Paul Goracke on the ‘iPhone Black’ UI Look

Paul Goracke:

Gratuitous use of a black UI only serves to distance an application from this smooth interface flow — maybe not as bad as a yellow, green or pale blue background, or an application that doesn’t even use standard navigation, tool and tab bars — but distanced nonetheless. Ironically, as more applications use the black UI, any one app using it is no longer differentiated — it’s now just noticeably “not Apple.”

His comparison to brushed metal is interesting and apt, but I do see one important difference: brushed metal looked bad, in and of itself. The black iPhone UI look doesn’t look bad, per se, it’s just different than the standard theme.

★ Monday, 29 September 2008