macOS Big Sur and the Return of Whimsical Design

macOS Big Sur app icon examples

Designer Michael Flarup writes about how macOS Big Sur will bring back “fun in visual design.”

With this approach Apple is legalising a visual design expressiveness that we haven’t seen from them in almost a decade. It’s like a ban has been lifted on fun. This will severely loosen the grip of minimalistic visual design and raise the bar for pixel pushers everywhere. Your glyph on a colored background is about to get some serious visual competition.

I don’t miss pre-iOS 7 skeuomorphism, but I don’t think I’ll mind some of that era’s icons coming back (just without the gloss). I also wonder if we’ll see them on iOS, or just macOS.

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4 thoughts on “macOS Big Sur and the Return of Whimsical Design

  • I also dearly miss skeuomorphism – there is no reason other than fashion to explain the craze for flat design. If an app or a function is a replacement or an emulation of a real-world device, it should bloody well *look* like the thing it is emulating.

    In many ways I really liked a lot of the design language that Jony Ive used. However, he went way too far in his quest for the infinitely thin, infinitely light, infinitely flat look and feel.

  • Well I do miss skeuomorphism and I am also welcoming the change to more creative icons. I posted a picture on Tumblr a while back a screen shot of my toolbar with I think four icons that were virtually identical, Pages, Notes, and two others. You need this creativity of for no other reason than to help with navigation. There is such a thing as to much flat, too much Ive

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