# Apple Desktop Interface × Xerox Star Interface — composed image prompt
# IndexStyle — https://indexstyle.org/compose?ids=apple-desktop-interface+xerox-star-interface
# Apple Desktop Interface carries the structure and Xerox Star Interface appears as the accent.
# Style descriptors only. This prompt names no artist, studio, brand or work.

Produce four original images that take their structure from Apple Desktop Interface (style, 1984–1997) and their accent from Xerox Star Interface (style, 1981–1990s).

## What to make

Make the kind of thing Apple Desktop Interface exists for: redrawing early Macintosh screens for an exhibition panel or an article on a modern display, or designing for a device that can only print or light two tones, such as e paper or a receipt printer. Choose one subject and hold it across all four.

## Structure comes from Apple Desktop Interface

- Two tones only, black and white, with gray faked by a checkerboard of black dots
- Window corners are rounded and the title bar carries several thin horizontal rules
- A menu bar pinned to the top edge of the screen, the Apple mark sitting at its left end
- Chicago, a heavy bitmap face whose letters are packed into a cell of 9 by 7 dots

Composition: A full width menu bar owns the top edge and everything below it is the work surface; rounded rectangular windows overlap freely and margins step in whole pixels. Type and lettering: A heavy bitmap sans, letters placed only on whole pixel positions, no anti aliasing; headings differ from body text by size rather than weight.

## Accent comes from Xerox Star Interface, used sparingly

- Every symbol on screen carries a text label, so meaning never rests on the picture alone
- The symbols stand for things found on an office desk: folders, in and out baskets, file drawers
- Objects are grabbed with the pointer, and moving, copying and deleting form one family of gestures
- The spreadsheet appears as a grid of rows and columns, with a menu of tools that act on the matrix

Let one material quality come from it: Work in two tones only and draw the symbols as outlines. Fill is either solid black or left white, with no intermediate greys.

## Colour and feeling

Build the ground on #FFFFFF, carry the structure in #7F7F7F and #000000, and let a single accent come from #9A9A9A. These are read off real works, so a direction rather than a fixed palette.
Feeling to carry: trust, technique, nostalgia, futurity.

## What goes wrong

- Apple Desktop Interface: Scaling the bitmap face by anything other than a whole number, or letting it anti alias, blurs the letterforms and erases the placed-by-hand dot density the style lives on.
- Xerox Star Interface: Stretching the desk metaphor to cover functions that have no desk equivalent breeds symbols nobody can name or find.

## Across the four

Keep the roles fixed in all four. Vary the framing, the scale and the arrangement so the set shows what this pairing can do rather than four versions of one picture.

## Constraints

- Do not imitate, reference or name any specific artist, studio, brand, character or copyrighted work.
- Do not reproduce the composition of an existing work.
- Produce original compositions in the general period languages described above.

Design specs for each entry: https://indexstyle.org/styles/apple-desktop-interface/design.md · https://indexstyle.org/styles/xerox-star-interface/design.md