My Top 3 Design “Kisses” I Like to Add to Every App
Several somewhat sexy unrequited design flourishes
At a corporate motivational event once, I found out it’s good to kiss your customers.
Not in a 2017, problematic, HR-esque way.
A “kiss” is just “a nice thing you didn’t have to do”. A chocolate on the pillow. The catch-up call where you don’t sell anything. The plus-one to an event. That tiny bit of satisfying design polish that makes your users think, right, these guys give a sh*t.
I’ve been adding these to every app I’ve touched recently:
Progressive blurs for otherworldly beauty
Metal shaders for skeuomorphic texture
Responsive haptics for an alive feel
You don’t have to use these kisses. But if you do, your users may just become infatuated with your app.
Progressive Blur
First there was a blocky blue nav bar. Then a clean, minimal white block. Then Material. At some point (I’ve blocked it out from my memory) Apple went all Liquid Glass on our asses. It was the future, until it wasn't.
But this isn’t sexy. Or frosty.
Progressive blurs just look really damn nice. You know?
You scroll up, the blur comes out of nowhere, and the blur radius bubbles smoothly up towards the screen edge, smearing your app’s colours as it ascends to the void, towards heaven, in an otherworldly, almost Thanosian evaporation.
Enough linguistic fapping. You just need to see it.
I can’t wait to share the magic of progressive blurs, SwiftUI Metal shaders, and responsive haptics with you. And if you’re a free subscriber, I bet you, uh, can’t wait to give me money. But you’ll have to wait a little longer with this 2-week free trial:
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