Serendipity35

Would you ever put your music, pictures or videos in a "folder"?  Well, you do digitally. That's skeuomorphism.

A skeuomorph is an object that retains some design elements to earlier objects. Why do designers use them? Because our brain is organized by analogies and it is key to the way that we understand. 

For example, when designing early graphical user interfaces for computer operating systems, designers used the skeuomorph of a paper folder as a place to put "files." This made more sense when you were filing word processing documents than it did for music files, but the analogy has held on to this day.

Skeuomorphs are not just computer-related. When you see physical objects with faux rivets to look like they are made of metal, or stitching to give a leather look or faux wood on a cars side panels or dashboard, these are all skeuomorphs.

Add an old design element to a new one. Some designers view them as cheats, especially when they are less than subtle. Other designers like that they help users make connections.

PowerPoint replaced trays of 35mm slides in presentations and so Microsoft used "slides" as the term and the framing device for each file in the presentation.

We still see various icons of trashcans and wastebaskets as the place to dump out deleted files.
Even though we click rather than "press" many icons on screens, they still look like and are referred to as "buttons."

If you never worked in a photo darkroom, then some of the icons and terms used in the Photoshop software package may seem strange. In order to move photographers who had used darkrooms into the digital world terms like dodge and burn and the sponge and eyedropper from the darkroom were retained in the digital darkroom.

An article in Forbes magazine suggested that it was time for skeuomorphism "to die."  The author points to Apple's design whiz Jony Ive as one person there who would rather not design with that nod to the past.

Apparently, Steve Jobs did not agree. That's why we saw on Apple products: calendars with faux leather-stitching, bookshelves with wood veneers, fake glass and paper and brushed chrome. When a technology is new, it helps. Taking notes on a screen may feel more comfortable if the the application gives us "pens and highlighters" and the screen looks like a lined notebook or sticky notepaper.

But at some point, the technology is familiar enough that we shouldn't need these nods to the past.

My students don't know what I mean by a Rolodex, but they recognize the cards as a symbol for a contact.

Skeuomorph is from the Greek: skeuos (container or tool) and morphê (shape) and has been used since the late 1800s.

But the design concept has been around since antiquity and can be seen in leather and clay pottery which used traits from the wooden counterparts of earlier artisans. Clay pottery with rope-shaped handles were creating a connection to a familiar shape and usage.

Digital skeuomorphs abound. Your digital camera or smartphone still makes a shutter-like click is an auditory skeuomorph since there is no mechanical shutter present. Even the swipe on a pad to turn a page is a nod to the actual paper page turning motion.

Apple's iOS 7 is seen as a shift from skeuomorphism to a cleaner, more digitally pure design. The death of skeuomorphism? I doubt it.