Given the recent WWDC announcement of Apple’s Liquid Glass design language and the subsequent discussion on their functional usefulness in conveying visual hierarchy of affordances, I’m wondering if some lessons could also be taken from an environment that had evolved in parallel -- that of video game interfaces, whose trend initially started out being a vehicle to facilitate immersion via stylized decorations (see: Warcraft and StarCraft), then underwent a phase of minimalism (reflector sight-esq monochromatic HUD overlays) before finally settling on something that is a mixture of stylized and functional thanks to a design pressure of needing to convey glanceable information during fast-paced gameplay without getting in the way.For a specific case study I’d like to ask what HN thinks of the UI design language of Minecraft, specifically the semi-3D button and slider looks motivated by a need to convey visual hierarchy given a constrained pixel-art granularity budget.It utilizes different shades of grey borders to convey a sort of faux surface-normal highlight on beveled edges to indicate whether the element is raised or sunken.I think this is an interesting innovation of min-maxing the visual complexity budget, perhaps the modern beveled-glass design language could draw some inspirations from here?
First seen: 2025-06-12 10:46
Last seen: 2025-06-12 10:46