Terminal UI

ターミナルUI / 1970s– / Style / UI Expression

The terminal look: monospaced phosphor characters on black. The VT100's green afterglow became the primal image of the computer's face, repeated from hacker cinema to modern CLI tools.

Terminal UI — AI-generated interpretation 1 — AI-generated interpretation, not a reference work

Terminal UI — Autopilot, Colossal Cave Adventure running on a DEC VT100, 2014 — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0 — Autopilot, Colossal Cave Adventure running on a DEC VT100, 2014 — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0 · CC BY-SA 3.0

Terminal UI — Attys, Linux kernel menuconfig screen built with ncurses, 2011 — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0 — Attys, Linux kernel menuconfig screen built with ncurses, 2011 — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0 · CC BY-SA 3.0

At a glance

Visual cues

Single phosphor color on black
The monospace grid
A blinking cursor
Scanlines and glow

Best used for

Developer tools packing state and next steps into one monospaced screen
Staging technical hardness or secrecy as the look of an interface

Use this style

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Dictionary entry

Type: One monospaced face where emphasis comes from weight and inversion alone
Composition: Everything on the column and row grid, blocks separated by blank lines
Material: One phosphor hue on black with scanlines and bloom added sparingly
Caution: Heavy scanlines and flicker cost legibility and the atmosphere ends up beating the speed that made the tool worth using.
Further study: the DEC VT100 / hacker screens in film / modern CLI and TUI design

Related entries

ANSI Art (BBS Scene) (ANSIアート)Shared effects: Rebellion / Technique.Compare Terminal UI and ANSI Art (BBS Scene)
Cyberpunk (サイバーパンク)Shared effects: Rebellion.Compare Terminal UI and Cyberpunk

Cite this entry

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

Link: https://indexstyle.org/styles/terminal-ui
Markdown: [Terminal UI — IndexStyle](https://indexstyle.org/styles/terminal-ui)
HTML: <a href="https://indexstyle.org/styles/terminal-ui">Terminal UI — IndexStyle</a>

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