What smartphone app resembles a 12th century nautical tool? The answer’s due south!
TheHilaryClark/ Pixabay

Skeuomorphs “Net” Cultural Memory

As we sail into a new decade, a titanic debate continues to rock the boat from port to computer port. On one side, designers who’ve jettisoned skeuomorphs. On the other, those who are still on board with them.

Should skeuomorphs be set adrift? Or treasured because they’re anchored in cultural memory? What are skeuomorphs, anyway?

Some designers dislike skeuomorphs’ ties to the past, as in this digital version
of a nautical compass.
Geralt/ Pixabay

Say, That Looks Familiar

Even if you’ve never heard of them, you know them. In computing, skeuomorphs are digital images that mimic older, physical objects. The nearest examples are probably on your cellphone:

• a retro telephone handset (digital phone app)
• a postage stamp (email program)
• a manual camera with lens and shutter button (photo app)
• a cassette tape, as invented in 1963 (audio-record app)
• a 1970s style pocket calculator (faster, high-capacity calculator app)

I say “probably” because neoumorphists are working hand over fist to replace such apps.

“Neou-whatzits?” Neoumorphists. This group practices a design style that features minimalistic, one-dimensional flat shapes. Moreover, they prefer either solid colors or no color at all. In short, they create neuomorphs.

The term neuomorph is itself a kind of skeuomorph. It mimics the old word to convey the idea of the new word. Maybe that’s why some practitioners prefer the term “Flat Design.”

Flat design took apps in a new direction.
Villarreallevi/ Pixabay

Skewing Away from Skeuomorphs

Why have flat-friendly designers given the heave-ho to skeuomorphs?

For starters, it’s been 35 years since Apple featured skeuomorphs on the first personal computer. Imagine seeing an icon of a floppy disk on the  device that made floppies obsolete. So why was it there? Because it made something new look comfortably old and familiar.

Like the cassette tape, floppy disks were physical objects manually inserted into a computer for the purposes of saving information. By contrast, the new computer required no disk. Instead, it showed a picture of one to help you transition into saving info digitally.

At the time, that seemed bold. It was a shot across the bow of cantankerous word processors. (I called mine “Old Ironsides.”)

However, to a young digital native, someone who’d never encountered a physical floppy disk, the digital image became the more real of the two. It evoked, not an object, but only an action: “save.”

Meanwhile, a new wave of designers, considered skeuomorphs clunky, their purpose lost at sea. Skeuomorphs were scraping the bottom of the barrel, they said. And they were not about to pipe down.

Gradually, the skeuomorph trend hit the doldrums. Mainstream designers, certain they’d keel over if they had to develop one more fake trashcan, file folder, or bookcase, began abandoning ship. They changed course, bound for the uncharted waters of start-ups.

By 2012, there was no stemming the tide.  To put it pictorially . . .

Flat Design went full steam ahead . . .
Herbert2512/ Pixabay

. . .  leaving skeuomorphs in its wake and over a barrel.

Ships Shapes that Pass in the Night?

Skeuomorphs were dead in the water, declared “Flat” fans. Old as the (Silicon Valley) hills. Some even claimed that before the Mac, skeuomorphism could not have existed, since there was no graphical interface.

Now wait just one oh I see moment: While not all skeuomorphs endure, skeuomorphism is no passing fad. It’s freighted with centuries of cultural memory.

Going Old-Skeu

The term skeuomorph was coined in 1889 when a scholar combined two Greek words—skeuos, meaning vessel or tool, and morphê, meaning shape or form. Archaeologists applied the term to ancient artifacts that carried “memories” of even older objects. Classic examples include:

• ancient clay pottery from Zaire molded to resemble the straw that was used in earlier, woven containers
• ancient Greek stone buildings that preserved the functions of their wooden precursors

In short, skeuomorphs were never just digital. That urge to imitate, to preserve, to artfully smuggle something older into the hull of something newer, has always been with us.

Vintage skeuomorph, this antique coffeepot looks woven and has “tree branch” handles.
Auckland Museum, CC BY 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Skeuomorphs Are Everywhere

Common household skeuomorphs include:

• battery-operated or LED “candles”
• window shutters that are purely decorative
• shoes with ornamental buckles over functional Velcro fasteners
• “wood-grain” laminate flooring

Unlike the wall, the “wooden” table is skeuomorphic. So are most of the “candles.”
© Joyce McGreevy

Skeuomorphism is roadworthy, too. For example, it includes:

• Logos of horses on cars—visual reminders of “horsepower,” itself a verbal skeuomorph
• The first trains and cars, modeled after horse-drawn carriages
• Electric cars with front grilles. That’s utterly skeuomorphic. No internal combustion engine? No need for cooling air-intake!

Skeuomorphs go beyond the visual:

• Taste: meatless burgers and tofu turkey
• Texture: furniture in one material that imitates another material
• Scent: air freshener imitating an “ocean breeze” or “lavender field”

Cars with wood paneling and wheel spokes are . . .

. . . skeuomorphic of old-fashioned wooden carriages.
Britlish/ Pixabay

Speaking of Skeuomorphs

There are, I think, echoes of skeuomorphism even in language. It’s in the way we knowingly or unknowingly imitate linguistic elements of the past.

That’s why, for the sake of experiment, I packed this post with vintage nautical terms, stem to stern. Did I go overboard? Aye, to prove a point: As old artifacts are “re-designed” for new users, the updated version retains vestiges of cultural memory. It’s as true of language as it is of technology.

So, even though you’re not an old-timey pirate, sea captain, boatswain, coxswain, rum smuggler, sea-shanty composer, or Viking explorer, every seaworthy idiom I used made sense to you. Like the digital native assigning new meaning to a graphical icon, you simply use it differently than its originators did.

That for me, is also the beauty of a skeuomorph. Be it digital or physical, visual or verbal, by intention or by-the-way, the best kind preserves cultural memory and takes on new meaning.

Don’t get me wrong. Flat Design has a vital role in language, too. If I need an ambulance, I’ll state my home address, not describe its architecture. I’m an idiom lover, not an idiot.

However, rather than choose one design style over another, I’ll navigate the best of each—the abstract and the pictorial, the streamlined and the layered. If neuomorphs make for plain sailing, skeuomorphs net cultural memory. Happily, there’s room onboard for both.

What’s next in digital design? Wait and sea!
PixelLoverK3/ Pixabay

Did you spot all the nautical terms? Some are less obvious than others! Plumb their watery word depths, here and here.

Comment on the post below, or inspire insight with your own OIC Moment here.