Aqua vs NeXTSTEP Interface
アクア / ネクストステップ・インターフェース
Aqua comes from Apple UI and NeXTSTEP Interface from Platform Screen Languages. Both are read here as style. They are reached for with different intent, which is the fastest way to tell them apart.
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.
NeXTSTEP Interface
The screen language NeXT laid down in its 1993 interface guidelines. The document states the goal outright: a color scheme based on black, white, and gray, and a simple appearance that uses shading for a three dimensional effect. The main menu stands as a vertical column at the upper left, and docked application icons run down the right edge.
| Aqua | NeXTSTEP Interface | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 2000–2014 | 1988–1997 |
| Family | Apple UI | Platform Screen Languages |
| Kind | Style | Style |
| Cues | Gel-gloss buttons / Pinstriped grounds / Deep drop shadows / Metaphors of water and light | A menu standing as a vertical column at the upper left, submenus attaching to its right / Square application icons docked in a vertical strip along the right edge of the screen / Thick bevels carved entirely from gray values, with no hue anywhere in them / A black title bar on the window taking keystrokes, dark gray on a window that is merely frontmost |
| Best used for | Recreating 2000s digital culture with the texture it actually had · Making what is clickable read at once as a pressable object | Building a developer tool whose entire hierarchy is carried by gray values and shading, with no accent hue · Showing where the visual language of today's Apple desktop came from, in a talk or an exhibit |
| Type | No shadow on text, weighted to stay legible over gloss | Run one Helvetica style face throughout and build hierarchy from weight and size alone. Leave unavailable commands in place in dark gray instead of removing them. |
| Composition | Components evenly spaced, gaps left for shadows to fall into | Fix a vertical menu column at the upper left and a vertical icon strip at the right edge, and give the space between them to the work. Windows are meant to overlap, so a black title bar is the only marker of the one in hand. |
| Material | A hard white highlight above, reflection and deep shadow below | Work in four steps from white to black and admit no hue. Assume one light source above, and keep every bevel consistent with it. |
| Caution | Gloss and shadow applied evenly to every component hides what is actually pressable, leaving texture where hierarchy should be. | Reproduce the grays and then add one saturated accent, and the premise that value carries hierarchy fails, taking the reading order of the whole screen with it. |