Why Apple designs are better than iPhone icons

ByIphonedigital

Apple is a company that is developing everything from hardware such as iPhone and MacBook to software such as iOS and macOS. Although it is an Apple product that is highly evaluated from software to hardware, the product designer Mark · Stanton unravels from these icons lined up on the iPhone's home screen how exactly these designs are superior.

Apple's Icons Have That Shape for a Very Good Reason
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"If you are not interested in the interface design of iOS, you should see the Apple product icon," Staunton said. Icons that are lined up on the iPhone or iPad's home screen look like squares with rounded corners at the first glance, but this is actually said to be "something like a square and a circle".

Apple-designed icons that are "complicated and sophisticated" than squares with rounded corners are now being used from iOS 7 and later. Apple changed the shape of the icon by sticking to fine details, but because that change was too small, it is a level that you can not even notice the change simply by looking at it. Stanton says that the answer to the question "Why did Apple make such minor changes in the form of an icon?" Is simply "consistent". Apple has a consistent design for both its own hardware and software, resulting in minor changes to the shape of the icons on the iPhone screen.

To know the fact that the shape of the icon was changed in iOS 7, you can compare the form of the icons before and after the change. If you delete the part where the icon before change (yellow) and the icon after change (blue) overlap, you can see that the curves remain slightly in the four corners like the part written as "the difference".


Also, an important element in Apple's hardware design is "TangentAvoid, "Apple is carefully designing under product continuity, avoiding tangents thoroughly in product design.

The picture below shows this well. The picture on the right is taken of the corner of the MacBook Pro. Although the two faces intersect perpendicularly and the corners are rounded, the curve is very smooth. Stanton says "(MacBook Pro design) is not just a surface finished in matte", and by using multiple curves continuously, "beautiful and sexy curved surface" is produced And that. On the other hand, the photo on the left shows that plain and curved places change clearly and are unclear.


About this beautiful roundness made using this continuously different curve, Stanton explains "This is one reason why everyone loves Apple products." And this continuous curve is also used for icons lining up on the iPhone 's home screen.

The following figures show the difference between unusual curves (left) and Apple's curves (right) other than Apple products. In the case of left, the curvature suddenly changes from 0 to the maximum at the place where it changes from a straight line to a curve, and draws a curve while keeping constant. On the other hand, the curvature of Apple's curve gradually changes, which makes a smoother curved line.


Finding this difference with the icon on the screen of the smartphone is a very difficult part, but as you can see from the example of the yellow and blue icon above, you can see that it is actually changing certainly. What matters here is not that "the icon of the Apple is gradually changing curvature", but "it is designed with the same guidelines in both hardware and software".

Since Apple has not obtained a patent for how to draw curves that change this curvature, other companies can do similar designs. However, it seems that such a design does not seem so much. The reason for this may be that engineers using CAD tools for product design do not have that idea or because the designer is not a CAD tool expert and can not reproduce the curve.

The "curvature continuity" that Apple uses for product design and icon design is provided by AutodeskAlias ​​tool tutorialIt is recommended to see.