Apple's new design language

Is this a new era of design system language?

Nov 19, 2024

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Now, on to today’s post…

Breaking down Apple’s all-new design language

We’ve all experienced that moment when a new design trend emerges, and it feels like the ground beneath us shifts. Your team is engaged in their current projects, and then a pivotal insight from a leading brand like Apple demands your attention.

I invited Ameer Omidvar, a seasoned designer at Sigma with a profound understanding of design systems, to share this with us. With his extensive experience and passion for creating impactful user experiences, Ameer has honed his expertise in translating complex design principles into actionable insights.

In today’s post, Ameer shares his insights on Apple's innovative design language, providing clarity on its significance and implications for designers everywhere. His perspective is invaluable for anyone looking to stay ahead in 2025.

You can follow Ameer on X, LinkedIn, and his website.

My name is Ameer, and I am currently the designer of Sigma. I’ve been in love with design since I was a kid. It was just my thing. To make things work better and look more beautiful. Of course, as a design enthusiast, I was always inspired by how Apple kept pushing the boundaries further and further, where every product was a design statement.

Over the years, Apple has revolutionized the industry over and over. In terms of UI, they did it multiple times with Lisa (Personal computing), iPhone (Mobile Computing), Lately Vision Pro (Spatial computing), and so many other iterations in between. We can agree that the Introduction of iOS 7 set the path for GUIs for the past decade, but it’s about time.

UIs are supposed to make things work better and look more beautiful.

I love this quote by Steve Jobs:

Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.

I think that’s the point many designers might be missing: the ultimate goal is solving a problem. While aesthetics play an essential role in the experience, they’re certainly not the whole story. So the question is, what’s the key to this following visual language to take advantage of new opportunities, including an entirely new spatial computing era?

Connecting the Dots

If you pay deep attention, you can see that Apple has been making some changes here and there throughout its UIs. While every platform has limitations and advantages, new design principles should seamlessly work throughout Apple’s ecosystem. Inspired by the new platform Vision Pro, exciting changes are happening to IOS, and I think that’s where it’s going.

Mental health feature in Health app on iOS 17

You should already see a pattern, but let me explain.

Immersive, Sense of physicality paired with motions.

I can break it down into these three main principles straight forward. With the rise of Spatial computers, critical changes must be made. Over the years, we’ve been limited by a screen where everything will be presented in a 2D environment. So, as designers, we don’t have to worry about space, depths, physics, and more, yet these factors play a massive role in the 3D world we live in. They add layers of new experiences. With spatial computers, there are endless possibilities for UIs to unlock new experiences.

Immersion

Take this as an example. In a weather app where you previously had to look straight into a 2d surface, now you can be standing in the snow to check out the weather. Flakes could fall on your hands. I mean, just imagining it gives me chills.

But of course, it can’t happen on IOS, right? Instead, I think the pattern here is to give apps their unique space. They take advantage of the whole display so they can be represented as more immersive than “inside the box.”

In addition to the examples above, I redesigned settings with the new principles to give you a clearer vision of how I think it’ll be transforming.

IOS 18 settings concept by Ameer Omidvar — iOS 18 Settings Designed by Ameer Omidvar Designer of Sigma

IOS 18 home screen concept by Ameer Omidvar — iOS 18 Home screen concept designed by Ameer Omidvar Designer of Sigma

Sense of physicality

Like the world we live in, everything inside Vision OS has physics. It has depth, shadows, reflections and more to embrace reality. I think the trend will also be like that in our 2D UIs. I think that’s one of the reasons we see a new form of Skeuomorphism returning to becoming popular, and the same principles are applied. A great example is the Action button settings in iPhone 15 Pro.

A whole new sophisticated level of motions

Dynamic Island was a profound idea to generously turn a hardware challenge into a software advantage. Something that i think we only see from apple. In addition to that, the animation is so fluid and has accurate physics in a “magical” way. We’ve been looking at this pattern on iOS 17—beautiful Shazam animation in Dynamic Island, Airdrop, and more.

In conclusion

Trends only become standards when they unlock tremendous new possibilities, solve problems, and feel more human-like.

We’re right at the edge of a new era where designers should start learning more about 3D graphics and environments, Truly thinking “outside the box” and motion interactions. While always keeping the problem-solving approach at the core.

What are your 2c on Apple’s new language?

Discussion about this post

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