Alt Visions Blog

Today, Microsoft unveiled their re-boot of windows mobile, now called Windows Phone 7. I’m so happy that they decided to go back to the drawing board and start from scratch. Where everyone else was trying attain the success of the iPhone by basically replicating the device, Microsoft chose to create a new user interface with a function-centric appeal.

So what does this have to do with the Bauhaus? Those guys were all about stripping away ornamentation until you had a naked core function. In this absence of fluff, beauty arose from simplicity. Some of my greatest design heroes come out of this era of design, know as modernism, and I think this is why I love the Windows Phone design so much. I’ve grown so tired of the over polished, glossy look that we’ve seen everywhere for so long and it is incredibly refreshing to see what has been a growing revitalization of the modernist style finally hit a mainstream device. To be more specific, I’m talking about the clean, minimal layouts that use flat colors and large, thin sans-serif typefaces in order to bring information to the forefront as the user interface.

This can be seen especially in the pure typographic layout of the calendar shown above. When the design is simplified like this, it is easy to use basic tools like color to make different types of information conspicuously stand out from their surroundings (in this case, the business and personal appointments are shown in separate colors). I know that a lot of the visual aesthetics shown in Windows Phone 7 were used in the Zune platform (whose look and style I loved, by the way) but the difference is that this base style was greatly expanded upon and done so on a platform that has a huge market share and much wider appeal. Anyway, the phones are supposed start hitting the market by the holiday season and I can’t wait to see more information on them. If you would like to find out more now, you can check out Engadget’s hands on post or gizmodo’s post on the ui among many others.