“A hierarchy of order”

Skeuomorphism,in case you haven’t been on a tech blog in a year or so, is basically design that’s emulating another material or a real world object. The usual examples are the green felt craps table in the current version of Game Center or the leather stitching in the Calendar app.

Recently, popular opinion has turned against this type of design. Apple’s head of hair – I mean software – even made a bunch of leather stitching jokes during his presentation. So obviously, this whole concept of emulating real-world objects is on its way out now that Jony Ive’s in charge of iOS design. Right?

Here’s the thing, though: we know Ive is really, really into materials. Their look, their texture, their feel. He’s a hardware designer, after all. The man made a laptop out of titanium. We all had to hear a lot of breathy discussion about “chamfers” when the iPhone 5 came out.

This hasn’t changed in his software design: iOS 7 is made of materials. The frosted glass of the notification center, the dock, and the new Control Center. The way the wallpaper on the home screen is set behind everything else – the phone’s gyroscope and accelerometer working to make it seem recessed beneath the icons.

Jony Ive would never make a laptop out of leather or a phone out of felt, but layered glass and plastic are his wheelhouse. Refraction, depth, contrast.These are the building blocks of this new design.

In hindsight, it’s kind of ridiculous to expect a man who’s earned a freaking knighthood by creating three-dimensional objects to create a flat design.