An Experiment with Apple iOS 7
With Apple releasing its most recent operating system iOS 7 for the iPhone, Craig Le Grice, newly appointed innovation director for Blue Rubicon thought he'd try playing about with the system - here's what he came up with.
Apple has taken a huge step forward in 'flattening' its icons and creating 'invisible design', where the physical software blends in to the background, allowing content to be the hero - something that its hardware has successfully done for a long time now. Its had a mixed response. While most designers have given it a nod, it's fair to say that it's not entirely flat. The use of gradients has divided many. The super-vibrant colour palette has caused even more debate.
What I have done is refine the colour palette slightly, sticking to 'created colours', rather than the 'straight out of the tube' feel that the new official ones have. I've also flattened everything entirely, doing away with any suggestion of dimension beyond its actual pixel-depth.
The main area of change is the skeuomorphic and metaphorical elements. In my tweak, they're gone. We don't need a physical telephone handset (from a very old phone at that!) to represent the phone app. An envelope for email is now completely inappropriate and - whilst I have a great love for all things Apple - the new camera icon is questionable as it takes even more from a physical (analog) device than the previous one did.
I'm not suggesting these icons are 'right' or perfect, but they do demonstrate what the 'next step' of Apple's flattening could have been. Indeed, the result is quite abstract and would take a little getting used to - especially for regular users. But, I do believe that it is definitely time to move on from metaphorical design references - like the 'floppy disk' being used for 'save' functions etc.
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