Skeuomorphism

Definition

Borrowed physics

A skeuomorph is an ornamental feature carried over from an older material into a new one — the shutter click on a silent camera, the wood grain moulded into plastic. In software it means the screen imitates an object: light falls from above, surfaces have thickness, and pressing something moves it down and darkens it. Nothing here is decoration for its own sake. Every gradient is an argument that this rectangle is a physical control.

It reached its peak between 2007 and 2012, when a generation was meeting the touchscreen for the first time and needed to be told, in the most literal terms available, what could be poked.

The rules

How it is actually built

1. One light source, always from above. Top edge catches a highlight, bottom edge drops a shadow. Break this in one component and the whole page reads as broken.
2. Raised means pressable, recessed means content. Text fields sink. Buttons rise. A depth inversion is the fastest way to lie to a user.
3. Texture carries the metaphor. Felt for a card table, linen for a notepad, brushed aluminium for a chrome bar. The texture tells you which real object you are holding.
4. Press states must move. A button that changes colour but not position is a picture of a button. Three pixels of travel is the whole illusion.
5. Letterpress the type. A one pixel dark shadow above and a one pixel light below and the label appears stamped into the surface rather than floating on it.

Specimen

Controls, in the material