Moodboard 2000
This post is almost more of a place for me to put the ideas that have collected up over the years.
I know what kind of vibe I want, and outlined some of the feeling in Early inspo in 2019. Shortly after that post, there was a programme recently about Heathrow, and they’d caught a moment of the scheduling software in use.
Funnily enough it looks like it’s running on Windows XP, which is almost too modern for my taste, but the software itself looks liked it was designed in an era before that time.
The look I’m trying to aim for is just before this era, in the “late 1900s” as the kids say now. One of the aesthetics of this era was dubbed Utopian Scholastic and was a common choice for a lot of educational software.
You can see an amazing collection on CARI’s website. I really love that style, but it isn’t quite the aesthetic that I’m trying to reach for.
Pixel UI
Stumble through the 1990s’ category on the Aesthetics Wiki long enough and you’ll eventually find Pixel UI.
I love so many details from this era, and the attempts at making some kind of skeuomorphism with shadows and depth.
This is a category of 8-bit graphics on simple displays, right through to the end of the era with System 9. This was right before Mac OS X and Windows XP arrived, when the world was apparently, mostly still grey.
This is the moment in time I want to capture, maybe with a little hint of the eras adjacent. I don’t ever want the interface to get in the way or become a gimick. It has to always feel real – and hopefully useful.
This post is much a repeat and an reaffirmation of Early inspo, but it leads into the most important aspect: the why.
Why 2000
I’ve always tended to call this game ‘Airplan’, even if that isn’t what it ends up being called. More recently though I’ve started calling it Airplan 2000, in a sort of homage towards SimCity 2000 and Gateway 2000.
The dawn of the new millennium in the 1990s did have a real buzz to it. There was a sense of hopefullness as we pulled ourselves out of the 20th century that I think the world could do with again now.
Maybe it’s just my own nostalgia from being brought up in the 1990s, but it’s a moment I’d love to be able to rekindle.