Skeuomorphs?

[brewerpaul]

I was just listening to a podcast of NPR's "How To Do Everything" (highly recommended) and they talked about the concept of skeuomorphism. This is where a design element of a manufactured object is carried over for purely decorative purposes in future uses. One example given was artificial ceiling beams in a room with more modern building design. The 35mm camera "click" when used in a digital camera is another. Some sort of sound is useful to let the user know that the picture has been taken, but having it sound like a non-digital camera lens is a skeuomorphism.
Other examples at Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeuomorph
Anyone have some favorite skeuomorphs?

[I.D.10-t]

Strange, I keep running into examples I find that seem to decrease their value in my mind. That broken-in look of jeans, gold plating on plastic forks, the electric motorcycle designed to make a rumble like gas engine. Had a phone once that had a metal bar in it so it would feel like it was made of more substantial material like the old At&t ones.

I think the click of the car's turn sigal is kind of funny, people had missed it when the blinking device no longer was constructed the same way, so they added the sound back so people remembered to turn off the signal.

The digital camera click is also said to alert others that you are taking pictures so you couldn't take photos of a comic book and put it back on the shelf with out the store workers knowing, Japan in particular seems to have written it into law.

I'm going to check out that program.
http://howtodoeverything.org/

[emmline]

Good word Paul, thanks! I have some skeuomorphic ceiling beams which were put in to further the Arts & Crafts theme. Now I'm going to start paying attention...what else?

[I.D.10-t]

Oilcloth, not really made with oil or cloth now, but you can still get the picnic tablecloth checkered red and white pattern.

Red barn paint. No need to make paint from scratch from what was available, But if a logo has a barn on it its probably going to be red.

Redundant false drawers on a large dresser. Don't now how much history goes into that. My mom had a hamper with several on the side, but opened from the top.

[Innocent Bystander]

The computer keyboard. Made that way so that typewriter keys don't stick together when you type quickly.
The little tremor on the second hand of electronic clocks that mimic analogue clocks.

[Peter Duggan]

Imitation stitching joining (some) shoes to soles.

[ytliek]

Flames on cars and MCs... and definition was kept "visual" in order to to leave out "auditory" synthesizers

Embossed logos on television programs. More for ID than decoration, its still irritating

Wasn't there a cola commercial, Pepsi, It's The Real Thing?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/tele ... thing.html

[MTGuru]

Some of the examples (such as Peter's) may raise an interesting ethical question - whether any particular instance is intended to appeal to expectations of atavistic continuity, or to actually deceive as to quality or construction.

[I.D.10-t]

It kind of works both ways, like for all designing it can be made to enhance the product or deceive, either by the person wearing it, or the person making it.

[ytliek]

Some of the examples (such as Peter's) may raise an interesting ethical question - whether any particular instance is intended to appeal to expectations of atavistic continuity, or to actually deceive as to quality or construction.

May be a stretch on multiple levels http://jdh.oxfordjournals.org/content/20/1/17

[Cayden]

I thought about this for a couple of seconds and thought of "lapstrake planking" molded into the hulls of fiberglass boats. Gives the hull that classic look without the time consuming maintainance required on a wooden boat.

My daughter is an industrial / product design major in the School of Constructed Environments at Parsons School of Design in NYC, I am going to pick her brain on this concept over the holidays. I am sure she could come up with many examples.

Cayden

[Cayden]

I just gave this subject a bit more thought and coming to mind was the cell phone towers disguised as "pine trees" so as not to visually infringe on an otherwise natural looking skyline.

Along the ethical questions posed by MTGuru, I do not believe that a "pine tree" puts out the same electromagnetic radiation as a cellular tower. So, is the design element to visually blend with the environment, or to make us less concerned regarding EMR? It would be interesting to know how many of such hidden cellular towers are hidden from view in areas of high human population densities, in close proximity to elementary and high schools, etc. Out of sight, out of mind?

Cayden

[Cayden]

Paul,
I assume that wooden whistles preceded those constructed of metal and certainly those of plastic resins in the evolution of the instrument. Given the technology of photoprinting, how long might it be before we see someone introduce a faux "cocobolo", "mopane", "blackwood", etc. whistle on a Generation frame? Hey Jerry Freeman, now there's a whole new angle on tweaking. The "visual tweak".

Paul Busman, Gene Milligan, David O'Brien, Geoffrey Ellis, Fred Rose. . . you can all relax, no photoprinting can come close to replicating the visual beauty of your wonderful wooden whistles.

Cayden

[fearfaoin]

My friend's favorite example is Lens Flare.
It used to be a very common visual artifact
in old cameras.




People got used to it in movies, so much so that
it is added artificially in purely computer-generated
space scenes to make it look like it was filmed with
a camera instead.



And sometimes superfluously. No one can say why.

[I.D.10-t]

Maybe they were going for diffraction spike in the Star Trek one.

Oh and Marshmallow, I think, maybe, or maybe not.