Good design got diluted in… Liquid Glass

Henry Ford famously said that if you asked people what they wanted, they would’ve said “faster horses”. And now that story comes full circle.

Steve Jobs was famous for taking risky decisions. User Research was never a big part of Apple.

They didn’t ask users for feedback.

They delighted them with something new and innovative. Time and time again.

Designed by Apple in California

Apple design language was classy.

It was the epitome of the word “designer” wrapped in a cute beige box since 1984. It was a stark contrast to what Microsoft was doing for most of the last three decades.

But now Microsoft is catching up and Apple seems a bit lost.

Apple Design heavily relied on what Dieter Rams had devised before them and those inspirations were clear as … glass.

But can you imagine a 1965 Braun record player with replacable color glass and multi-material body? It would be a monstrosity.

You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.

The biggest problem of design is… people

Good design requires taste. Taste requires time and a lot of energy. To learn to design even at a mid-level, you need to live and breathe design. That’s why most regular people are not designers.

Regular people won’t see a difference between Helvetica and Verdana. Regular people still use Comic Sans unironically.

Countless regular people had used the horrifying Samsung’s handwritten font in their phone UI. Are you seeing it clearly now? Like you’re looking through some liquid glass?

We laughed at Samsung for making the UI crazy ugly. Of course it wasn’t them. The default was a normal typeface. But they let the people change it. And the people picked what the people wanted.

It was called Choco Cooky.

It was POPULAR!

Some people say, ‘Give the customers what they want.’ But that’s not my approach. Our job is to figure out what they’re going to want before they do. … People don’t know what they want until you show it to them.

Apple is losing to consumers

Being one of the most valuable companies and changing from design-driven to market-driven has changed Apple profoundly.

Since Steve Jobs died and Jony Ive left, they don’t have a clear design leader that will put his foot down and forge a path forward. They went the safer “let’s ask the customers” way instead.

Humans personalize

We, as humans have a natural tendency to personalize things. Just look at Casey Neistat’s iconic sunglasses. Regular raybans got a completely new visual identity through him.

But there’s personalization that is connected to a story, and there’s just letting your users design. This is exactly what Samsung has done with their UI font choices. And we, iOS users laughed at them.

Can you guess, when will we see a handwritten, Comic-Sans style typeface in iOS? I’m guessing iOS 28 tops.

Jarring colors, but it’s mine

Apple has already ventured into UI personalization with the homescreen icons. Something that was supposed to be consistent throughout the entire experience, can now have completely different look between two devices.

Giving non-designers the ability to customize, will lead to them picking clashing, jarring colors and thus diluting the Apple design experience. It doesn’t feel premium anymore.

It doesn’t feel “designer” anymore. It’s plastic, mass-market.

It’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.

Apple Design? Now it’s ours. Regular.

Play-doh of normie expectations shaped to be personal as a badge of honor. The brand disappears beneath all that. As long as you pay $999 or more on the latest device they don’t really care.

Make it yours.

Apple won’t tell you what good design is anymore. It lets you be the designer. You’re the gatekeeper of this garden now too. Ugly UI? That’s on you.

We can now laugh all we want at the wooden shelves, but at least they were designed. They looked good (for the time) in all possible conditions.

Books looked great on them. It was all natural.

Liquid Glass…

I should be cheering for Liquid Glass. After all, I was the one who coined the term Glassmorphism, because I was tired by all companies calling it different names.

The frosted glass effect, a result of a simple background blur, is here to stay.

It can look stunning too. In many apps or websites we worked on it made total sense to use it. Many of the examples Apple has shown are truly BEAUTIFUL.

But they all rely on user choices and that almost never ends well.

I’m not happy about these changes.

In many places it’s a nightmare of cognitive overload and low readability. The glass refractions need a certain level of transparency to look the best and that level will crash and burn on half of the backgrounds.

The only problem with Microsoft is that they have no taste. They don’t bring a lot of innovation. They don’t push culture into their products. They make really third‑rate products that have no spirit in them.

Now they’re becoming Microsoft. Vista era.

Glass for context

Using a glass material in UI is a great way to keep you in context of an action. Like a quick menu that doesn’t fully cover the content underneath.

It keeps you safely thinking that your content is right there — under the glass and you’ll be right back to it.

The problem however, is that you can’t really make out any of the details anymore and after a while it becomes a mere gimmick.

The easiest UI path to look fancy without substance.

Our glass, your backgrounds

The entire OS becomes liquid. The familiarity of experience is thrown out the window because now you can make it your own. And I don’t mean the glass panels.

Your chat message can have ANY background you like. The transparent chat bubbles will have to adjust to it.

It can look really nice sometimes. I’m sure many designers will soon share beautiful, noisy gradients to put under your glass.

But to most people it will be some eye-watering monstrosity under there. And this is what Apple UI Design will be associated with.

Sometimes delightful, most often jarring. User-driven design for an experience that’s uniquely yours. It’s not Apple design anymore. You’re the creative now. For better or for worse.

Dear user, you got what you wanted.

Now go and ride your faster horse towards a sunset covered by a glass panel.

Yee-haw.