Saturday, November 3rd, 2007

Pink is the new black

The trend in GUI’s these days is black. From Microsoft to Apple, black is the new king. It wasn’t long ago that GUI design standards dictated that you should have a consistent look and feel to the operating system that surrounds you, but now it seems that the fancier an application, the better. Previously, applications relied on users’ system colors for everything; now the field is wide open.

Solid colors are also out. At minimum, controls need to have gradients; most have “glass” or “plastic.”

Microsoft has embraced this with Office 2007. Office used to be the standard windows application. Menu and toolbar on top, all with standard windows controls. Office 2007 threw this out and uses no standard controls, not even the system buttons.

So the question as a GUI designer is, what form of thought do you follow? Do you embrace the trend or do you stick with developing a standard app? For many years I believed in abiding by the users’ color scheme and the operating systems look and feel. Lately my mood has changed.

When designing the GUI for snapACT I toyed with many different looks and color schemes. I hate to be a follower, but what I settled on was black and glass. I didn’t come to this because I wanted to follow a trend, in fact, I wanted to do just the opposite. However, I think it looks good.

Images “pop” on a black background, and that is what this application is all about: your images.

Take a look for yourself and see if you agree.

(this is a shot in progress, so items such as icons are just place holders)