Aqua vs OPEN LOOK
アクア / オープンルック
Aqua comes from Apple UI and OPEN LOOK 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.
OPEN LOOK
A screen language for Unix workstations, specified by Sun Microsystems in a functional specification published by Addison-Wesley in 1989. The book defines two parallel designs, one black and white for monochrome displays and one three dimensional for grayscale and colour, sets a single sans serif variable width face for every common element, and tells implementers that restraint is the key to colour. Each pop-up window carries a pushpin at the left of its header, and pinning it leaves the window on the workspace.
| Aqua | OPEN LOOK | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 2000–2014 | 1988–1990s |
| Family | Apple UI | Platform Screen Languages |
| Kind | Style | Style |
| Cues | Gel-gloss buttons / Pinstriped grounds / Deep drop shadows / Metaphors of water and light | A pushpin at the left end of a pop-up window's header, which pins the window to the workspace instead of dismissing it / Three dots after a label announce a window, an outlined triangle announces a menu / Scrollbars split into an elevator, a cable and top and bottom cable anchors, with the dark part of the cable showing how much is in view / The workspace is a 50 percent dither pattern and menu drop shadows are a 75 percent pattern |
| Best used for | Recreating 2000s digital culture with the texture it actually had · Making what is clickable read at once as a pressable object | Rebuilding a Unix workstation screen from around 1990 with a look that reads as Sun rather than Motif · Rebuilding a working screen so it survives a one bit display, using dither patterns and outlines alone |
| Type | No shadow on text, weighted to stay legible over gloss | Set every shared element in the same sans serif variable width face. Size in points rather than pixels, and scale through the 10, 12, 14 and 19 point steps the spec provides. |
| Composition | Components evenly spaced, gaps left for shadows to fall into | Give each window four resize corners and gather commands into control areas outside the pane. Every pop-up window opens with a header that carries a pushpin. |
| Material | A hard white highlight above, reflection and deep shadow below | Make the design work in black and white first. For the three dimensional version pick one background colour, derive the recessed shade by adding 10 to 15 percent black, and reserve white for lit edges. |
| Caution | Gloss and shadow applied evenly to every component hides what is actually pressable, leaving texture where hierarchy should be. | Starting from the three dimensional colour scheme collapses the moment the design meets a monochrome display, where neither the raised edges nor the pushpin survive. |