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Future Screens Are Mostly Blue
- tempestn 10y agoEvery time I see something about LCARS I'm re-amazed at how modern it still looks, nearly three decades later now.
- yetihehe 10y agoEverytime I listen to Jean Michel Jarre - Oxygene II, I feel this is "future" too. I've recently heard it in a commercial of some car with traction control and some digits projected on road. Connect LCARS and Oxygene and you have perfect futuristic music player?
- StavrosK 10y agoThe problem with these is that they're the 80s' future.
- vidarh 10y agoOxygene was '76 ('77 most places outside France), but has largely avoided sounding dated, to the point where in particular Oxygene 2 is still regularly used to evoke a sense of futurism in TV and ads etc. If you want to pick out "80's future" electronica, then the Airwolf theme or Crockett's theme (Miami Vice) would be more natural choices in my opinion... Or if sticking to Jarre, tracks like Moon Machine or Computer Weekend, which sounded cheesy at the time too. And for those who likes their 80's cheesy, purply-neon, metallic, there's also the Outrun subreddit [1] which tries hard to take it places where even the 80's wouldn't go - turns out there's several electronica sub-genres dedicated to it as well. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/outrun https://www.reddit.com/r/outrun
- vidarh 10y agoMy two favourite Jarre tracks and two of my all time favourite pieces of music are Oxygene II and Last Rendez-Vous (Ron's piece; so named because Challenger astronaut Ron McNair was meant to have played it from space and record it to be played during Jarre's Rendez-Vous Houston concert - as a result Jarre almost cancelled the concert after the explosion, but was convinced by people at NASA to go ahead, with a replacement playing the piece, as a tribute; I rarely care about "background" behind music, but that piece is hauntingly sad to begin with and the story behind it magnifies it greatly). If you haven't yet, you should check out the two opening tracks to Electronica 2. They are basically an exploration of Jarre's early symphonic style with lots of references to Oxygene (though not Oxygene II) and Rendez-Vous to the point where I keep being "cued" by it to expect well known sequences from those albums that never comes (normally this would detract from it, but it works well).
- swalsh 10y agoIts one of the things that I hate about the new star trek movies, and the last star trek series. Instead of that "look towards the future" excitement that it used to give me, it's more of a shiny nostalgia feel. I realize star trek is 50 years old now, but it's always been at its best when it was the dream of what the future could be. I'm hoping the new series coming out in a year tries to recreate what the future COULD be by jumping a century ahead of where voyager left off (i believe that was as far as we got into the future in a Star Trek series).
- MrBuddyCasino 10y agoA theory: Good Sci-Fi movies are smart and interesting, they appeal to the mind. Thus they use a cold, cerebral color. If they were about emotions, like a Rom-Com, they would use a warm, comforting color.
- Piskvorrr 10y agore "make-it-so button" - I have that button, too. It's labelled "git push", and Makes It So for all sorts of different things ;)
- TeMPOraL 10y agoDoesn't the label actually say: "git push --force"? ;).
- Piskvorrr 10y agoNah, you don't want to automatically override safeties (this week it's 30 years since the Chernobyl disaster, hint hint). What I was trying to say is that it makes sense to first set up a self-contained transaction, and then a single universal "button" to push it into the world, instead of firing off single commands, one at a time. (Especially at the latencies involved in cross-galaxy communication)
- userbinator 10y agoWe seem to have gotten over the obsession with blue LEDs that was wildly popular around 10 years ago, when almost every device had blindingly bright blue LED indicators or decorative lighting.
- pjmlp 10y agoYou still see them in car tuning, specially underneath.
- creshal 10y agoIIRC that was because blue LEDs used to be more expensive than other colours, so it was (very briefly) an indicator of high price.
- SyneRyder 10y agoThe inventors of the blue LED won the Nobel Prize for Physics, because it was so difficult to make, and paved the way for white LED lighting and lights with tuneable colours: http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/191580-blue-led-inventors-awarded-nobel-prize-for-enabling-white-led-lighting-revolution http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/191580-blue-led-inventors...
- blt 10y agoThey are still more expensive - a search on Mouser yields many 6-cent red LEDs and 10-cent green LEDs but no blue LEDs under 15 cents. But yeah, in the past the difference was muuuuch bigger.
- vidarh 10y agoI still have a stack of small round black stickers for the purpose of reducing the brightness of (mostly) blue leds. On some devices I had to stack 2-3 of them to reduce the amount of light enough.
- icebraining 10y agoSame here, and the green leds on my Thinkpad get the same treatment.
- anexprogrammer 10y ago"Consider the MicroTAC, one of Motorola’s first cell phones. It did not sell well." It was nothing to do with the MicroTAC being £3,000? No, it was the direction of the flip. Right. The later MicroTACs with LCD sold loads. At the time, most people seemed to prefer them to the early StarTAC.
- eterm 10y agoI noted that, also the 7 years between the two phones is disregarded completely, despite the large overall growth between 1989 and 1997.
- creshal 10y agoThe StarTAC also came out seven years later. The market for $1000 mobile phones was a bit bigger in 1997 than the market for $3000 phones in 1989.
- masklinn 10y ago> The market for $1000 mobile phones was a bit bigger in 1997 than the market for $3000 phones in 1989. Not to mention adjusting for inflation the MicroTAC was 4 times the price of the StarTAC, not just 3. Clearly the shell direction is the one thing which made the StarTAC. Not SMS support, not being 25% the price and 25% the weight (assuming a slim-battery MicroTAC), not the vibrate mode, it was the flip opening up instead of down.
- asimuvPR 10y agoI have a friend who used the starTac until AT&T forced him into something else. He fought for months trying to keep his old phone working. He moved to an iPhone but says it doesn't compare.
- pjc50 10y agoIsn't this a subset of http://priceonomics.com/why-every-movie-looks-sort-of-orange-and-blue/ http://priceonomics.com/why-every-movie-looks-sort-of-orange... ?
- sehr 10y agoFunny enough this was posted just a month before "Her" was released in the US, I remember that had a really warm feel to everything.
- Matt3o12_ 10y agoWhile I'm sure we can learn lots from science fiction, some designs imposed by fictionary authors are while looking cool, super impractical. Blue screens are one of the impractical designs: if I were to stare at blue colors all day, I think would get a headache more quickly. I'm super greatfull for Apple's true tone display, that makes reading on my iPad much better and night shift is also a feature I've long missed enough. It think we should rather focus on our environment to know what we need to improve interfaces. Science fiction movies sometimes do that for us. But regarding blue screens: the less blue and the more yellow (or other warm colors), the better.
- drb311 10y agoThe best bit is the anecdote about LCARS in Star Trek: The Next Generation. It was all due to a budget shortfall: "Star Trek also may have helped create the entire image-under-glass paradigm that governs our digital world. The interface, known as LCARS, is cool-looking. It’s distinctive. And it’s actually the result of a budget shortfall. Star Trek: The Next Generation didn’t have as much money for set design as did the original series, which had panels wired with jewels and glowing buttons. Instead, they cut out film and put them over glass panes." It's usually constraints, not the lack of them, that give birth to true innovation.
- creshal 10y agoThe LCARS (and its various IRL implementations) is also among the least usable UIs, so I wouldn't exactly call it "true innovation".
- TeMPOraL 10y agoAt least it's consistent and non-distracting, which is something you can rarely say nowadays about IRL user interfaces.
- zyxley 10y agoImagine the logistics of pushing LCARS updates to God-knows-how-many starships and Federation installations.
- noir_lord 10y agoThat could make a fun fanfic. Starfleet Tech Support.
- gvurrdon 10y agoViz magazine (http://viz.co.uk/ http://viz.co.uk/) recently did a strip wherein a thinly-disguised Enterprise and crew are obliged to beam up Captain Thomas T. Cook and his landing party in the face of danger, but his messages requesting help come through via email to Outlook Express...
- klunger 10y agoThis should have (2013). Also: I love how Terminator 2 made 1991 red.
- notlisted 10y agoHmmm... Isn't the real reason for the blue interfaces because futuristic movies employ loads of green-screen shots?
- tudorw 10y agoMaybe assisted by the Orange & Blue bias in film colouring, http://priceonomics.com/why-every-movie-looks-sort-of-orange-and-blue/ http://priceonomics.com/why-every-movie-looks-sort-of-orange...
- joshvm 10y agoI hate this trend, it's almost impossible to unsee it in modern sci fi movies (e.g. anything Marvel churns out). It's almost at the point where I lose respect for a movie when I see that kind of grading being used. A notable exception is the Matrix which opted for a green caste specifically to highlight scenes that are in the Matrix itself.
- Piskvorrr 10y agoMatrix used different hues for different environments: Matrix/Loader/Zion/etc.
- tudorw 10y agoNice, when used to effect it's a great thing, City Of Lost Children springs to mind. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NaFeK5LWDxw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NaFeK5LWDxw
- tudorw 10y agoI guess at some point they will release a colour profile with the movie and we can pick our own effects :)
- mortenjorck 10y agoIt's color grading for DPs who aren't good at color grading, a shortcut to something that "looks cool." Some of the best color grading I've seen in the past few years has actually been on Game of Thrones, where good color grading is used to cement the aesthetic of the show's many different locales - it's to the point now where in this season's premiere, I could tell the instant an establishing shot came on screen where the scene was taking place: "Look at those vivid greens and turquoises; we're in Dorne!" or "Misty blues and tans, must be Braavos!"
- spyder 10y agoWhat a stupid statement: "blue is so rare in nature (if you discount the sky and the ocean ..." Of course the Blue Planet isn't blue if you remove all that makes it blue...
- arbuge 10y agoI think that statement was directed at the absence of blue colors in living organisms.
- TeMPOraL 10y agoProbably - after all, you don't see the color blue on peoples' eyes, on flowers or on fruits...
- loup-vaillant 10y agoStill: The sea is a notoriously hostile environment for great apes such as us. The sky is notoriously unattainable (we fly since, what, 2 centuries?) Everywhere else, Blue is pretty uncommon On average, the wilderness is mostly shades of brown and green. And what is blue tend to be pretty intense: flowers and venomous animals, mostly. That said, I've read around here that colours are mostly a cultural thing (except maybe red). So I'd wouldn't put too much into it. The interesting parts come later in the article anyway: how UI design could take inspiration from sci-fi, including its mistakes.
- madaxe_again 10y agoBlue is very common. Human perception of it is just poor, as with so many blue photons about you don't need to detect them as efficiently as say red or green. This is why blue neon signs are illegible at night.
- ChristianBundy 10y agoFor the curious: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_vision#/media/File:Eyesensitivity.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_vision#/media/File:Eyese...
- probablybroken 10y agoThere's a significant difference between an interface which looks good as a feature of a scene, and an interface that looks good / is functional when it is occupying your entire attention..
- spiralpolitik 10y agoThey missed the fact that the "make it so" context aware button already exists. Your average Playstation controller has at least 4 that do different functions depending on the context. Modern TV remotes have also long drifted in that direction with the four color buttons that change use depending on what screen you are on.
- jermy 10y agoAnd a typical aircraft flight management system would involve inserting a series of instructions then pressing the execute button.
- rnhmjoj 10y agoI love the interfaces in the movie Oblivion: https://vimeo.com/64377100 https://vimeo.com/64377100
- omnibrain 10y agoGMUNK also did work for Tron:Legacy and the Windows 10 default wallpaper.
- jamesdelaneyie 10y agoHe recently spoke at OFFSET in Dublin and went through about 900 slides in 30 mins. Mad man. His early flash work was very cool to see as well.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- hashkb 10y agoIt's because movies are mostly blue (and orange). Blame the colorist.
- smcl 10y agoI think the cyan/orange colouration is more of a recent thing
- ocdtrekkie 10y agoThis was one of the things I loved so much about Android's Holo UI. It LOOKED LIKE THE FUTURE. I will probably never love a software UI as much as I loved Android 3.0-4.1.
- sliverstorm 10y agoHow about the overwhelming blue/orange cast in movies? Or the fact that old terminals were green (thus not futuristic) and red is damn hard to read.
- firasd 10y agoOne of the most aesthetically "future proof" movies is probably 2001: A Space Odyssey. Compare Star Wars, released almost a decade later, and how the Stormtrooper armor looks dated (at least to me): http://i.imgur.com/sLhv0LJ.png http://i.imgur.com/sLhv0LJ.png This is a great related essay: "HAL, Mother, and Father: Watching the sixties and seventies through 2001 and Alien." http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/01/09/hal-mother-and-father/ http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/01/09/hal-mother-and...
- notahacker 10y agoI dunno, whilst Kubrick deserves credit for giving his space explorers a proto-iPad, those gorgeous space station interiors[1][2][3][4] scream 1960s cutting-edge style in the way plastic bodysuits, or indeed the more functional interiors of the Death Star don't really say much about the seventies. I'd put the tacky appearance of the Stormtrooper armour down more to Lucas being less obsessive about detail than Kubrick. [1]https://hansbkahl.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/2001_a_space_odyssey-space-station-main-level-d-lobby.jpg https://hansbkahl.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/2001_a_space_o... [2]https://hansbkahl.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/968full-2001-a-space-odyssey-lunar-journey.jpg https://hansbkahl.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/968full-2001-a... [3]https://hansbkahl.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/on_space_station_v_dr__heywood_floyd_places_a_videocall_to_his_daughter_on_earth.jpg https://hansbkahl.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/on_space_stati... [4]https://drnorth.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/vlcsnap-11937.jpg https://drnorth.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/vlcsnap-11937.jp...
- smcl 10y agoCame here looking for this comment - I'm glad you agree. Most interfaces are a tiny bit laughable a few years later, but 2001 overall still feels current (in UI and just ... Everything). I also kinda liked the UIs in Alien(s) and Bladerunner, though they are clearly kinda dated
- vidarh 10y ago> Well, what if the sound is the interface? Audio is a much more efficient gauge of surroundings, since it spans 360 degrees, whereas vision only covers 120 degrees. It might be that there are sensors on the outside of the Millennium Falcon that provide 3D sound inside the gunner seat. So when we hear ships blow up, we’re actually hearing an augmented reality interface that Luke and Han hear. Maybe? The game Terminus took that approach. The game had a bunch of settings that let you get "arcade-like" physics and appearance of space, but the manual explained that this was provided by the ships on-board computer systems to make it more intuitive for people to fly them. You could opt to "turn off" all the enhancements, such as moving starfields, bright nebulas serving effectively as markers to help orient yourself, "outside sound" etc., up to and including "computer assisted" firing of navigational rockets (so that rotating the ship would start changing direction by automatically firing rockets vs. being able to rotate the ship while continuing in the original direction)
- vanderZwan 10y ago> And that is one of the many design lessons we can learn from sci-fi. I'm sorry, but whoever wrote this knows absolutely nothing about design. Or worse, is the type of visual designer who treats usability like an afterthought and thinks aligning with whatever is fashionable is an indicator of quality. None of the design decisions made in those examples reflect the needs of someone using a machine. It reflects the needs of a TV-series of movie to have cheap props that fit their narrative of exposition and drama, as well as the budget restrictions.
- alexc05 10y agoYou mean they don't choose a yellow-on-white emphasis with matching yellow highlight color? /snark I really thought the blue-histograms over the years was super cool. What happened in 1991 where it suddenly became RED? http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103064/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103064/ Terminator 2: Judgement Day - the interface from Arnold's point of view was a RED overlay. Which, one might consider an invalid sample as it was not meant to represent a human-computer-interface but in fact, an Android interface. Anyways, great article!
- tim333 10y agoRed's a bit more evil/aggressive looking. "Seeing red" and that. You can sense the guy in the picture is in for an unfortunate time http://media.gizmodo.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/terminator_vision.jpg http://media.gizmodo.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/termin...
- wglass 10y agoI'm skeptical there's anything going on here other than an overwhelming trend in film to make everything that needs to be visually distinctive be blue. http://priceonomics.com/why-every-movie-looks-sort-of-orange-and-blue/ http://priceonomics.com/why-every-movie-looks-sort-of-orange...
- mhd 10y agoSo, blue screens and the OCR font?
- chimaza 10y agoBleu foncé meme.
- rootbear 10y agoWhat always strikes me is how uniform the appearance of screens is in SF films. When I look at my own screens, I see various applications that have all made different choices, within the bounds imposed by the GUI itself. An old app doesn't magically get new design styles. Old Windows XP apps, for example, may look odd when run on a Windows 7 system. Apparently, in the future, not only is everything blue, but the platforms they use have very rigid design rules that are strictly enforced.
- xenophonf 10y agoWhat I love the most about that videophone sequence is the little girl asking for a phone for her birthday. Here we are, living in the future, and what do kids want for their birthdays? Phones.
- carapace 10y agoThere are no blue foods.
- jordache 10y agoThat's a lot of analysis for something that some art directors just decided to go with because it looked good, or spring boarded from previous designs...
- GFK_of_xmaspast 10y ago"Art History" is a discipline of study for a reason.
- frogpelt 10y ago"Noessel posits that, because blue is so rare in nature there’s something fundamentally mystical, unnatural, and inhuman about it." This is strange. First the ocean and the sky look blue. So regardless of whether they are, they are. Second, there are blue flowers, blue birds, blue fish, blue eyes, blueberries, Kentucky Bluegrass, Blue Heelers, and Blue Tick Hounds. It doesn't seem more rare to me than red or yellow. Green is everywhere. But blue doesn't seem rare to me. It is the second most common color in flags (behind red) for a reason. it is the second most common color in logos for a reason.
- ruk_booze 10y agoCommodore 64, way ahead of its time.
- nickoakland 10y agoComputer blue.