Aqua vs Magic Cap
アクア / マジックキャップ
Aqua comes from Apple UI and Magic Cap from Platform Screen Languages. One is style and the other aesthetic. They are reached for with some of the same intent, which is where they get confused.
Aqua
Mac OS X's design language of buttons you want to lick. Jelly gloss, pinstripes, deep shadows and the genie effect staged digital components as objects you could touch, and set the terms for UI throughout the 2000s. What the web made of it with images is Web 2.0 Gloss.
Magic Cap
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The interface General Magic put on its communicating handhelds, running on the Motorola Envoy and the Sony Magic Link. Instead of imitating single objects it imitates a place, opening on an Office where a telephone, a Rolodex, a notepad and a calendar sit on a desk, with a wall clock, in and out boxes and a filing cabinet behind it. From there a Hallway, furnished and hung with pictures, leads to the Game Room, the Living Room, the Storeroom and the Control Room.
| Aqua | Magic Cap | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 2000–2014 | 1994–1998 |
| Family | Apple UI | Platform Screen Languages |
| Kind | Style | Aesthetic |
| Cues | Gel-gloss buttons / Pinstriped grounds / Deep drop shadows / Metaphors of water and light | An opening screen where a telephone, a Rolodex, a notepad and a calendar sit on a desk / A wall clock, in and out boxes and a filing cabinet drawn on the wall behind that desk / Movement between rooms goes through a hallway that is itself furnished and hung with pictures / Line drawings on a coarse grayscale display, touched directly with a stylus rather than a finger |
| Best used for | Recreating 2000s digital culture with the texture it actually had · Making what is clickable read at once as a pressable object | Designing a handheld for first time users where tools are handed out as rooms rather than as a list of features · Building period art for a mid 1990s handheld where the screen contents have to hold up on their own |
| Type | No shadow on text, weighted to stay legible over gloss | Treat type as a nameplate inside the drawing. Name the rooms and the objects briefly and do not fall back on list headings. |
| Composition | Components evenly spaced, gaps left for shadows to fall into | Make the whole screen one place. Chain the desk surface, the wall behind it, the hallway outside and the next room in that order. |
| Material | A hard white highlight above, reflection and deep shadow below | Draw rather than photograph. Show each object from the front and give thickness and shadow only to the things that can be pressed. |
| Caution | Gloss and shadow applied evenly to every component hides what is actually pressable, leaving texture where hierarchy should be. | Every extra room and hallway pushes the tools further away, so count the round trips before committing to a spatial metaphor. |