On: iOS 7 Tech Talks

[chadwickthebold]

Is it just me or do those icons look like they were drawn by a 5-year-old with a crayon?

[josefresco → chadwickthebold]

I wouldn't go that far, but they are bad. I think it will take some time for Apple's designers to adjust to the new style. Or maybe this was so far down the designer food chain that it got plopped onto the desk of an over-worked and under qualified graphic intern.

[cheshire137 → josefresco]

Can you clarify what's bad about them?

[potatolicious → cheshire137]

I don't think they're that bad, but they're inconsistent.

Part of the whole thing about going flat is to rid yourself of unnecessary decor. This also means moving away from extreme levels of detail in favor of big, bold symbology - whittle down to the basic symbol and use that.

I think they've done this well for NYC and SF - large swathes of color, immediately recognizable symbology, and large undetailed shapes that are still recognizable.

Ditto Japan, though that one sort of derived itself.

Berlin, London, and Shanghai are weird though. Berlin and Shanghai especially - highly detailed silhouettes on what is otherwise a very spartan backdrop. Seems incongruous, especially when paired with the first two icons in the set.

[joeblau → potatolicious]

Inconsistently consistent with the rest of iOS 7 though... :)

[gurkendoktor → potatolicious]

I actually thought that Shanghai was the best one. Unlike on iOS 7, nothing is centred in the other icons.

[coldtea → chadwickthebold]

No, it's also other people that are not appreciating a certain deliberate design aesthetic.

You could show them the work of great Swiss designers for example, and they would think the same.

[gurkendoktor → coldtea]

I don't care a lot about the deeper artistic value of this all, but I haven't seen anyone deny that this design is very polarising. Much more so than the visual style that has been used in previous WWDC slides.

The question remains whether a polarising design makes sense for things like developer sessions, or Apple's "iOS for businesses" website a while ago. If not, then it might technically be good design, but used in the wrong context.

[coldtea → gurkendoktor]

>I don't care a lot about the deeper artistic value of this all, but I haven't seen anyone deny that this design is very polarising.

Yes, but polarising is not necessarily bad. It actually means "some think it's bad, some think it's good, and all think it's interesting enough to talk about".

>The question remains whether a polarising design makes sense for things like developer sessions, or Apple's "iOS for businesses" website a while ago. If not, then it might technically be good design, but used in the wrong context.

Well, since they went with this aesthetic for iOS7 they will have to be consistent for their other iOS related material too.