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Side note: I’m kind of shocked that they dropped the isomorphic style for the icons. That was a truly... iconic! aspect of the BeOS visual language. And quite modern in my opinion!

The pixel-perfectness of the UI was also iconic. If it were me, I’d go back to isomorphic and go deep on a rigorous system-wide grid. You can still do vector icons but be meticulous about the grid.




I think you mean isometric (that's where the X, Y, and Z axes all have the same scale, and are 120 degrees apart).

Fun fact: pixel art is usually not-quite isometric because they use a vertical line and then lines that have a slope of 2:1 which is about 7 degrees larger distance between the X and Y axis[1].

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isometric_video_game_graphics#...


That is a fun fact! That means both isomorphic AND isometric are the wrong word for what BeOS did.... they did military/oblique coordinates?

It’s special because you get very smooth, very sharp diagonals.

I think they also compressed the vertical scale though so the proportions look a little more natural.




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