With macOS 11 Big Sur, Apple seems to have lifted a ban on fun, allowing for an expressiveness in visual design that we haven't seen from it in almost a decade
It's finally here. The thing I have been advocating for through my work, writing, videos and talks for years. A swing of the pendulum. Tweets: @natisho , @flarup , @gavmn , @lkanies , @flarup , @maxrudberg , and @samhenrigold Tweets: @natisho : “Flat minimalistic UI and iconography doesn't blend well into the real world.” Seems to me that the new design language Apple introduced with Big Sur will trickle into iOS and iPadOS and the OS that will ship on their AR wearable. https://applypixels.com/... Michael Flarup / @flarup : It took me a week to gather my thoughts but I have been waiting 7 years to write this. 📝 The Comeback of Fun in Visual Design https://applypixels.com/... On the philosophical change in the role of visual design and why I think we're on the cusp of a new era. #WWDC20 https://twitter.com/... Gavin Nelson / @gavmn : “Apple is legalizing a visual design expressiveness that we haven't seen from them in almost a decade.” I'm very excited about this pendulum swing considering skeuomorphic visual design like this is what got me into the field in the first place. https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/... Luke Kanies / @lkanies : I don't love all of this. But I like most of it. The Comeback of Fun in Visual Design https://applypixels.com/... https://twitter.com/... Michael Flarup / @flarup : I'm floored by the response to my article on the comeback of fun in visual design. Thank you to everyone who read and share 🙏 —a few years ago it felt niche to hold these views. Now I see that we are many who are ready for a future with more fun & judicious expressiveness ❤️ https://twitter.com/... Max Rudberg / @maxrudberg : Flarup on Big Sur's icons: 'It's like a ban has been lifted on fun' https://applypixels.com/... Sam Henri Gold / @samhenrigold : “In just the past week I've seen many people try to make Figma, XD and Sketch do things that they've never done with it before. Will this generation switch back to Photoshop?” I mean I'd like to but the bevel/emboss layer style section scares me https://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
This piece is the origin point of the design pendulum the corpus keeps tracking: Michael Flarup and fellow designers read macOS 11's expressive visual language as the end of nearly a decade of flat minimalism, and the related coverage frames it as neumorphism — light moving within 3D space rather than pure skeuomorphism. The designers' explicit prediction is that the language will trickle from the Mac into iOS, iPadOS, and whatever OS ships on Apple's future AR wearable.
That prediction is what makes this worth rereading in hindsight: five years later the same arc shows up as Apple's Liquid Glass and Airbnb's redesign bringing dimensionality back, spatial widgets in visionOS 26, and a live argument over how far expressiveness can go before readability suffers — the beta 3 transparency dial-back and beta 4 re-add of "liquid" are the pendulum still swinging.
First-order effects
- Designers like Flarup, Max Rudberg, and Sam Henri Gold who spent years advocating expressive iconography get public validation, with Big Sur as Apple's own endorsement of their position that "flat minimalistic UI doesn't blend well into the real world."
- Apple's platform design language changes immediately for developers and icon designers, who must now produce richer, more dimensional assets for macOS 11.
Second-order effects
- The trickle-down the article predicts forces the whole Apple ecosystem onto the same visual cycle — iOS, iPadOS, and eventually the AR wearable OS inherit Big Sur's expressiveness, making cross-platform design consistency a recurring rework cost for third-party apps.
- Rival platforms and design-tool ecosystems face pressure to follow, as the corpus's later coverage of Airbnb's redesign shows expressiveness becoming a competitive aesthetic rather than an Apple quirk.
Third-order effects
- The pattern that holds across 2020-2025 is a cyclical industry aesthetic — flat to dimensional and back — with Apple's OS releases as the pendulum's driver and each swing triggering user-pushback calibration cycles like the Liquid Glass beta 3/beta 4 adjustments.
- If expressiveness keeps winning, interface design consolidates around fashion cycles — OS updates as trend seasons — rather than the flat-design consensus that held for the decade before Big Sur.
The trend: Interface design is moving in pendulum swings between flat minimalism and dimensional expressiveness, with Apple's OS releases setting the tempo and user readability complaints applying the brakes.