The Europa Report UI was a challenge in designing for realism. According to Perception, the studio behind the UI and screen design, director Sebastian Cordero's emphasis was to portray a scientifically accurate vision of the future. Therefore the UI designs had to be rooted in a believable reality.

From the looks of the finished designs, they've achieved this in a style that looks almost like an 80s/early 90's vision of the future with a polished twist.

What seems key in the design is the efficient use of space, there's no overcrowding and attempt to replicate complexity. Instead the design is fairly stripped back and with minimalist style elements and chunky icons.

It's quite nice to see retro elements being brought into the UI, there's quite of lot of nostalgic devices and measurement tools that have been introduced, with some given a modern twist.

What's also interesting is the multicolor approach and the use of many different fonts, often a big taboo in design, but this actually helps create a retro, old system feel. It's probably because the rules for typography were less strict a decade or two ago.

Overall, Perception has created quite a unique style of it's own for Europa Report. I'm actually quite looking forward to seeing the movie too.

Big thanks to Perception for putting up the concept designs for us to see the stages it took to get to the finished design! It gives a good insight into the thought and method behind creating a UI. Also there seems to be some very nice ideas in the concept stage that were scrapped.

Check out the Europa Report UI breakdown

PS. Thanks Matthew Burrow for the heads up on this one!