xpdx9 splash screen

[Big Frank]

they get more and more bland
i think with the whole windows 8 microsoft rebrand everybodys going for flat linear iconography
shame
i loved the original xara splash screens

[pauland]

It looks good.

[xtom]

I guess this is the current trend of what is deemed professional looking. It is a bit bland and not very exciting but I don't dislike it and it does represent the all-in-one "suite" of programs well. Unfortunately I think colourful exciting splash screens are out of fashion with 'the professional look' at the moment. I think they should have matched the progam icon to the splash screen look though, the old brown one seems disconnected from the blue colour theme in the splashscreen.

[amoore]

Blah, it is. Windows 8 style doesn't say "professional" to me at all. It says "ugly and uninspired". And I'm not just referring to the Xara splash screen, which at least is only blah.

[Karateed]

Well I suppose this begs the question of whether we should have a mini-contest for bragging rights to come up with a better X9 splash screen using the new software.

[gwpriester]

My complaint with the DPX9 splash screen is it is not consistent with the other three products in the suite. What is the point of having a suite of products if it does not look like a suite?

As you can tell from my avatar, I love the flat graphics in Windows 8. The colors are bright, not dreary, and the graphic are crisp and clean. Again, the problem I have is very few software companies have followed the Windows 8 design theme so you have a hodgepodge of styles. What those who like extra vowels in their words would call a dog's breakfast.

[BONES]

Blah, it is. Windows 8 style doesn't say "professional" to me at all. It says "ugly and uninspired". And I'm not just referring to the Xara splash screen, which at least is only blah.

Really? I love it. It takes the emphasis away from the OS and puts it onto the things you use the OS for. Actually, I should clarify, Windows 8 looks OK but Windows Phone is where it works even better. The screen you get while you are in a call is my all-time favourite piece of UI design. It looks like the best from big budget sci-fi films, as is befitting of a smartphone. And in WinPhone, most of the tiles are the same colour (I'd make them all the same colour if I could) and things are differentiated by size and position instead. It's an absolutely brilliant minimalist aesthetic that should be exactly what you want from your UI. In 3DS Max, for example, they use coloured icons on all the toolbars, similar to what we get in Xara, but since Autodesk bought Discreet Logic and handed Max over to them, there has been the option of simplified, monochrome icons that have the effect of pushing the UI into the background, allowing you to focus on the viewports where you are working. It's the first thing I do whenever I install Max.

Unimaginative, yes, but I prefer to think of it as simple and elegant.

I like it! Really nice work. It is very easy to pile on the detail, much harder to do only what works, nothing more.

I have cutlery at home that I love to use - it has subtle rounded edges with very simple basic forms. It has no decoration or embellishment. To my eyes ( and those of the designer, no doubt ) it is beautiful. When I first bought it (without my wife seeing it), she hated it because it lacks any form of embellishment. Now she loves it. At a casual glance most people may evaluate it as plain and boring.

Ooh! Cutlery is the perfect analogy because it's design should be about usability first but within that there is infinite room to go crazy with design. Sometimes though, usability goes out the window and you get beautiful cutlery that is uncomfortable to hold. Mostly this seems ot occur in Thai restuarants where the cutlery can have absurdly heavy handles that ruin the natural balance in your hand. The secret is enhancing the look without destroying usability and too many UIs go too far the other way. Windows 8 pulls this back wonderfully, I reckon.

Like I just mentioned in my post, perhaps the conversation would be different had Xara actually incorporated actual advancements, improvements, etc.

Welcome to my world. The last 3 or 4 versions have been one step forward, two steps back for me. OTOH, X9 has some great new tools, like Background Erase, that I would use every day at work if I could. Sadly, I don't get to choose the software or hardware we use so I'm stuck with Adobe CS 5.5 on stupid MacPros. X9 is the first time in several upgrades that I haven't had to think about whether the upgrade is worth $99 or not.

These are just things I like starting up the program with and have tried to remain consistent in the design from version to version.
I used Xara, however I traced over rendered models I created. Which, if you think about it, is another testament to the features in Xara.

I don't hate those. I think I'd have loved them in 2008 but they are quite dated now.

Anyway, I got bored on Page 6 so here's my take - the only thing I don't like about the new splash screen is the progression of colours in the tiles from left to right. It might work better if the third one was first but I think the problem is that they have changed the brightness of three of them and the saturation on the other, which makes the progression inconsistent.
Other than that, I like the design. It includes drop-shadows so any similarity to Windows 8 is pretty minor.

[Big Frank]

frankly i'd hate to eat at ms' redmond canteen
their cutlery is probably die cast from blue plastic hospital bed undersheets
but i guess the ms staff are used to rolling them into straws and sucking their raspberry pi through them
give me the ferking great gobs of steel you get in a thai restairant any day
you know why?
because at a thai restaurant i always use chopsticks
even for the soup
because its about choice
the people in this world i despise the most are the ones who tell me what i should be using because its this or that
pauland is absolutely right about his cutlery because he likes it
sod the rest of the world
i have no idea what that outburst has to do with the xdpxxpdwdx9 splash screen but what the hell
i have a smurf and a teddy bear hugging each other on my pc and my dog has fleas
life is too short

[BONES]

I think they should have matched the progam icon to the splash screen look though, the old brown one seems disconnected from the blue colour theme in the splashscreen.

Interestingly, the "brown" icon (I think they'd call it gold) is quite new. I think appeared with the first version of "Designer Pro X" and it didn't fit with that, either. It has always intrigued me where it came from and why they use it.