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Transparent Ambition

ghtmare from which I am trying to awake. Aside from movie visual effect trickery, it started out in Mac OS X's Aqua, followed by Windows Vista's Aero, followed by (then) OS X's Vibrancy, followed by Windows 10's Acrylic.

Well-known and time tested elements of design are, if not abandoned, then demoted below the desire to have a visually striking, consistent branding user interface. The first decade of Aqua is a great example of this, in going from flashy, jarring, gaudy tech demo to something a bit more toned down, but still elegant, effective, playful, beautiful and with a lot of personality. Aqua had in its roots that it wanted to be user interface, with clearer and bigger fonts, more prominent key buttons, allowances for pro features, solving issues that classic Mac OS had long suffered.

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