What the heck is Frutiger Aero?
Frutiger Aero, otherwise known as Web 2.0 Gloss, is an aesthetic from the early 2000s, making use of skeuomorphism, glossy textures, cloudy skies, tropical fish, water, bubbles, glass, lens flare, bokeh, Frutiger fonts, etc.
Basically, to oversimplify, it's kinda the look and overall vibe(?) of early iOS and Windows Aero (XP, 7, Vista), before everything became all flat, minimalistic and kinda boring.
It is peak aesthetic (and nostalgia). I am especially drawn to the style of Aero, with transparent glass windows and auroras galore.
I am no designer, and I have no idea what I'm talking about, but, personally, in my humblest opinion, Windows Vista is the best looking version of all the Windows OSes, and I hope to be able to somewhat replicate that style for myself.
It's really too bad that everything is so flat and minimalistic nowadays, so let's try and get a bit of that nostalgic aesthetic back in our own way.
My turn
Here's a possible look at what my website could look like in an extremely simplified aero style.
I made the above "mockup" by directly modifying the CSS of the front page of my website in the browser inspector, it's a lot less effort than going into Figma, that's for sure.
It's missing a lot, but it's a start, now we just need auroras, a ton more gloss, and more transparent windows.
Modern web development should, in theory, make this easy. Rounded borders, gradients and transparency are all trivial to implement using CSS. Adding auroras can probably be done using SVGs, or just having a background image.
The hard part is probably getting the design right, which for a typically not-very-artistic person like myself, is a huge undertaking.
Stay tuned for updates (maybe).