Platinum

プラチナ / 1997–2001 / Style / Apple UI

Apple's own name for the default appearance of Mac OS 8, shipped alongside the Appearance Manager, a framework built so the entire look could later be swapped for another. It drains the color out of the interface and works in grays alone, embossing whatever can be pressed and flattening whatever cannot until it merges with the background. The newly thickened window frame was a signal that the window could now be dragged by any edge.

Platinum — Mac OS 8.1 desktop and "About This Mac" — Wikimedia Commons / CC0
Mac OS 8.1 desktop and "About This Mac" — Wikimedia Commons / CC0 · CC0
Platinum — Classilla 9.2 browser on Mac OS 9.2.2, 2010 — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0 · © Classilla contributors , Wikipedia contributors ( Featured , News ), Screenshot by Skedaddle
Classilla 9.2 browser on Mac OS 9.2.2, 2010 — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · © Classilla contributors , Wikipedia contributors ( Featured , News ), Screenshot by Skedaddle
Platinum — Login screen of Rhapsody Developer Release 2 — Wikimedia Commons / CC0
Login screen of Rhapsody Developer Release 2 — Wikimedia Commons / CC0 · CC0

At a glance

Visual cues

  • Windows and controls built entirely from desaturated grays
  • Live controls carry a bevel and stand up, while disabled ones go flat and sink into the same gray as the background
  • Thick molded window frames sitting next to modal dialogs that have almost no frame at all
  • A collapse box at the right end of the title bar, and pop up menus raised into buttons with a double triangle

Best used for

  • Rebuilding a late 1990s desktop screen with the period's actual control sizes and spacing intact
  • Showing which controls are usable in a dense business application without relying on color, using only whether a surface is raised or flat

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Dictionary entry

Type
One small sans serif carries both body text and controls. Hierarchy comes from surface height rather than type size, and bold is reserved for titles and the current selection.
Composition
Padding inside windows and dialogs is set in fixed pixel counts, and controls stack in a single column aligned to one left rule. Windows get the thick frame and modal dialogs get none.
Material
Keep three grays (a light face, a base, a dark edge). Build the bevel from a one pixel light line at the top left and a one pixel dark line at the bottom right. For the disabled state, delete both lines and fill with the base gray.
Caution
Hand drawn custom controls do not participate in the system appearance, so they stay stuck in the previous generation's look while everything around them changes.
Further study
the pixel level spacing tables in the layout chapter of the Mac OS 8 Human Interface Guidelines / the theme switching scheme the Appearance Manager inherited from Copland / why the thick frame on dialogs and the thin frame on windows in System 7 traded places in Mac OS 8

Related entries

Often confused with

More from Apple UI

Continue through styles in the same Apple UI family, prioritised by shared effects.

Browse all Apple UI entries

Cite this entry

The dictionary is meant to be linked to. Take whichever form fits where you are writing.

Link
https://indexstyle.org/styles/platinum
Markdown
[Platinum — IndexStyle](https://indexstyle.org/styles/platinum)
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<a href="https://indexstyle.org/styles/platinum">Platinum — IndexStyle</a>

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