Interface Design and UX Thread - How our App Looks

[mindseye]

Love the gear thing as well..

Not sure if this will help or hurt, but I gathered a designs from DeviantArt...

I in no way plan on copying, just some inspirations and ideas..

Love the idea with the gear as the container, utilizing hotspots will free up many design constraints that happen from Windows Native GUI..






Regards,
mindseye.


EDIT:

More inspiration could be found searching for game GUI etc. im sure.

[Gare]

mindseye, your example image looks a lot like the work of Layne Karkruff, a Macintosh UI designer whose work I've loved for years if not a decade.

Download some of his wallpaper and see if it isn't inspirational vis a vis what we're doing.

BlueSkey Heart Graphics



-g

[mindseye]

Yep... Love it! and still do love that style. How can that get old? The depth and quality is just beautiful.

Thanks, another bookmark added.

Animated PNG, oh yeah.



mindseye.

[Gare]

I don't think rich, photorealistic renderings will ever go completely out of style, mindseye, but as far as UIs go, "skeuomorphic" is a trend, not a movement, and it's being supplanted by "the flat look", specifically Microsoft Windows 8 Metro look. Even Apple is "getting it", and moving away from literal paintings of iconic representations.

Skeomorphic at top



Flat at bottom

This sort of treatment historically has been for international signs, like No Smoking, and Men's Room, not to editorialize too much!



Which doesn't mean that We have to go with the flow. On the contrary: Microsoft has encountered so much blowback over version 8 that they issuing version 8.1 later this year and 8 adopters get a free upgrade.

I think we just really need to decide what art we are able to create is the easiest read in the UI: simpler is sometimes better, but not always. And a visually rich UI is value-added as far as customer perception goes. Look at Painter's old UI compared to PaintShop Pro, to compare two Corel products.

My Best,

Gary

[Gare]

This is just a different "treatment" of Barbara's design concept: a blueprint motif.



And if you really, really, really, really HATE blue, I guess on dark grey it could look like a chalkboard.

My Best,

Gary

[angelize]

I like the Gear interface. I took Barbara's file and gave it a grungy metal look. All the pieces and parts and a couple of really nice textures as well came from the scrapbook section of the DPX designs gallery. I modified them a bit to fit Barbara's basic idea.

[Barbara B]

I like what you did.

I especially like the current tab displaying in a metal nameplate or gauge window, the addition of the screw heads.

I didn't texture the gear, especially the center panel because I thought it would make the text hard to read, but your treatment separates beautifully.