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Neumorphism will not kill the skeuomorphism star

Adolfo Ramírez Corona
UX Collective
Published in
5 min readJan 6, 2020

Image by Sabine van Erp from Pixabay

Everything began with a couple of stories of Michal Malewicz, here on Medium. Now it’s trending in different sites and communities.

Malewicz wrote about a “new skeuomorphism” in UI design. Jason Kelley proposed “neumorphism” for the new trend.

In the beginning, it seemed like a new aesthetic proposal. Original, but only in the design sense. But as the term became viral in specialized sites and communities, it also became a discussion about the neumorphism as a replacement of the flat design trend.

Some of the discussions involve terms like usability, accessibility, adaptability, even biomorphism.

And of course, skeuomorphism.

Let’s start with definitions: neumorphism is a form, new, but form. Skeuomorphism is not just a form, but a container, a vehicle.

The term skeuomorph is compounded from skeuos (σκεῦος), meaning “container or tool”, and morphḗ (μορφή), meaning “shape”—Wikipedia

On silent film, intertitles and interpreters

In the beginnings of cinema (silent film era), every projection was accompanied by music played live, and by an interpreter who explained the film to the public.

Yes, a person explained the silent film during the projection.

The theatrical part—the drama—was perfectly understood by the audience. But not the montage, the sequence of shots that build the plot.

The use of intertitle cards and interpreters were necessary to understand the plot for most of the audience.

Intertitle cards and interpreters were the interfaces between the movie and the audience.

An intertitle from Jonas Mekas’s Walden (from Wikipedia)

Of course, once the audience learned the language of cinema, the intertitles and interpreters were no longer necessary. The interface became implicit for the…

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Written by Adolfo Ramírez Corona

Author, psychotherapist, coach—Human behavior, UX, media & audiences—Father, husband, meditator—Courses & coaching: antifragilewriting.com—More adolforismos.com

Responses (9)

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Don Norman is a very good reference for this subject, Bernd Warnders.
I remembered the silent film example when writing this piece and that took me to a semiotic perspective of the issue, but the psychological approach is more detailed in the…

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Thank you, Alfredo Domador for your appreciation. After the good response to this story, be sure I’m going to share more about it.
I studied Philosophy for a couple of years at University, many years ago, and I’m always finding connections to the use of new technologies.
It's good to know these ideas cause interest.

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Don’t kill neumorphism, Michal Malewicz, please!
Well, I think you can’t do it anymore, it’s too late, anyway.
New concepts are as important as necessary, even if they are not well defined at the beginning, or they fail to catch reality at the end.
This…

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