More and more we’re starting to see consumers seek out products and experiences that provide not only physical care, but also emotional care; base level comfort is expected—consumers are now looking for experiences that provide meaning, depth, and promote general wellbeing. We’ve termed this social trend ‘Enlightened Moment’ and it’s supported by three micro-trends worth taking a closer at.

Personal Touch Points

The micro-trend, Personal Touch Points, connects familiarity to comfort; it’s based on bringing personal preferences into an individual experience. In an interview we recently conducted with Walid Saba, the Creative Director of Design and Marketing at Chrysler, he talked about the growing importance of personalization in cars, “It is more fulfilling (for people) to be able to customize their experience so that the products/services can meet their needs as an individual.” The demand for products and services that provide intimate, individual attention is quickly growing. A perfect example: the rise of the ‘private concierge’ in travel and other sectors. Do you need soymilk, goat milk or almond milk in the hotel refrigerator? What type of sunscreen, lotions and shampoo would you like in the bathroom? Flannel or cotton sheets on the bed? All of this is meant to make a trip of any kind feel as familiar and comfortable as possible. Technology also plays an important role in the personalization of an experience–it’s not only made personalization easy, but also possible in many cases. Airlines have started to address passengers as individuals through technology by adding on demand meal service, apps that make it easier to choose the right seat, and getting to know passengers through Facebook.

Premium Basic

Another micro-trend that addresses emotional comfort, Premium Basic, aspires to bring a heightened value to everyday simplicity. Introducing premium elements into budget products or services allows the thrifty consumer to not only love their purchase, but to also feel good about their choice. Restaurants that focus on a simple dish, such as mac and cheese, and turn it into a premium comfort food are on the rise. Virgin America is a great example of an airline that offers budget prices while delivering a desired experience.  Budget hotels are also offering guests more than just an inexpensive room by aligning with sustainability and social causes. Similar to Southwest Airlines, Jet Blue, and Iceland Air, a growing number of airlines are using design to bring added elements of style, humor, sustainability or humanity to a price conscious ticket. Iceland Air provides a clean modern experience while inspiring passengers through quotes on headrest covers, while British Midlands hands out intricately wrapped boxes of toiletries. These types of efforts, both small and large, help consumers feel good about their purchases.

Smart Way of Life

With so many sources vying for our attention, consumers now want clutter free experiences that focus on what’s truly important and meaningful. The ‘Smart Way of Life’ trend is about fusing technology and design to bring seemless connectivity and multifunctionality into products to simplify user experiences.

Examples are found in products such as the iPad Smart Cover, which adds ease and flexibility to the iPad, and the GE Watstation, which makes owning an electric car more convenient. In transportation, luxury automobiles are hiding technology to differentiate premium from economy. Saba from Chrysler explained, ‘Technology that is placed behind the curtain can communicate the sense of luxury and comfort.” Airlines are also exploring ways to simplify the travel experience and get rid of negative distractions such as long, complex check in procedures. Air NewZealand introduced innovative kiosks that allow passengers to ticket and check their own bags. Qatar uses ‘behind the curtain’ technology to check in premium passengers in a style similar to checking into a hotel complete with lounge chairs and the sounds of chirping birds.

Comfort is a trend that simply can’t be ignored in hospitality. In the travel industry in particular, comfort alone can make or break a brand. Airlines that capitalize on the growing trends within emotional comfort will undoubtedly create richer and differentiated experiences, the kind that consumers crave.

Perhaps it is the inherent nature of globalization, or the leveling effect of capitalism, but ‘global’ design as we know it in its most familiar form: big box retail—seems systematically intent on burnishing down all the messy, non-conforming bits; the personal idiosyncrasies and peculiarities that would otherwise communicate place of origin.  Reflecting on design’s recent path through such culturally rich locales as South Korea and China, the general consensus of those of us assembled in Pune was that while the successes of those nations was admirable; it had clearly come at the price of place. Anonymity, it appears, is the levy design and manufacturing are willing to pay in their quest for international success.

Compare that achievement to the integral, if accidental role ‘place’ has played in the exported design success of Europe, North America and Japan. Not too long ago ‘made in’ and the incidental export of cultural values and attitudes was part of the experience, indeed a backhanded benefit, of buying imported goods. In that era place of origin was inevitably mixed in with the experience of ownership. A Braun razor, a pair of Levis, a Sony Walkman were not only useful products, they broadcasted the aspirations and ingenuity of the places they came from. Design not only spoke of manufacturing prowess, it telegraphed the ‘brand’ of nations as they vied for recognition in a rapidly converging marketplace.

Have we lost that? Why can’t the path ahead for places like India and Brazil return us to a similar era; one of cultural diversity in mainstream design rather than a future defined by antiseptic uniformity? A future where the manufactured object once again participates in the transmission of ideas and solutions, and where exposure through commerce can inspire us —designers and consumers alike—to contemplate new ways of doing. The path to economic transformation across which emerging markets progress is rife with social, economic, and environmental challenges, the solutions to which might prove every bit as relevant to developed markets as they are transformative to domestic ones. Before you dismiss that idea as merely a romantic notion informed by too much mid-day sun, let me make a case for two benefits real cultural diversity could deliver the global toolkit of design.

EXTREMITY

If you read about design with any regularity you’ve no doubt heard the term ‘trickle-back’ or ‘blow-back’ innovation; the phenomena by which innovations and product advancements acquired in emerging markets find application in developed ones. In some cases the improvement is genuinely new, in other cases it’s often little more than an outsized process improvement ‘discovered’ in the process of addressing some basic oversight on the part of the exporter. But in the best cases, the ones that present insights for new ways of doing, something more akin to an extreme use case scenario lays at the heart of this insight. In extreme conditions long held assumptions break down, and the remedy to that condition, once identified, actually advances the product class or service in a way that finds broad application with mainstream users. This dynamic, this ‘stress-testing’ of assumptions happens so frequently in emerging markets one could very well make the case that emerging markets are the world’s laboratory for creating a steady supply of ‘extreme-users’; users who through cultural bias or context aren’t reflexively accepting of brands and solutions that have been ginned up in some foreign context.

So what informs this disposition? Why are emerging markets such reliable incubators of insights that contradict prevailing wisdom? Perhaps it’s in the numbers. With populations that generally tip the scale at close to a billion, the domestic market in places like Brazil and India serve up a sampling of users that encompass a hyper diverse range of needs, biases, and outright peculiarities. Let’s face it—the needs of Western Europe, North America and Japan are not exactly representative of the more basic needs that the rest of the world grapples with on a day-to-day basis. Designing for the disabled is no longer ‘elective’ in a population such as India’s where roughly 12 million are blind (20 million if you include the additional 8 million blind in one eye)*. The language of the consumer, either as a result of regional dialect, or the effects of illiteracy are no longer ‘shared’ in a market of such unfathomable dimensions, population density and historical diversity. What’s more, the transformative wealth and prosperity these nations aspire to, require some fundamental reconciliation with these ‘outliers’ if it is to be realized in a way that doesn’t invite social chaos. In China by comparison, economic transformation has been regionalized for years, so much so, that even in that tightly choreographed society labor inequality and social injustice threaten to slow its once boundless prospects for wealth creation. India and Brazil have a chance to pursue another path, one that’s a bit more equitable and less intrinsically volatile, and their cultural legacy suggests they just might do so in a manner that reconciles the extremes of their society more artfully in the process.

 NARRATIVE

European Design and American Design, while arguably different are still ultimately birds of a feather. The hegemony of western design, even if it is more and more frequently executed in Asia, has remained pretty much unchallenged for nearly seventy years. It’s brought us some great things, fantastic ideas about individualism, mobility, technological accomplishment and, of course, beauty, the Porsche 911, Dieter Rams, Memphis Style, Philippe Starck, Apple, Nike, Herman Miller—examples of western culture’s apparent conquest of our shared visual landscape is vast. But to some degree, in all the years of its dominion, and right up to its present hurrah in Asia, western design has in many ways come to represent a somewhat dated narrative: one of supreme convenience for the individual. Sure, there are exceptions to this over simplification, but Dr. Dre’s Beats, 60inch plasma displays and the latest Bouroullec brothers meditation—while cool as hell, are in no measure about addressing the more contemporary needs of we.

My point here is not to judge the right of everyone who might aspire to have the latest gadget or luxury novelty, consumer culture is after all global. But as design spools up in emerging markets, where the cultural values of  ‘the West’ are often perversely refracted, I can’t help but hope that an influx of new narratives and perspectives might lay just around the corner; ones that incorporate different social conventions, new aesthetic vocabularies and perhaps most importantly—new values. Think about it: What does ‘green’ mean in a nation where systemic poverty means every thing finds reuse—not through recycling, but through repair or repurposing?  What does transportation mean in a country where roughly 370 people occupy every square kilometer?*

Context and cultural perspective make all the difference in how design tackles any given problem. Porsche didn’t invent the car, Apple didn’t invent the computer, rather these companies cracked the code as to what these products could mean. Their solutions, authored by German perfectionism on one hand and West Coast counter culture on the other, became exemplary because of how powerfully they blended technical proficiency with a point of view informed by national character. Looking forward I’m willing to bet that as the unmet needs of consumers in emerging markets come into focus, the Western perspective will increasingly find itself having to keep pace with a host of domestic ones that bring fresh insights to long standing problems. The designs that emerge from these markets as global success stories will, like their predecessors before them, excel by infusing a common need with a singular perspective that transcends international boundaries while simultaneously exporting national values.

Design is a dynamic process—a living activity that evolves day on day, hour by hour. Today more so than perhaps at any other time in its short history, more and more people encounter design as a formal activity; one that is no longer viewed as haphazard or episodic, but rather as the result of people actively contemplating an opportunity and using their skills and actions to deliver value around a given problem. The west has had a prolific run delivering solutions that democratized convenience. Asia took a page from that playbook and geared itself toward scaling design and production to keep pace with a global market’s rising desire for more of the same. Today that equation, scaling convenience, shares the stage with new concerns, ones that entail notions of community, sustainability, and the reconciliation of individual needs with the common good. To tackle those types of problems, emerging markets will need to add new pages to design’s playbook. In its short history Design has amassed a considerable war chest for working this new class of problem, and in this regard emerging markets will invariably build on the successes of their predecessors. But to surpass them, and create an enduring place for themselves in Design, they will need to temper those tools with perspectives that are undeniably their own and which transcend definitively the western perspective. And that’s where culture becomes an advantage.

Reflecting on all this, I can’t help but think —in spite of myself—how much the mechanics of global trade and cultural export mimic another well-worn path in the cause of economic advancement: immigration. If the parent immigrates in hopes of a better life, abandoning all they have for the prospect of a better future. The child of the immigrant, in their efforts to acculturate entirely to the norms of the new country, is generally all to ready to reject any notion of that past. They master the style, the values and—in the surest sign of their ‘belonging’—achieve mastery over a language their parents struggled to attain competency with. But then comes the child of that child. Who, liberated from the burden of their ancestry, actively seeks out ways to regain it anew.  Seen in this light, the achievements of China and South Korea, who have so completely embraced and to some degree exceeded the accomplishments of the west, strike me as analogous to those of the immigrant’s child; they have mastered the language and the culture of design production as it was defined by the west. I sincerely hope that the next wave of emerging markets will build on the successes of their ‘parents’ and wear their cultural heritage with a bit more ease and lot more self-confidence. If they can, their design solutions will be all the more compelling. Returning us to an era where the export of design didn’t just satisfy a need, it invited us to contemplate and understand. In a shrinking world with a growing number of shared troubles and tensions, I can’t imagine a better by-product of design and commerce than that.

* Seely Brown, John and Hagel III, John. “Innovation Blowback: Disruptive Management Practices from Asia.” The Innovator’s Cookbook . Ed. Steven Johnson. New York: Riverhead Books, 2011. 133-135. Print.

* by comparison the US comes in at 32/ km² and Western Europe 73/ km²

In the 21^st century we’re so used to the notion of relativity that most of us hardly give it a thought. Of course we don’t travel at even a tiny fraction of the speed of light where some of the more startling aspects of the Special Theory of Relativity become apparent, but when considering something such as the magic of flight, the concept of relativity becomes of primary importance. If we were to take a person, as in Galileo’s anecdote, and shut them up inside a ship (or an airplane), the experience after reaching cruising altitude and before decent would be identical. Simply stated, once the cabin becomes an inertial reference frame the occupants are, for all intents and purposes, motionless. Each occupant can perform the same activities cruising at .71 Mach as they can sitting in their living room, cruising in their car, or riding on a train. The primary difference between the former and latter examples is that occupants can easily deduce motion by simply looking out the window at passing scenery. The question then becomes, can we extract magic from this experience alone?

Author and futurist Arthur C. Clark’s proclamation that “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” is well applied to the reality of modern air travel. Even as this maxim is well founded, the rate at which technology becomes “insufficient” in this case, is astonishing.  The question then becomes: If the primary technology of air travel is no longer sufficient to be indistinguishable from magic, where does the magic of flight come from? The Boeing Company has strived valiantly to address this issue with its innovative aircraft interiors. Various advances in technology and the applications of that technology are the cornerstones of Boeing’s desire to “connect the passenger to the magic of flight”. However, just as leading car manufactures grapple with separating the passenger from the environment while at the same time keeping them connected to it, airplane manufacturers must do the same. This leads to an almost paradoxical situation. How can one connect to the experience of flight, while being protected from it simultaneously?

Referring back to the genius of Einstein, the issue of simultaneity was part of his work on the Special Theory of Relativity. Things happening at exactly the same time (i.e. simultaneously) were relevant only to those within the same inertial frame of reference. In other words, two people in constant linear motion relative to each other would not interpret any two events as being “simultaneous,” rather the one who resides in the same inertial reference frame of the two events would see the event as simultaneous, while the other person would see the two events at different times. In the case of modern transportation, the concept of simultaneously separating and combining with the environment in which one is traveling becomes apparently untenable. To clarify, it seems untenable in the physical sense, but not necessarily in the experiential sense. If the passenger/driver can attain a sense of engagement with the environment sufficient to make them feel a part of that environment, perhaps they can attain a sort of magical state. In an airplane or submarine for example, this level of control is unlikely to occur, further separating the passenger from the environment outside of their immediate space, or inertial reference frame.

Suppose then, that we abandon the concept of the magic of flight in the context of being connected to the inertial reference frame of the earth and being acutely aware of our motion relative to it. What other potential could we have for experiencing magic in flight? During an appearance on Late Night with Conan Obrien, comedian Louis CK colorfully expressed what he considered the “miracle of human flight”. To Louis CK, the idea of sitting “in a chair in the sky” was amazing.  Perhaps in this regard we can take a more practical approach and appreciate the fact that we can actually partake in what could be considered a magic carpet ride enabled by sufficiently advanced technology.  Being in an inertial frame of reference nearly five miles above the surface of the earth can have another startling, if not magical property. Because there is no difference between the physics of a person flying in a plane and one sleeping peacefully in their bed, a passenger can literally sleep through the flying experience.  My friend and colleague, Jared mused “I find it amazing that I can go to sleep in London, and wake up in LA.” The concept of flying as a veritable time travel device is every bit as magical as displacing enough invisible air to maintain a several mile gap between a passenger and the earth while moving with great precision through space.

Just as Einstein marveled over the elegance and power of combining seemingly disparate physical phenomena as well as the properties of nature, there is much for us to marvel about modern travel. We have a great deal to admire about the human spirit, creativity, determination, and ingenuity. To some, the magic isn’t in the fact that we can travel by air, but that we had to audacity to try it.  We need not try to manufacture magic out of non-existent connections to alternate inertial reference frames. We need only to realize the great beauty, power, and sometimes-unexpected nature of reality. In that sense, magic is everywhere.

As both Thompson’s and Biddle’s articles describe, the philosophy that drives the majority of contemporary UIs is called skeuomorphism. Derived from the Greek words “skeuos”, meaning vessel or tool, and “morph”, meaning shape, a skeuomorph is a “derivative object that retains ornamental design cues to a structure that was necessary in the original” (Oxford Dictionary).

Skeuomorphism can apply to either a physical or digital creation. In others words, it means to replicate form and material qualities of something which is no longer inherently necessary — with the objective of making new designs “look comfortably old and familiar” (Skeuomorphs and Cultural Algorithms, Nicholas Gessler). When applied to UI, the logic here is that it will make the interface more intuitive and usable because the user will understand how it functions based on knowledge of the analog object it is replicating.

There is validity to a skeuomorphic approach. To create any good interface it is essential for the designer to understand the cognitive models that users bing to new products. Designers have to take into account the conventions and operational principles of the products and services users are familiar with. Even if it is simply just to know how to evolve.

Clearly a great deal of objects and tools we use could do with the attention of a good designer (or designers), but there are also plenty of highly refined design solutions that embody fundamental design principles, conventions and years of collective refinement, and there’s no need to attempt to reinvent the wheel.

The eInk screened Kindles are examples where this was done to great success. The Kindle carries over just enough of the fundamentals of editorial design and the conventions of physical books, which took 400 years to evolve. The design makes it feel enough like a book to make it appealing to avid readers and comfortable for them to use.

However, how Kindles replicate physical books is very subtle. Kindles do not rely on material aesthetics in quite the same way many skeuomorphs do. The design is underpinned by typographic and layout conventions (e.g., position of page numbers, chapter name and so on) allowing the aesthetics of the UI page to recede for the reader to become immersed in the author’s word. This is a quality any good book designer will tell you the design of a book should facilitate: uninhabited reading.

Unfortunately, the iPad book app doesn’t achieve this level of sophistication. It’s much more theatrical (as someone probably felt the need to take advantage of that fantastic color screen). The app employs elements like an overly-rendered paper texture and a faux page turn animation, which make it difficult to become quite as immersed in the prose of an author as the Kindle’s eInk design allows.

In many ways, the iPad book app was designed to look like a book, whereas the Kindle was designed to feel like a book.

The point is that there’s something that feels gratuitously obvious about the philosophical approach Apple takes to the design of the iPad book app and many of its other recent application designs. It’s very easy for skeuomorphism to become a crutch and used as a way to justify lazy design decisions: “This is what is familiar to users because this what they understand.”

Digitally recreating real materials and analog objects very quickly creates aesthetic for aesthetic’s sake. It’s hard to believe that all but a minute percentage of Apple’s user base has a tan, suede bound calendar or book of any sort — or anything else that looks remotely similar. Unfortunately, these are the characteristics of skeuomorphism that a vast majority of UI designers employ when using this approach (see Blackberry Playbook).

Ultimately, it becomes a less creative approach to the design problem and more a question of aesthetics (usually bad aesthetics). It encourages designers to become less critical and less inventive, which is detrimental to evolving new and improved solutions.

While novel interfaces for the sake of novel interfaces are bad — see 90% of old-school flash based websites — innovative solutions do stem from constructively exploring something new. For this reason, we’ve lost many inquisitive, thought-provoking gems like David Small’s early studies of dynamic 3d typographic landscapes, which looked like they would have long ago spawned new ways to explore and interact with information.

However obvious Apple’s skeuomorphic approach to UI might be, it’s an approach that is hard to argue with. Their products are still considered highly innovative, and their success is unprecedented; most would successfully argue they’re by far the best we have. However, aside from aesthetics, it is hard to see how these designs will ever evolve beyond derivative representations. Will they just change color and increase their visual fidelity?

As Kurt Anderson discusses this cultural stagnation in his article, You Say You Want A Devolution (Vanity Fair, Jan 2012), Apple’s approach to UI design is just another example of the gestalt. Anderson points out that technology has radically changed how we live, but the underlying cultural philosophies that drive aesthetic and visual fashion have remained largely the same for 20 years (it’s the first time it has happened, ever).

It has been a long time since a car design seemed uncomfortably radical; in fact, we have a ton of reissues instead. And Madonna has simply morphed into Lady Gaga. Like the 27 film sequels that made 2011 the record year for such things, perhaps Apple’s digital recreation of things we know and love is simply just a sign of the times.

When people are critical and thoughtful enough to conceive new ways of instantiating interactions, truly interesting things start to happen.

Take Soulver, a Mac based calculator that does away with the standard method of simulating the standard layout of calculator hardware. Instead, the design harnesses the advantages of computers to use and understand natural language. Instead of entering equations using a grid of buttons, calculations are done by entering phrases like “$45 for dinner plus a 15% tip”. This is certainly a lot more intuitive than figuring out the right series of button presses, which would be: “((45/100)*15)+45”.

However, Soulver is primarily addresses the function of a calculator by changing the default layout. It doesn’t inherently negate using realistic rendering within the UI.

Clearly, there is lot more to this debate than discussing the merits of rendering real-word materials or simply applying textures, highlights and shadows to give a sense of depth to communicate hierarchy and indicate elements that are actionable.

The arguments that surround this subject have been raging between UI designers for as long as most of us care to remember — it is tiresomely old. The debate stems from the fact that these graphic techniques are largely and completely unnecessary in printed material.

Traditionally, well-educated and experienced graphic designers have long opposed the use of drop shadows and faux rendering on websites and in software. These designers have made sound arguments for why this approach is completely unwarranted. However, design for screens addresses a different medium, which has radically different characteristics than paper and ink. Therefore, it requires a different approach and different thinking.

The design of interfaces has as much of a relationship to the design of physical products as it does to graphic design.

As we continue to evolve a new discipline of UI design, we are going to need careful and judicious consideration when applying the principles and techniques of both disciplines to our designs. Not only do colors behave differently through a backlit surface — as opposed to reflective surfaces — posters and printed pages don’t have actionable areas.

Physical products obviously have things like buttons, but screen interfaces can animate, morph and transition to different views and layout states because they are not static pages. This is especially true of UIs that are created for ever-improving graphic processors and screens with higher and higher resolutions.

This presents evolving challenges that require completely new methods and approaches that are influenced by film, animation, title design, and others.

In short, based on the practices of a single discipline, to categorically dismiss digitally recreating real-world materials on screen (i.e., rendering buttons to look like physical buttons) is to be naïve and indecorously black and white.

Of course, aesthetics affect function in both good and bad ways. The visual treatment of UI can inspire emotive qualities that can make a product more attractive and rewarding use.

For example, the nostalgic analog aesthetics that are applied to apps like Instagram are what makes it so appealing, even if this approach does ultimately hinder things like “efficient interaction” or “optimum usability”. The current retro-analog focus of much of the digital camera world is irresistibly beguiling (for example, Fujifilm’s x100 and x10, Leica’s cameras, amongst others).

But there are interface improvements that the current paradigm of cameras could surely benefit from. Radical new approaches to photography like the Lytro camera are very welcome.

Fortunately though, there are mainstream examples of UIs that venture away from the safety of skeuomorphs. Microsoft’s Metro design language — first deployed on Windows Phone 7 — is an exquisite example of what UIs can be if we free ourselves from being obviously derivative.

As a designer, it is hard not to be in awe of the pure and principled delivery of the Metro design language, which achieves such an admirable balance between function and aesthetic. Metro is not just design for design’s sake. By using the principles of way-finding and signage to drive how the design language is conceived, the proposition of Metro is arguably a better consumer play than any smartphone UI alternative.

However, what is less admirable is that the Metro design language has become the way of justifying the cause of the “anti-skeuomorph-zealots.”

While the design philosophy behind Microsoft’s Metro products like Windows Phone 7, Xbox and the forthcoming Windows 8 are successful attempts to create interfaces that leverage the unique characteristics of screens, it is difficult to accept that these are any more than simply contemporary instantiations of the Bauhaus/Modernest philosophy.

Unfortunately, the use of the term “modernism” is far more likely to apply to an aesthetic than to truly leverage the philosophy that defined a way of life and the design of objects and artifacts that support it.

In “Modernism: Defining a new World”, the book’s introduction “What is Modernism?” states that despite demonstrating the strength and breadth of the original modernist movement, modernism also “hides a surprising vagueness and ambiguity of meaning”.

The Metro design language is lauded by the “anti-skeuomorph-zealots” for its lack of ornamentation — a key tenet of Modernist philosophy. However, it’s not really that clear-cut. Compared to the yee-haw suede texture in iCal, there’s substance to this notion. But the large colored tiles and dominant use of icons and pictograms are a still a pretty dominant aesthetic, albeit simple.

True, these graphic elements don’t use superfluous drop shadows and rendering, but they also don’t really use space any more efficiently than many skeuomorphic iPhone apps. It is highly debatable whether they need to be as graphically dominant or whether the aesthetic form is purely driven by function.

Metro’s graphic elements are largely abstracted representations of their function, so from a modernist point-of-view, it is interesting to think of what else could be stripped away to enhance their function.

The app Flipboard, for instance, is far more stripped back and has far less ornamentation. Though, there is admittedly more user content (magazine covers, photos and so on) to drive the overall look-and-feel). Another better example, from another company not known for their design, is Google’s Gmail.

A key element of Modernism’s drive to remove ornamentation is being faithful to the characteristics of the materials that a thing is constructed from. With this, the Metro design language is often hailed as being authentic to inherent visual characteristics of digital screens: pixels are treated as pixels.

In the past when the square blocky form of pixel was so obvious and digital colors so distinct and limited, this blocky UI notion made sense. Today, ultra-high resolution screens have pixels that are so small that they are particularly indistinguishable without very close inspection. Color is no longer any limitation, for example 24-bit color pixels produces 16,777,216 possible colors, making it possible for a pixel to appear dull or bright, matte or shiny and take on more print-like qualities.

The capability of modern screens and processors means there is no longer any analogy to be made between pixels and materials like concrete, paper or brushed stainless-steel — all of which have a distinct, undeniable and unshakable aesthetic. A pixel can effectively take on almost any aesthetic and replicate almost any form.

So if the screen medium has no inherent visual characteristics, there’s almost an argument to be made that a skeumorphic calendar UI better follows another key Modernist principle “form flows function”, more than many of the more inventive approaches employed by Metro design.

Certainly, there’s been a very successful attempt to reduce a superfluous visual detail and visual clutter in the Metro design language. This clearly follows the principle of “less is more” professed  by Modernist, Dietar Rams. But ultimately, it doesn’t achieve the same level of subdued minimalism displayed by the products Rams created for Braun or ironically, that Ive created for Apple.

Metro’s colored tiles, refined iconography and black backgrounds create a distinctive visual character that is aesthetically vibrant. It’s not quite “Less is More”, but it is certainly nothing to be scoffed at. It’s a bit of more like Milton Glaser’s “Just enough is more”, which is a more workable philosophy for screen UI. In any respect, distinctive visual character is entirely necessary when you think of the role the Metro Design Language plays in manifesting a tangible brand presence for Microsoft in its products (avoiding the trapping of heavy handed corporate identity).

When creating UIs, it is important to have established a strong philosophical point of view with a clear objective that is support by a coherent set of principles. This isn’t where it ends though. It is essential for this point of view to have some substance. Designers must articulate how their solutions relate to long-established design philosophies, movements and methodologies.

However, the field of UI design is still evolving in its own right, so the influence of other disciplines of design is just that: an influence. The distinct camps that exist today are largely based on theoretical, subjective opinions. There’s a lot of making to be done and thoughtful, critical analysis of the solutions we create before we evolve approaches and philosophies that are truly unique to the discipline of UI design.

To do this, we do need to create UIs that are stripped-down as much as they can be. This means avoiding superfluous and gratuitous ornamentation, both visually and through how elements move. This doesn’t mean focusing on raw elements, which just support function. It is not simply a case of stripping everything back to the point of a handful of elements for the sake of being minimal; that would be simplistic, not designed.

As with film, there’s an opportunity to delight by incorporating elements purely to serve an emotive purpose. This is where the philosophy “Just Enough is More” fits better than simply “less is more”. Everything must be scrutinized, so there is a clear, purposeful rationale for each element, and layouts support the primary objectives of the product.

It is not possible to achieve success without thoughtful consideration of the way we interact with products in the analog world; incongruent designs would be far too cognitively taxing. However, designers cannot just digitally recreate or simulate analog models for the sake of familiarity, so we need to be checking our metaphors and make sure they’re making sense.

We must also be cognizant that much of the pre-internet world is now obsolete and unrecognizable to anyone under 20 years of age. Have you ever watched a perplexed 3-year try pinch-to-zoom a picture in printed magazine?

The next time you feel that comforting temptation to just stick with what works, remember that real value is created by design.

Teague takes a more holistic perspective, developing solutions that account for how consumers engage with various touch points and where our clients have a unique opportunity. This transcends simply crafting a message or designing a package and throwing them into the chasm. Instead, we architect an experience—based on a compelling value proposition—that’s designed to thrive in an increasingly crowded and complex CPG landscape.

This reminds me of a book I read awhile back, Chuck Klosterman’s “Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs.” In one very memorable chapter, Chuck talks about the impact of MTV’s The Real World on contemporary culture. Forget the multi-dimensional personalities of the past; society today only identifies with one-dimensional archetypes. Who are you? I’m usually the b*tch. Throw that into the now more popular competition reality formula and I’m the “character” that usually ends up screaming, “I didn’t come here to make friends.” I thought I was so much deeper than that…I am actually.

But deep takes time, and for whatever reason, these days we’ve got everything but time. The world generally opts for quick and easy; enter Hybrid Happenings.  Forget crafting a style all your own.  Find one you like, and just buy the hell out of it. I picture Anthropologie as opposed to Diesel, but the idea is the same. It’s a look. It’s a lifestyle. And it’s a damn shame. Your clothing, hobbies, home, pet, books—your individual choices make up the fabric of who you are. Put all these things in a pile, and it represents you. Put a bunch of things from Anthropologie in a pile, and it represents Anthropologie. Lesson here, opt out of quick and easy. Get a life. And don’t settle for just being the b*tch. It’s boring.

In the past, just as summer came to a close in the great Pacific Northwest, the award season kicked off in Europe, followed directly by the U.S. There’s not much to love about the submission process, but I do love winning. And after three intense months of dotting I’s, crossing T’s, and cropping images for awards, it was back to business as usual—media relations, communications and marketing, just a few of my favorite things. Not so bad really.

Those were the good ole days, circa 2010, when award season came on slow, a bit like a cold, with an itch at the back of your throat that lets you know trouble’s brewing. As much as I didn’t look forward to it, I didn’t mind it either. I could plan for it. Kinda like a vacation…to a place you don’t really want to go, but a good break from the daily grind nonetheless.

But something changed last year. New awards started creeping up, and what seemed like worthwhile awards at that. I didn’t really want to enter them, but at the same time, part of me really did.  So I womaned up, started dotting I’s, crossing T’s, and cropping images for awards. And before I knew it, design awards weren’t seasonal anymore. They were all the time. They are all the time. Which begs the question, what’s the real value? If there are a million design awards, they can’t all be worth winning. Which of course means, they can’t all be worth entering.

So my question to the design community is this: of all the design awards out there, which award trumps all others? Which award is the crème de la crème of design awards? And what makes it worth the work required to win?