the aesthetic now? Did you also dislike the colorful look of Windows XP? >>11885 Also the same paradigms are reused by corporations everywhere. I feel like we've come full cycle in this regard. Modern flat design screams 'corporate!' about as much as the gray and beige designs from the 90s, when contrasted with something like Windows XP or 7.

>>11881 >What does lain think about the fruitiger areo aesthetic? i think it's yummy as hell

>>11881 It’s what liminal space would be, if it were happy. Has a clean and surreal feel to it but juicy, naive and playfully ugly. I like it when limited to a enclosed space, otherwise it becomes dystopian

Nostalgia stuff is just fake roleplay for Zoom3rs. I like clean, simple modern designs, like this site’s default theme or new Linux. No way I’d seriously make my PC look like old Windows. 11882 But yeah, this is kinda cool...

>>11993 > Nostalgia stuff is just fake roleplay for Zoom3rs. No, I was around when this was a thing as have others. Just a lot of people get tired of the homogenous flat "clean" look because while it seems pleasant at first since it lets you focus on the desktop more becomes boring to have design unchanged for around over 15 years now where every site, every program, every icon looks the same in how undetailed it is and when it has to be detailed like a game it breaks the design aesthetic. It's no surprise with 4k monitors being more common there is people wanting detail again instead of simplicity. Since there isn't really a new design the only place to look for an alternative is the past.

>>11997 I sill prefer flat icons over this "frutiger aero" icons. The Furryfox one look like soykaf, yes, but the Librewolf, Brave, Mullvad, Tor, etc. icons for example, all look great in my opinion, and they're all 'flat'. Their design is also quite different from each other, well, about as different and original as old "frutiger aero" ones were from each other. Also, that first icon was really awful. The 2017-2019 one was really when things went downhill, the ones inbetween were fine, but I blame this on soykafty design, not lack of details. >I was around when this was a thing as have others. So was I. I'd have to be 5 to not have had any contact with muh frutiger aero. I meant roleplay as in nostalgia larping. >Since there isn't really a new design Yes, there is. Linux generally doesn't follow this trend. (e.g., Linux mint default theme) This whole thing assumes that mainstream software is all there is, but why bother with Google, Mozilla, or Microsoft's choices when we can just reject their lousy tools entirely? I also barely notice software icons in general. This is also more about corporate refinement culture than the graphical design trend of the time.

>>11998 > I sill prefer flat icons over this "frutiger aero" icons. I do get the appeal of flat just the standard icons have a tendency to not be very appealing is what I meant. Also fat is hard to deal with when it comes to the windows since if colors in a program match them you can't see where the top bar is if uniform color which is another reason some people dont like it. > Their design is also quite different from each other, well, about as different and original as old "frutiger aero" ones were from each other. Well yes on an individual level but having some degree of uniformity is also nice. Not that it matters since icon packs always can be used changing things up to whatever you want to make things more uniform. > that first icon was really awful. The phenix does look bad yes. >The 2017-2019 one was really when things went downhill, Yes I'd say so. > I blame this on soykafty design, not lack of details. It's because symbolism to represent previous logos like your Pepsi example. The 70s and early 90s and early 2000s Pepsi logos look best to me. Even though 50s logo looks good it doesnt work great as a logo when most people dont even get to have bottle caps from corporate greed using plastic, though im going off a tangent there. Current one just looks closer to the Obama campaign logo than the Pepsi log and feels off balance. > Yes, there is. Linux generally doesn't follow this trend. (e.g., Linux mint default theme) Does it? The Linux Mint default doesn't look very unique to me aside from color pallet. > This is also more about corporate refinement culture than the graphical design trend of the time. Yes that too but even non corporate people just follow the same trends to match. Not always bit it happens.

>>11999 >Current one just looks closer to the Obama campaign logo than the Pepsi log and feels off balance. Not really anymore, seems like they've kind of rolled back to the 80s logo with their newest one.

Its my favorite windows theme ever, shame it died out

Why are ui designers so allergic to gradients

>>12330 Color banding of LCD displays maybe.

>>12330 looks bad >>12318 you might like this https://frutigeraeroarchive.org/

Prefer clear & simple; it's the better UI for me. Personal is best.

I think it's a soykafty term for many different loosely related artstyles. Sure I'd like for it to make a return, but it probably won't, and all the kids nostaligizing about it on tik tok today are cringe and fake. >>12318 There are Windows Aero themes on 10 if you look hard enough. Probably 11 too. I'm running one rn.

>>12697 >clear >simple Pick one. Current design trend tries both and fails on clear because it is too simple. >>12699 You can like an old aesthetic without having to be nostalgic for it wanting it back. Doesn't matter if it was before their time.

My absolute loathing for this aesthetic--which I only ever saw as bloated, wasteful use of system resources--was one of the original reasons that I jumped ship off of Windows to Linux.

>>12702 >bloated The icons and wallpapers add basically nothing to system resource usage. Some effects can use more, yes but only Windows did things like translucency of the windows, at the time anyway.

>>12702 poser glitterboy no one gave a fuarrrk about bloat back then

>>12715 performance way always a concern, you would intentionally go back to win95 visual style because it wasn't hardware accelerated and would avoid creating rendering issues, this was still the goto solution with dual monitor refresh issues on 7 and became only impossible to use with 10

I just want simple bold colors