Liquid Glass
Is Just Frutiger Aero With Extra Steps
In art, especially digital art there is something mystical drawing designers to push the envelope past the point the engineers had ever imagined it to go. As with the burst of nostalgia (deserved or not,) Frutiger Aero was ahead of its time, a push towards digital realism. After skeuomorphism set the stage the translucent blurry glass effect trotted out to take advantage of the high powered graphics cards of the age to flaunt complex gradients 3d shapes and realistic shadows.
The internet was and in many ways still is wrestling with its identity as a place and a service. Is being “on Facebook” a place that we inhabit? Actions have permanence and friends appear to be in our vicinity or is it a service like a party line where people can hop on and off, to soak in, vent into the void, and disconnect to return to real life. I grew up watching how our culture’s relationship to this tool teetering one way or the other. And around the dawn of the iPhone, the internet tried on something more tangible. Attempting to have weight and substance, icons went through a metallic, almost gummy transformation. They looked slick to touch like a well-polished set of gadgets.
Flat Design
By 2012, the top down junk drawer look of a home screen had, as all art does, gone too far before the pendulum swung in the other direction: Flat. UX Design of the time was not ready for people’s relationship to the internet changing from place to service. It established new rules of how we orient in this digital space and what we come to expect. There was no longer a hunger for digitizing a physical object into a 3D space on a screen. After all, those computational resources can be put to better use like streaming video or real-time data.
The era killed by Flat iOS 7 was posthumously dubbed Frutiger Aero and smarter people than I have reflected this art moment much more in depth than I can go. But a strange thing has happened since then. Apple has released Liquid Glass, a sea change from the flat design of iOS 7 that dictated the de-facto design language of the internet for nearly 15 years.
Flip to 2025
I write this in a tumultuous time, online gatekeeping has risen for protecting children who are chronically online from the pornographic and predatory places on the internet. While I have my reservations about such a heavy handed solution, it only underscores my point to where the “placeness” or lack thereof is a something that the internet is constantly grappling with. That it is everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Some places in the real world have boundaries and limitations, most if this is controlled by weight. A business or place is defined by its physicality and the things that exist within its perimeter. It is only natural that we as a species project this onto the 2-Dimensional screen with glossy overlays, harsh shadows, and soft chrome finished.
This I feel is reactionary, a retreat from the bland, sameness of the existing paradigm of ad-driven, transnational internet and seeking refuge in the tangible (or mock-tangible) permanence of a 3D world with weight and identity now that the speed and technology support graphics intensive interfaces. Like the return of crystal cases.
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But hey, if you want a place where true web creativity can shine, then I highly recommend awwwards.com. A site dedicated to showcasing places on the web that break the traditional mold to show true works of online experiences.