For those of you that don’t know, Frutiger Aero is a design aesthetic that arose admist the mid 2000’s that focused on bubbly, nice, round and nature-focused visuals usually with water mixed in somewhere. This aesthetic was used to give a kind of ‘futuristic’ feel to things and project the idea of a clean, bright future that is filled with softness and smoothness. It’s a lovely aesthetic, one of my favourites, and it was used a lot in games and game-related media during the height of its popularity in the 2000’s.
As an example, see the image above. This is the original Xbox 360 dashboard. Look at the bright orange and green colouration, the smooth tabs and how they curve, the rounded nature of the buttons and the visuals that layer onto each other and look like they almost pop out. That’s Frutiger Aero, and there’s plenty of games that utilised such aesthetics too such as Spore and Mirror’s Edge (that game is basically all designed around Frutiger Aero).
The design really reminds me of some of the best years of my life and shows the great nostalgia wave that many feel for those days of the early and mid 2000’s. It’s even made a comeback today, riding upon the love of things such as nostalgiacore and liminal spaces to make for an excellent aesthetic recurrence. I’d be interested to know however if you have any games or game-systems that remind you of Frutiger Aero, I’d love to see all the images you may have for these so I can enjoy thinking about the future we never got.
That’s all for now, and as always. It’s not just a game, It’s a Life.