The biggest controversy with iOS 7 is probably the super-ugly set of homescreen icons (especially safari, but also the fact that most icons simply are too big within the rounded-square boundaries). One designer decided to take a stab at it and redesigned the icons (on the left) vs their original ones. We think this looks MUCH better! What do you think?
Check out the full size image and give props to the designer (Leo Drapeau) at His dribbble profile
We installed the new iOS 7 right away and we wanted to share both our thoughts and a nice set of screenshots from the release with our readers along with some commentary where we think it’s necessary to say something. Overall we have mixed feelings about the new OS design. Some elements are simply stunning (blurred navbars and tabbars), while some look like they’ve been done in a rush (the safari icon, the Control Center arrows are way too thick and so forth). On a side-note Apple also now allows developers to transfer their apps to another developer account. That can be handy – I hope Rovio transfers Angry Birds to me based on a typo ;)
What we like
The blurred, semi-transparent backgrounds of some elements are just plain stunning. We also like the general white tone of the OS that differentiates it from all the competition (both Windows Phone and Android are much darker). Siri looks simply stunning. The new UX features in Safari (pulling down for an unified search / address bar rocks!). The new keyboard is also pretty sweet looking. The lockscreen and weather (the do share a common aesthetic) are also beautiful. So is the new search bar and folder view. An oh the music icon finally has a white note one it! Just as we hoped it will!
What we don’t like
There’s still A LOT of inconsistency between all the apps. They have different font sizes and spacings, different color schemes (the keyboard sometimes changes the color too) and some of the new icons are plain ugly. There’s also a big inconsistency within the icons – some have very soft gradients while others – like mail, have hard and long gradients on them. Instead of unifying the look it makes it actually just as distracting as before. Apple showed some pretty advanced font alignments (with rulers and measurements and stuff) but all in all in some places the fonts really look out of place. Sometimes it’s better to judge things by the eye than with the numbers apparently. Some elements in the presentations were also pretty off (like the headline above the AirDrop bubbles – it’s not in the center of the screen but more to the left and it shows!). The control center arrow is WAAAAAY too thick and it looks out of place there visually. Also the messages are bulky and too close to each other. The whole messaging app doesn’t have enough breathing room (white space) and they don’t really look refined at all. More like a quick mockup as the internal paddings of the messages are way too big, while the external margins are way too small… Also some tab-bar icons are only blue when active (app store and contacts) while others are all blue (safari and maps).
What we’ve noticed
The icons are more rounded now which also changes the perception of the homescreen a bit. Also the contacts have now been put inside circles. This is actually a bit odd as there are not many circles anywhere inside iOS (the icons, even when more rounded are still rounded squares). But the circles do look nice. Some icons have thicker edges than others, some are very narrow and some are very wide. That all creates a bit of inconsistency.
Our judgement
We think it’s a step in an interesting direction but this is not what we’d expect from Apple. There’s too many little mistakes or weird, mismatched elements and inconsistency for my taste. But since it’s the first version of a developer beta we think a lot of the stuff will be refined in the final version and maybe that’s the idea Apple has – to get some good feedback now and refine iOS 7 for the fall release.
Screenshots
And here are some screenshots we took today:
More after the break.
We have discussed earlier that Apple has had some poor color choices for it’s icons – namely the desktop iTunes icon and the iOS music app icon. The iOS music icon especially should have the notes in white like it was before, and apparently with all the upcoming iOS 7 visual changes it finally will. We’ll keep you posted on the design updates as soon as they appear.
Fingers crossed for some visual goodness and cool new UX ideas because we don’t want another Android or Windows phone with just going minimal. If it indeed goes minimal we want it to be unique :)
The hype is building up before WWDC this year about major redesigns for both iOS and OS X (which is unlikely especially since Apple has pulled engineers from OS X to deliver iOS on schedule, and OS X is by far a more complex OS)
We think it’s a cool direction for both iOS 7 and OS X (what cat comes after Mountain Lion? Anybody knows?)
People say “modern, flat designs are all the rage” which is of course true, but looking back they actually always were. They’re just being refined as people understand the technology, hi-dpi screens and touch inputs more and more.
There has been a lot of speculation about how iOS7 will look like this year and apparently Apple gave us a hint releasing the updated WWDC calendar app. It’s going to be white – everyone said. The whole iOS 7 will be white as snow! Yeah, well, maybe. But judging it just by the WWDC app is not really the right option, because it had a different, white design since last year. And when it was announced last year ahead of WWDC everyone sang the same song – the new iOS 6 will be whiter and flatter and prettier because of the WWDC app!
And guess what? It didn’t change at all then. This year we’re almost sure it will, but let’s wait and see, because the WWDC app is at some points pretty nice looking, but it has it’s flaws that can be forgiven for a one-time event app, but not for the whole OS that everyone will use at least for a year. Take a look at those oversized fonts in the sections (they almost don’t fit). There’s very little whitespace in many screen sections too. Also the font stayed the same.
So what I think is that this whole “whitening” might actually happen inside iOS 7 because most OS’es are actually dark, but it will probably not look this way. This is a slightly different app from the rest of the OS for at least a year and even though parts of it look promising, as a whole it’s a typical iOS 6 app.
PT Sans is another great typeface for body copy that we can use both in apps and websites. Of course it’s also free which is always nice and it’s not helvetica+ ;) I suggest you go ahead and download it from http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/PT-Sans right now.
I’m especially happy to see that we’re not limited to Helvetica Neue, Roboto and Segoe for our mobile designs with great free fonts like this one, Open Sans or Source Sans Pro around :)
Pixelmator developers never cease to amaze us. They released a great update not too long ago, and now it turns out it’s packing a whole other app hidden inside of it. When you press Command + Shift + V the app switches it’s mode and becomes a vector editing tool. It might not yet be an Illustrator replacement, but I really like how the vector tools work and feel like. This is a great way to enhance the possibilities of the app and also some simple logos and shapes can be created from within the app, but in a more streamlined and specified UI. Great work!
You can download Pixelmator 2.2 on the App Store for $15. Blueberry is a free update for all the existing Pixelmator users. I hope to play a bit with the vector tools in Pixelmator / Vectormator and see how they work when there’s actual work to be done. Updates coming soon.
We expressed our love & admiration for Pixelmator a couple of times before, also noting a couple of small issues. (most of them are fixed by now :) But in general it’s one of the apps (and success stories) worth looking at with awe.
Now we can download the 2.2 version, codenamed Blueberry from the App Store and it’s absolutely worth it. At that price ($15) it’s probably the best price-to-features ratio on the planet. Sure – layer styles are nowhere to be found in this version (but they said they’re coming further down the road) but we have some more awesome photo effects (beautiful and very customizable light-leak effects) and vector shapes done in my oppinion better than in Photoshop. They’re both easier to manipulate, handle and edit than what the big brother has to offer.
Adobe moving to fully to the cloud with Pixelmator gaining features and staying at a low price point may in a year or two convince a lot of designers to just switch to a cheaper alternative with a much prettier UI and most of the really useful (at least for web / mobile design) functions are already there. Once we get layer styles a lot can change on the market.
Great job Pixelmator Team!
You can download the app on the mac app store and read more at www.pixelmator.com
Photoshop CS6 has brought a couple of great and not so great additions to the world’s most popular pro graphics app that we already covered. But now after over two months with it the little annoyances don’t seem to be going away in an update anytime soon.
Especially since Adobe has decided that we won’t get a CS7 and should all use Creative Cloud instead. On one hand the deal is great (and pays for itself usually with a portion of a project) but abandoning CS5 and CS6 users and leaving them with not-fixed bugs is kinda not-cool Adobe!
The Font bugs are the most common and most annoying – some fonts take a VERY long time (seconds) to load even on a Retina Macbook Pro with 8GB’s of RAM. Some fonts are smaller in size visually than others, but Photoshop proclaims them bigger for some reason. Setting a consistent font-size among lots of text-fields can be a pain.
I’m keeping the CS6 license, but will probably upgrade to Creative Cloud quite soon. Does anyone know if the CC version of Photoshop (yes it’s apparently a different version with a different update cycle) has those type tool bugs fixed?
With project “Innsbruck” – the apparent Jony Ive led iOS redesign – just a few months away, the web is speculating extensively what will the changes bring. People are speaking of flatter designs, less gradients, shadows, leather, wood and all the other Skeumorphic stuff and that is all good. Purely digital, flat designs are all the rage right now thanks to Microsoft’s innovative approach to Windows. Soon after that, Android and google iOS apps got some nice “flattening” treatments (coincidence? ;)).
The funny thing is that Microsoft is praised so much for the design of it’s system, yet most users choose either iPhone or Android anyway. There’s also one more problem with radical change – unless it’s something really new and great, it will simply be compared to being a Win8 ripoff. And does Apple really want to be the company that copies others?
There’s also the problem of the app-stores – I don’t expect all the developers changing both their apps and their icons to be more “minimal” in any way. And that will bring great inconsistency.
But all that aside I’d be happy to see Skeumorphism go, but it doesn’t necessarily need to be towards superminimal-flat design. It can be something in between that compliments the hardware well. You know, kinda like we tried with that color-coding the OS to the Phone’s color thing back a few months.
Source Sans pro is a great Sans Serif font from Adobe, that has a wide range of languages and a very nice overall design. As helvetica (in it’s many forms) is a bit overused, it’s always great to look for alternatives. You can download the font for free at:
Airbag is a Radiohead inspired Slab Serif Typeface that fits perfectly into any poster or branding design. It’s also free so it’s a no brainer. Go get it now at Simon Stratford’s website.
Photoshop CS6 was released quite a while ago, but as usual, the first versions are ridden with bugs and generally slow, so I finally bought the update yesterday and wanted to share my impressions about it. There was one annoying (very annoying) bug with Middle-Eastern typography setting (instead of East Asian) that I resolved, but more on that later. Now let’s get to what’s cool:
I took on a project recently to create a fake brand of a fast-food restaurant with a traditional Polish drinking angle with vodka shots as main courses and small appetizers to take the edge off.
You can see all the posters at our behance:
http://www.behance.net/gallery/Polevvka-restaurant-branding-and-posters/7733451
This week we have another “body copy” font that can replace Helvetica Neue in at least a few of your designs: introducing Museo Sans 500. The whole typeface is not free, but the 500 and 500 italic versions are so if you’re into finding a way to freshen up your copy designs go ahead and download it now!
Make sure to check out CityFix – we made it and it truly works, no mockups! We even added some real issues around the venue today.
