Flyosity: Mac & iPhone Interface Design Blog by Mike Rundle

The underlying secret to beautiful user interface design is realism: making 2D objects on your screen appear to sit in 3D space with volume, surface properties and undulations that might appear in real life. These faux 3D objects have highlights and shadows just like objects on your desk might have, and they have textures that emulate real objects from glass to sandpaper and everything in between. Designing beautiful user interfaces has more to do with the why than the how.

Thinking in 3D

If you're trying to design a realistic-looking user interface element then you have to think about what that object would look like in the real world. What's the easiest way to do that? Look at it from the side. What would a button look like if you viewed it from the side of your monitor? Let's take a look.

Here's a button-shaped panel that's designed to look slightly raised and have a matte surface. It's thin, has a subtle convex shape, and has a small edge that goes around the outside. In a 3D space, the light source would illuminate the edges (slightly brighter on the topmost edge) and would not fully illuminate the bottom slope of the panel past the apex. The object would cast a small shadow since it's not raised off the surface very much.

Pastebot, the new app from Tapbots, has a table view filled with panels that look similar to the one from above. Let's see what it'd look like with multiple panels next to each other.

This looks like a realistic series of panels because of the Top Edge Highlight up against the Inset Shadow which, from the side, would look like this: <. The Inset Shadow appears because the light source does not illuminate that area but then the next panel starts and pokes out, catching the light and showing a highlight.

Design elements that we think look great are usually the ones that look the most realistic, as if they could be in front of us on our desk or on the wall. Paying close attention to how light would strike the object as if it were real is crucial to executing a realistic user interface element.

Designing The Material & Surface

In my internet globe icon tutorial I stressed the impact an object's material has on its overall look. Not accustomed to thinking about an object's material? Get used to it! It adds a new dimension to your design and keeps the object's realism in the front of your mind. If you're designing an interface element and can't immediately name what type of material you're emulating then how can you execute it with perfect realism?

I recently linked to some beautiful Dock replacements for your Mac and many of these illustrate how important the material is to your overall design. In one named Phantom the designer uses two different materials to make the Dock: a textured, grainy surface coupled with a semi-transparent glass edge. The textured surface seems like the back of a notebook pad or a heavily-used wallet whereas the front edge looks like a clear, solid block of lucite.

Apple has been using shiny, gloss-laden user interface elements in Mac OS X for awhile but recently there has been some chatter that they were gearing up for a total interface refresh using matte elements. This full refresh never happened but matte interface elements have been steadily making their way into Mac OS X for a number of years.

With the latest version of iTunes, many user interface elements like scrollbar sliders and buttons have been given the updated, matte look.

Apple's also been using the matte look in some of their Pro software, most notably Final Cut Server. In that application's interface, Apple's removed the gloss from nearly everything and kept convex buttons close to flat with only a slight highlight on the edge. Also, the icons on buttons are not set into the button (accomplished via a thin, white drop shadow on the bottom, a style used throughout Mac OS X) but instead sit on top of the button through the use of a dark drop shadow on the icon. The entire interface pane is slightly raised and looks like dark, textured steel, making the application look like the instrument panel to a high-tech piece of equipment.

Here's an assortment of icons that all show how different surface materials contribute to the overall look of the element:

Next time you want to create something shiny, think about what type of material you're really executing: is it plastic? Glass? Reflective aluminum? If you're designing a matte element, think about just how grainy and textured it should be. Paper or sandpaper? Cardboard or anodized aluminum like an iMac? Is there transparency? Are you emulating something in real life or creating a material that's more hyperrealistic?

Tips For Execution

It's one thing to look at beautiful interface elements, icons and illustrations and quite another to build them yourself. Here are some ways that I build designs using Photoshop.

Noise Layer
Matte interfaces are hot right now and one of the key elements of a matte surface is that it's not perfectly symmetrical, it has some texture and grain to it. The easiest way to accomplish this is by creating a layer of one flat color and then using the Noise Filter to add some texture. The key is to keep it subtle and barely noticeable.

Radial Highlights
The main light source comes from the top but that doesn't mean you can't introduce a secondary light source for emphasis. Below I've created a custom navigation bar for an iPhone application that uses a subtle radial highlight for added dimension and detail. The Blend Mode has been set to Overlay to brighten and saturate the overall color and the transparency has been knocked way down to keep it realistic. Also note the edge highlights to make it look more like a raised surface.

Creative Layer Styles
Layer Styles are a key part of my design workflow, I use them for everything. Usually I'll draw a vector object, set the Fill to 0%, and design the entire thing using Layer Styles. Anyone can add a Drop Shadow to something, but if you get creative with Layer Styles then it enables you to really transform what you're working on. For example, you can only apply one Stroke but you can emulate 3-4 different stroke styles through creative use of the Inner Glow and Outer Glow styles if you crank up the Spread and Choke sliders and turn your glows into solid lines.

Once you turn glows and drop shadow styles into solid lines you can achieve a lot of effects with minimal effort. Below are some Layer Styles applied to rounded rectangles that use 1px glows and shadows. The PSD file for the following examples is released under a Creative Commons license: Button Examples

Reality Is Subtle

When something looks "off" in an interface, it probably looks fake, like it wouldn't exist in the real world. How do you keep your interface elements looking real? Here are some things to always keep in mind:

• Keep it crisp. No blurry lines or edges.
• Always adjust opacity. Nothing is totally black or white, dark or bright. A semi-transparent black or white line, glow, shadow or shape goes a long way.
• Go vector when you can, it can be resized later. Don't Free Transform vector objects: use the Direct Selection Tool to move individual points.
• Experiment with Layer Styles. White Inner Glow makes shapes pop. Use Overlay blending mode to liven up and saturate colors.
• Drop Shadows will ruin your design if you don't do it right. Things should be right up against their surface which means using a 1-3px Drop Shadow size. And 0-3px distance. This isn't WordArt.
• To save a complex shape as a PNG or GIF, turn the layer into a Smart Object first, then Rasterize it. This preserves color blending modes.
• When using type within an interface element, it either sits on top (dark 1px drop shadow) or is inset (white 1px drop shadow), it's never at the same surface as a button or widget.
• Real-world objects rarely have perfectly square corners. Use subtle rounded corners to make objects look real.
• In real life, everything casts a shadow. Unless you're drawing vampires, if you intend your object to have depth and be resting on a surface then it better have a drop shadow, even an incredibly subtle one.

Categories: Application Design Tutorial

Apple's paradigm for indicating network connectivity is nicely-detailed globe icon with crisscrossing wires across it — you can see it in the System Preferences for Network settings. Wolfgang recently rejuvenated this UI analogy in his work on LittleSnapper's interface. I thought it'd be fun to do my version of this icon and step you through the process as I go.

Spheric Realism

Before getting into the tutorial's steps I thought it'd be good to go over some key techniques for creating a realistic sphere.

Designing a nice, shiny ball has many applications and is a nice skill to have in your back pocket. When designing a ball that's meant to look as round as possible here are some things to keep in mind:

• What material is it? Glass, plastic, anodized aluminum? The material of an object is its most important attribute as that defines how it is supposed to reflect and transmit light in the real world. Most textures on shiny spheres are semi-reflective glass or metal, rarely do you see a rough metal used as the material.
• It reflects light inside too. Not only do you have to worry about the global OS light but you have to keep in mind that light gets reflected inside the sphere as well, bouncing around the walls. Depending on the type of material of your sphere and the transmittance properties it will look different. Opaque material lets no light pass through so there will be no internal reflections.
• Is it totally round? Designing a perfectly spherical ball is not necessary all the time, sometimes all you want is a mostly-rounded button or disk. These have similar properties as spheres but the edges will have light reflections and shadows rather than the top or bottom of the ball. Spheres don't really have edges to catch the light since, um, they're spheres!

Lots to think about! Don't remember high school physics and how a material's refractive index changes light passing through it? Don't worry, just follow along and we'll have you building spheres in no time.

Step 1: Draw Your Base Circles

To make the globe look three-dimensional, it'll take more than one crack at Photoshop's Layer Styles which means a little onion-skinning will be necessary.

We're designing our icon at 256px so get your new document open and use the Ellipse Tool to make a circle sized so that it allows for a shadow underneath it. We're applying two layer styles — Gradient Overlay and Inner Shadow — in order to get the basic lighting in place. The Gradient Overlay is radial and I used the mouse to move it down to the bottom of the sphere representing the light passing through the top of the sphere, reflecting off the bottom. The Inner Shadow was also positioned at the top to give it some initial radial shading.

I need to apply some additional effects to the base circle so I duplicated my previous circle, turned the Fill to 0%, and re-opened my Layer Styles. I gave this second circle an Inner Glow with Multiply blending (half opacity) and an additional Inner Shadow positioned only at the top with Soft Light blending.

Step 2: Lay Your Shadows

Before we add the final lighting to our sphere, let's position its shadow first.

I drew a small ellipse at the bottom of the sphere and filled it black. Next I converted it to a Smart Object and applied a 73px horizontal Motion Blur and a 12.5px Gaussian Blur. To darken the center a bit more since that's where the sphere is "touching" the surface I duplicate my previous shadow and shrink it down a bit.

Step 3: Circular Highlights

Realistic lighting and highlights can't be fully reproduced using Layer Styles, you'll need to draw some more ovals.

Draw a circle about 3/4 the height of your previous ones and align it a few pixels from the top of the main circle. Make sure it has a 0% Fill and give it a Radial Gradient layer style from white to transparent with the white directly on top.

Now convert it to a Smart Object and give it a 3.9px Guassian Blur to soften it a bit. This represents the main OS light hitting the top of our sphere. (Note: Others may have a different preference regarding how blurred they want their top highlight. Some people won't want to blur it at all. Do whatever you think looks best.)

To make the center of our top highlight a little brighter, let's duplicate the layer and shrink it down proportionally. Now we have two ovals at the top of the sphere representing our top-down lighting.

For the bottom-up lighting, duplicate your larger highlight you created, flip it vertically, and move it down to the bottom of the sphere. Change the Blending to Soft Light. Here's what it looks like:

At this point we're done with our sphere but we still have the lines to draw, so let's get to it.

Step 4: Draw The Network Lines & Hubs

The network lines proved to be a little tricky to get just right. Here's how I did them:

1. Use the Ellipse Tool to draw a circle that is approximately the same size as your main sphere.
2. Free Transform your circle to flatten it out a bit.
3. Rotate it a bit on its center axis, make it look like a hula hoop wrapped around your globe.

I hopped into the Layer Styles and gave it a 2px white stroke with Blend Mode of Overlay. I also gave it 4px Inner & Outer Glows both white. Doesn't look like much yet, but here's what we've got at this stage:

I'm going to use this loop as both a foreground and background network line, so I duplicated the layer and hid the second one for now.

I used my Eraser Tool with a big brush that's fluffy on the edges so I can keep the edges of the loop anti-aliased as it hits the sides of our sphere. On your foreground loop, erase the left side completely, and erase just enough right at the top and bottom of your loop so that it fades into the sides of the sphere. ow for the background loop, erase the right side and use the same technique for the top and bottom edges.

To make the lines look as if they're sitting on top of the globe more, I duplicated each layer, gave it a slight Gaussian Blur, and then nudged it a few pixels away from its twin. I could've achieved this look with an Inner Glow, but hey, there's different ways of doing what you want in Photoshop.

I've now done this a few more times (foreground and background loops) and we're done with this step.

Final Step: Adding The Network Nodes

At this stage I think it looks pretty good, but we're not quite finished yet. Where our network lines cross we need some glowing network nodes. Fortunately, these are really easy. Take your Ellipse Tool, draw the node, fill it white, convert to Smart Object. Then, give it a little Gaussian Blur and change the blending and opacity appropriately. We're done!

Our final icon is on the left. On the right is a slightly tweaked example showing what you can do by changing some Blending Modes just for kicks.

Download The PSD

Reading about Layer Styles isn't that appealing, so if you want to check out exactly how the objects look, download the PSD all zipped up right here: you're free to do whatever you want with it.

Categories: Icons Tutorial

When I first started designing for the web (don't ask how long ago that was!) I was constantly finding websites that had a particular "look" that I didn't know how to reproduce. When you're a flat-out beginner you don't have anything in your mental repertoire to pull from — techniques and concepts that you can do blindfolded. Now that I'm working harder on icon design, I've found that the easiest way for me to get experience and learn is to try and reproduce the fantastic work that others have put together. It's only for learning, however, I absolutely do not advocate taking anyone's creative work and passing it off as your own.

Now that I've got that out of the way, let's take a crack at doing our own version of the brilliant Billings application icon (designed by the extremely talented Cian Walsh) in Photoshop.

Step 1: Draw the basic shape

The Billings icon is meant to look like some sort of futuristic stopwatch (and perhaps EVE from WALL•E!) so the shape is essentially a stretched out circle. To get this shape, I grabbed the Ellipse Tool and drew a circle that approximated the dimensions of the top half of the stopwatch.

The full shape isn't a circle, so we've got some work to do to make it look how we want. Grab the Direct Selection Tool. Click directly on the object's path and drag the bottom point of the circle down to where the bottom point of our stopwatch object will end up being. This will warp the circle, but not to worry, you can reshape it by grabbing directly on the curve and moving it to where you want it to be. Manipulating the path's curves will force the bezier points on either end of the curve to adjust themselves to fit your adjustment. Tweak the individual bezier curve handles in order to fine-tune your shape, but remember to leave the overall shape smooth with no jagged points. I've got my stopwatch shape colored #e1e2e1 as my base color for the object.

Step 2: Draw the shadow

I like to work on the shadow early in the design process as it gets my mind into 3D mode faster, letting me better visualize the lighting of the object.

I find it easier to create drop shadows on icons via separate layers rather than Layer Styles because when trying to emulate perspective, the shadow's size needs to look like it's behind the object and therefore visually smaller to your eye. Feel free to use normal Layer Styles to create the drop shadow if you'd like.

Duplicate the layer you were just working on and move the duplicate behind your actual stopwatch layer. Next, give it a black fill and resize it down a little bit — proportionally — using the top-right handle. Rasterize the layer and give it a Guassian Blur enough to start making it look like a nice shadow. I also gave my shadow a Motion Blur from left to right to spread it out a bit more. Here's what we've got so far

Step 3: Initial shading on the base object

The shape we're drawing has some complex lighting so it can't be taken care of with just one Layer Style, it'll take a few layers overlapped on top of each other to finish the shading. In this step, we'll be roughing out the initial shading with a Gradient Overlay and an Inner Shadow.

The Gradient Overlay has Blend Mode: Normal, Opacity: 100%, Gradient: #fff->transparent, Style: Radial, Angle: -65°, and Scale: 117%. For radial gradients, the angle changes the size of the radial gradient. To get the placement of the gradient exactly where I want, while I was working on the Gradient Overlay I just grabbed and moved the gradient right on the object itself while the dialog box was still open.

The Inner Shadow has Blend Mode: Overlay #000, Opacity: 100%, Angle: 164°, Distance: 26px, Choke: 9%, Size: 24px. Just like with the Gradient Overlay, to get the perfect placement I grabbed and moved the shadow myself. This was important because to duplicate the shading exactly, there should be no shadow on nearly the entire right side of the object.

There's a lot more work left to be done, but here's where we are so far:

Step 4: Onion-skinning your way to realism

Most of the time your object will need additional shading details that just can't be created with a single group of Layer Styles — you'll need to layer a bunch of effects on top of each other to make it look how you want. Here's what a typical process is like:

1. Duplicate your original layer, name it something recognizable.
2. Drop your Fill to 0% if it's not there already. You want your effects to layer up and not block-out the original layer.
3. Add new Layer Styles and adjust your Blend Mode to accomplish the look you want.
4. To build up additional effects, start back at 1, rinse and repeat

Why is this necessary? Because Photoshop doesn't allow you to have multiple versions of the same Layer Effect on a layer. That means if you want an inner stroke, and outer stroke, and a center-aligned stroke on the same layer, you're out of luck. Multiple inner shadows? Sorry, no can do. You can accomplish a build-up of the same effect via this onion-skinning technique, but keep in mind if you ever have to change your initial shape you'll have to tweak all your duplicated layers as well.

I've got 3 duplicate layers on top, each with 0% Fill and a series of Layer Effects applied. Here's the list of layers and their effects in the order they're shown in Photoshop:

• Inner Shadow: giving a bit more depth
• Stroke: a white stroke to give the bottom corner of the stopwatch a small bevel
• Gradient Overlay & Inner Glow: the gradient overlay is a transparent -> white linear gradient from left to right, and a thin white inner glow around the entire object.

Step 5: Drawing the face of the stopwatch

Compared to the body of the stopwatch and all its shading, the face is much easier technically. It's comprised of only a few layers:

• Dark blue dial — an ellipse that's been tweaked for perspective, it has Radial Gradient for the center highlight, an Inner Shadow for the top left dark area, a Stroke for the thick blue border, and a Drop Shadow of white at the top.
• Minute/hour markers — just a bunch of circles drawn with the object tool in a circular pattern around the dial. Each has an Outer Glow applied.
• The time wedge — this was drawn with the Pen Tool and has a Gradient Overlay and Inner Shadow.
• The sheen — I duplicated the blue dial, shrunk it a bit, applied a Gradient Overlay, then chopped the bottom part off with a circular cut.

Finished!

There are some small tweaks to be made like darkening up certain areas of the icon for enhanced contrast, and adding the stopwatch button at the top right, but I think this is a good place to leave off. Some quick tips:

• If you're designing an icon for multiple resolutions, it's a good idea to stay vector as long as possible for easy scaling. I usually keep my layers as editable vector shapes with Layer Effects applied, and only rasterize if absolutely necessary. Also, if I rasterize a vector shape, I like to keep an original vector version around (hidden) if I need it later.
• Use the "onion-skinning" technique to get a build-up of multiple effects that can't be done in one layer style. Multiple inner shadows, multiple strokes & gradients are crucial when designing icons for maximum realism.

And that's it for now!

Categories: Icons Tutorial

One of my favorite pieces of UI design on the iPhone is the toggle switch that lets you turn something on or off. The design and the smooth flow between the two states is perfect. I thought it'd be fun to emulate this element in Photoshop as a quick tutorial.

Step 1: Design The Button

For maximum flexibility, I'm going to be using vector shapes and Layer Styles. To draw the button, grab the Rounded Rectangle Tool and use a 3px radius. Draw the shape similar to what I've got below.

Hint: When you resize vector shapes, it scales each part of the shape to the new size which means your rectangle's corners will get stretched out. To keep the correct border radius, use the Direct Selection Tool to select the 4 points on the side of the shape you want to move. This will keep the corner radius intact.

The coloring for these effects comes straight from the iPhone's slider via a screenshot. I typically use both Gradient Overlay and Inner Shadow together to render my lighting effects. The gradient is for the overall light hitting the button, and the inner shadow (in this case, a thin white line at the top) is the highlight right at the top of the bevel.

Step 2: Design The Track

Here, we'll be designing the blue "On" state of the toggle switch. The "Off" state has the same shape but is a light grey instead of a vibrant blue.

The track has the same height and border radius as the slider button, so the easiest way to create your track object is to duplicate the slider button you just made. Select your Move Tool and have your slider button object highlighted. Hold down the Option + Shift keys and drag your cloned object to the left of your original slider button. Now, resize your slider track so that it's about 1.5x the width of your slider button and make their right sides line up.

Now it's starting to look pretty close!

There should be a shadow on the left side of the slider button, indicating that the slider track is recessed and that the button is closer to the light source than the track. Let's add that in the next step.

Step 3: Finish The Switch

To show the drop shadow to the left of the slider button, we'll go back to our button layer and add a Drop Shadow that's facing directly to the left — Blend Mode: Normal #000000, Opacity: 38%, Angle: 0%, Distance: 3px, Spread: 23%, Size: 2px.

The relatively high shadow spread is so that it will fill out a few pixels to the left of the object, eliminating the "leak" we'd get if we simply boosted the size of the shadow. If we increased the size beyond 2px, it would show the drop shadow above and below the slider button which isn't what we're looking for.

To finish it off we've added the "On" text and gave it a thin drop shadow to indicate that it's inset on the slider's track.

And that's it! Now you've got an iPhone toggle switch that you can use on your own projects.

Categories: Tutorial iPhone