How do you give an OS a personality?

This passion project was meant as a critique of mobile UI trends in 2015. I noticed that, in an effort to look professional, nearly every mobile design in 2015 was simple, flat, and devoid of any personality. Everything began to look the same and I found the monotony to be quite boring.

So I set out to design a new mobile UI in response. Something that still followed the flat trend everyone was pushing, but infused with a fun and care-free personality. The underlying inspiration for reimagining each icon as a building came from watching HBO's Silicon Valley.

The small details really do matter.

I approached the icon design from a unique perspective. Instead of the super simplification that is typical of flat design, I wanted each icon to be highly detailed. The theory was that having all these details, even if they were too small to see when shrunk down, would be the features that really gave each icon a personality. And, because I used the same flat, skeuomorphic design direction for each individual icon, the icon set as a whole was still cohesive despite each icon having its own personality.

A unique take on flat design.

In January 2015 I released the icon set as an iPhone theme under the name Metropolitan. The UI was designed with two users in mind: the uniquely understated and the uniquely eccentric. For the more understated consumer I included a collection of tasteful city-inspired wallpapers that tied the whole UI together. And for the more eccentric consumer I created a wallpaper that turned the OS into a tiny town. The theme was posted on Reddit where it received praise for its refreshing concept and high level of detail.