[HN Gopher] Frutiger Aero
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Frutiger Aero
Author : carlos-menezes
Score : 71 points
Date : 2023-11-15 13:33 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (aesthetics.fandom.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (aesthetics.fandom.com)
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| I would love to see more of this. Flat design just doesn't cut
| it.
| carlos-menezes wrote:
| Although this aesthetic brings me (not so fond) memories of MSN
| malware and peer-to-peer networks, I wholeheartedly agree.
| coldacid wrote:
| Today I learned that CARI[0] exists.
|
| [0]: Consumer Aesthetics Research Institute,
| https://cari.institute/
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| I've had a lot of fun going through their categories over the
| years. Now, I can put names on designs I dislike, like global
| village coffeehouse.
| JusticeJuice wrote:
| If you find that interesting, you also might find the existence
| of WGSN interesting, a product and fashion trend forecasting
| company[0]. If you're making a run of 10,000 items, would be
| nice to know if the design will still be in fashion after the 2
| years it takes to get it to production right? Companies like
| WGSN try predict exactly that.
|
| The odd thing is they're so popular among production businesses
| that it's unclear if they're predicting trends, or setting
| them.
|
| [0]: https://www.wgsn.com/en
| rchaud wrote:
| That middle era of computing between WinXP and Vista, mashing up
| Bryce3D-esque reflective renders of desktop icons with elements
| of videogame console palettes, mostly Wii and PS3.
| gtroja wrote:
| Metacreations Bryce 4 changed my life as a kid. I loved the
| interface
| ckz wrote:
| I've actually starting incorporating the Vista/Aero aesthetic
| again in some recent UI work. Not explicitly in anticipation of
| the 20y trend cycle returning to it and not nearly the same level
| of overall gloss (yet?), but I wouldn't be surprised if it feels
| fresh and new soon enough. :)
|
| Though from a hobbyist perspective I probably own more
| interesting designs falling under Y2K. Transparent PDAs, game
| systems, etc. have always been cool in my book!
| aquova wrote:
| While I do have fond memories of this aesthetic (although more
| for old Mac OS X than Windows), and do prefer it over the flat
| design, I'm curious what will come next. Looking at this site's
| other pages, it seems that it's about once a decade that these
| trends tend to change, and we're about due.
| thom wrote:
| Excited for the Windows control panel to be rendered in _three_
| different UI paradigms in five years time, I guess.
| jszymborski wrote:
| If I had to make a guess, it'll have Brutalist DNA.
| voldacar wrote:
| Metalheart hopefully
| earthboundkid wrote:
| This is not allowed to be retro. I forbid it.
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| Understandable, have a nice day.
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| You're right. It's not retro. It's timeless.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| It would be nice if more modern tech branding / marketing used
| the nature aesthetic that Frutiger Aero had. There's something so
| warm and optimistic about it, even if it was greenwashing. The
| most solarpunk aesthetic.
| atleastoptimal wrote:
| I feel the optimism people reminisce over around frutiger aero is
| coupled with the more optimistic view people had of tech at the
| time vs today.
| nvy wrote:
| Yep, back when we still believed the lie of "Don't be Evil",
| and before the tech darlings of yesteryear ruined society by
| turning all of technology into a surveillance panopticon just
| to sell us a few more ads.
|
| I hate the future we inhabit compared to what could have been.
| Lammy wrote:
| Also, we were twelve
| https://www.gocomics.com/tomthedancingbug/2007/06/16
| erickhill wrote:
| Yep, good ol' C64. Sigh... (lord, I'm getting old!)
| tomcam wrote:
| How did Tom the dancing bug slip out of my view? Thanks for
| the callback.
| DrawTR wrote:
| I think that's half the fun of it? There's this sort of squeaky
| clean optimism and hopefulness to it that's just absolutely
| gone in today's universal design language
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> more optimistic view people had of tech at the time vs
| today._
|
| Probably because there was yet not that much weaponized
| targeted advertising, brain rot content, and social media
| designed to make you consume content all day that gives you
| non-stop dopamine, then makes you feel depressed about
| yourself.
|
| Tech was more of an extra tool to aid life IRL, and hadn't yet
| completely absorbed and replaced IRL entertainment and
| interactions. It was easier to separate and limit your on-line
| activity from your daily life than today without the feeling
| that you're missing out.
|
| The online presence was all about niche online communities,
| games, forums, bulleting boards, and chat groups, instead of
| all being absorbed into Subreddits that gamify your engagement
| for upvotes to sell it to investors and advertisers.
|
| Consumer PC hardware at that time was mature and reliable
| enough to not require a PhD or make you hate using it, but
| still progressing quite fast to make you excited about the next
| OS, video games, CPUs and GPUs(back when people could actually
| afford them).
|
| It was a wild transitional period for tech, from 32bit CPUs to
| 64bit, DirectX 8 to 9 to 10, single core CPUs to multi-core,
| some of the best movies, videogames and franchises launching in
| that period, instead of all being sequels, rehashes, reboots
| and remakes of old franchises like today. It was a great time
| to be alive and whatness all that, hence the optimism you
| mentioned.
|
| Oh, and all videogames (and SW in general) shipped as "Gold" on
| discs, fully finished, tested and patched, no bullshit broken
| preorder cash-grabs needing the famous zero-day patches to work
| as advertised, treating their customers as beta-testers, plus
| half the game being sold to you as an extra DLC six months
| later.
| anthk wrote:
| >wild transitional
|
| Not even close to the huge shift from 1989 to 1999.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Meh, PCs weren't so mainstream in consumers' homes back
| then, it was still more a thing for businesses and nerds,
| as the tech was quite limited for entertainment and HW
| still quite expensive for the casual user.
|
| Yes hardware progress was fast, but it was also quite
| expensive and difficult to set up and use, a lot of the
| times buggy and with compatibility issues, and it would get
| outdated far too quickly[1] to the point you'd spend a
| fortune on a new GPU which would be obsolete in a year and
| the company would go bankrupt in 2 years, leaving you with
| no games that would support it anymore, turning you
| expensive GPU in a worthless paperweight.
|
| It was rough being a a consumer back then unless you were
| loaded to afford keeping up with the upgrades and
| stomaching the teething issues and quick obsolescence.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRHIz97L2iI
| julianeon wrote:
| For me this style brings back memories of bad Windows-style
| interfaces, the wallpaper of the background I was looking at as I
| was trying to delete Bonzi Buddy.
| Lammy wrote:
| Seeing Aqua described as "Aero" hurts my inner Mac fanperson
| something fierce. Aqua's aesthetic was Aqua lol
|
| I've been reliving it on my Wallstreet Powerbook
| https://old.reddit.com/r/VintageApple/comments/15s67e8/266_m...
| goldwolff wrote:
| i agree. on tiktok its unbearable
| asow92 wrote:
| I guess I'm officially old now.
| ideasphere wrote:
| Much like in music, I find this hyper-specific genre-mania is
| ultimately just tiring. Regressive retromania that leads to
| pastiche and revivalism at best.
| confd wrote:
| Similarly, I don't mind the concept of "aesthetic" when applied
| to products, like Frutiger Aero. But once it crosses over to
| what amounts to short-term identities or "identities in flux" I
| am repulsed.
| ideasphere wrote:
| I agree 100%. Style is important but it's the personal
| identification with defining and policing its microscopic
| fluctuations that ultimately leads nowhere but back at the
| snakes head. The older I get and the most first-hand
| experience I have, the more I realise it's an obsession of
| those not burdened with this. The broad strokes are there but
| it's ultimately myth making - seeking to squish the square
| peg of history into the round hole of a neat narrative.
| desi_ninja wrote:
| Fun video explaining Frutiger Aero :
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ostolucALTA
| chromakode wrote:
| Fandom is completely unusable these days without an ad blocker.
| I'm surprised communities still put up with it. Why hasn't
| another free wiki host emerged?
| Lariscus wrote:
| In short, because of SEO. Google downranks your site if it has
| the same content as an already existing site. This means you
| have to rephrase every single article on your new wiki because
| wikia refuses to delete anything hosted with them. So your
| choice is either stay with wikia or try to battle against
| wikias SEO.[1]
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcfuA_UAz3I
| goldwolff wrote:
| another example of the ugliness of the modernization of the
| internet and its culture.
| jfax wrote:
| I couldn't find independent use of the term "Frutiger Aero"
| outside of this article when it first blew up, so I guess this
| coined it. Why "Fruitger" Aero. This basically smacks of being a
| forced meme by underageb& zoomers. But that's only half the
| reason this hits me as being frivolous and tiresome, I also echo
| the other comment here that's beginning to find "hyper-specific
| genre-mania" boring now.
| ideasphere wrote:
| Adrian Frutiger was a well-known type designer whose fonts were
| popular in the era being talked about. It makes sense but I
| agree that to me, this hyper-specificity and flexing of
| knowledge on specifics shows that it's really about the person
| coining it wanting to plant their flag in the ground. To be
| 'the person who coined that phrase everyone uses online' and
| their justification for taking that role is "I know who Adrian
| Frutiger is." It promotes the idea of singular figures defining
| (and policing) the definition of these terms rather than
| encouraging others to contribute and engage in a collective
| mess (which is how I prefer culture to operate.)
| Apocryphon wrote:
| It dates back to at least CARI's work:
| https://www.are.na/consumer-aesthetics-research-institute/fr...
| ideasphere wrote:
| They are specifically who I'm defining as flag-in-the-ground
| types.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Someone's got to catalogue these things somehow. If it
| wasn't them, it'd just be some YouTube essayist or TikTok
| streamer.
| nxobject wrote:
| I think the Longhorn UI prototypes were the best exponent of
| Fruitger Aero - information-dense, glossy, alive with ambient
| animations everywhere - the anti-Windows of today. Also, nowhere
| near close to ever having been implemented.
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=I7FnBHrJSao&t=2s&pp=ygUPbG9uZ2...
| ikari_pl wrote:
| i miss Longhorn.
|
| If not the .NET explorer frequent crashes, it would have been
| my most exciting OS experience to date
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| If the internet historians are to be believed, Longhorn was
| pretty innovative for its time because Microsoft gave their
| devs free reign and let them go crazy with it to put all their
| ideas into the new OS.
|
| Which was cool for show but apparently turned Longhorn into
| "the car Homer Simpson designed"[1], being plagued by endless
| cost overruns, constantly changing requirements, deadlines
| missed, a release date with no end in sight, and a codebase
| nobody could prune to turn into a solid shippable product,
| forcing Microsoft to scrap it completely and start over from
| scratch to create Vista in a ungodly short amount of time just
| to have something to ship to replace the now ageing Windows XP.
|
| As what was supposed to be Longhorn was schedules to release
| just 1-2 years after XP but due to the Longhorn development
| fiasco, a half-baked Vista launched a whopping 6 years after
| XP, which was an eternity in tech back then.
|
| Yeah, Microsoft really blew it with Longhorn and Vista, they
| tried to kill too many birds with one stone and ended up
| loosing all the birds and the stone. One wonders what Longhorn
| could have been if they hadn't messed it up from the start.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPc-VEqBPHI
| KerrAvon wrote:
| That looks a lot like Aqua-era Mac OS X with a different skin
|
| edit: clarity
| captainmuon wrote:
| I remember fondly learning from tutorials how to make "glossy"
| buttons. The trick was to have gradients running against each
| other, with a sharp line in the middle. Now that I think about
| it, this aesthetic started already with MacOS X and Aqua.
| Everybody wanted to have the "liquid" style. MS only adopted it
| with Vista - XP's Luna was famously matte plastic "fisher price"
| style.
| goldwolff wrote:
| yes i remember this so vividly, I was obsessed with the
| dark/orange windows theme on vista. The early psps themes had a
| similar feel as well.
| CrimsonCape wrote:
| I look at the examples and think "yup, that's Nvidia. That's
| Nvidia too. Nvidia. Nvidia. Yep all Nvidia." Not sure why, maybe
| I watched too many CES videos in the 2010s...
| tomcam wrote:
| > The term "Frutiger Aero" was coined in 2017... and went viral
| in 2022
|
| Well, maybe not viral. I never heard of it until now.
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(page generated 2023-11-16 23:01 UTC)