Internet aesthetics are deeply fascinating. It can be liminal in a way, yet also extremely beautiful, as humans have managed to create design, art, and influence in a virtual world. Architecture and interior design was once reserved for bricks and wood, and physical liveable space. But the insatiable hunger humans have to create allowed the internet to become a place fit to be designed. To be made beautiful. The most inhuman materials were made emotional and evocative.

The primitive internet that the world had in the 1990s was a place without design. Functional, quite aright in a way. It was like a factory or a production line. It had information and its walls were unpainted. Its influence too was limited, computers were very much stationary. The online world stayed within its own limitations. Internet aesthetics had not yet shaped the world or the way in which things are designed.

Looking at the world now, tech is permanent and everywhere we look. It’s as if the world was designed with the internet in mind, rather than the internet being a product of the world it exists in, the world is now a product of the internet.

But when the whole world believed the internet would disintegrate when the year 2000 arrived, and then after all it didn’t, the internet started to stretch its legs. It started to become beautiful. The apocalypse averted, the online spaces began to wear design and shape popular aesthetic opinion.

Frutiger Aero is the name for the design phase that occurred between around 2004 and 2013. As I write this article, you may be amused to read, I am listening to a Frutiger aero playlist through wired headphones. My phone too wears a clear ‘liquid glass’ style with a Frutiger background I found on Pinterest. As a Gen Z-er, the Frutiger phenomenon does resonate with me, it does feel special. And I can’t quite figure out why.

In the 2000s, touchscreens were new to the public, and so too was the idea of computers being a necessity. So Frutiger aero was a transitional design language. It made the internet a more human place, it focused on nature. A coexistence with the earth, a world where tech and nature support one another. That’s the key idea: humanism.

Making this virtual world seem human was the key thing for designers, and so too I believe is why it has seen such a resurgence in popularity. Frutiger aero created this idea that tech is gentle and harmless, that its impact on the world and humans was good and only good.  

The post-2000 design phase for the internet was a deeply inhuman silver and chrome. Abstract and different from our own world, it was exciting but scary. Frutiger aero took that futurism and made it more human, more natural. More transitional.

Windows Vista start up screen – Image Credit Kristina D.C. Hoeppner – Source Flickr

In an interview with Dazed, Amanda Brennan, former head of Tumblr, said in 2023 that the Frutiger aero design period corresponded with this rise in eco-awareness, which may be a reason it is seeing such popularity now too. The early 2000s, saw a huge shift towards environmentalism and eco-consciousness. Climate change is with us now and will impact all our lives, so why would we not want to envision a world of blue skies and green grass? A world that looks cooler and more stable.

It’s also widely accepted that in times of uncertainty, such as the troubled political world we live in now, often lead to periods of nostalgia. And as young people now face the future of a world both warmer and wilder, and that also faces political and class division, Frutiger aero is a hopeful and more connected existence.

Connection being a key theme of Frutiger. Connection of elements, of nature and tech, of light and colour, of humans and computers.

Authentic, Energetic, Reflective, Open. There were the words that Microsoft said Aero stood for in their guide they published alongside the new operating system in 2007, Windows Vista. 

Also a connection between eras, a defining characteristic of the Windows Aero UI, which is where the style gets half of its name from, was the use of glass-like panels and windows. Web pages would have translucent edges and the buttons on screen bore stained-glass like faces.

Image above used for purposes of showing lock screen example, original background image credit unknown.

The use of glass, colour, watery elements all link to the natural and the human that exists within Frutiger aero. And they can all be seen today. As I said earlier my iPhone is set on the clear liquid-glass mode. All my apps and interfaces are clear and see-through. Frutiger aero persists in the most modern and abundant UI in the world. IOS 26 is Frutiger aero.

The connection of AI however is one not so positive. There is a link between the AI boom and the popularity of Frutiger aero. AI takes away the human aspect of the internet, humanism and AI cannot and will not coexist. Webpages, social media posts, and simple answers to questions can now all be made without humans. The internet no longer belongs to us.

But the Frutiger world was designed and built by us in response to the inherent inhumanness of the virtual world. So now as the internet is stolen from us by the machine, we look at the world of eco-efficiency and human impact being a good thing, with longing eyes.

The human need and ability to create art out of anything is so deep and so immovable. Absolutely everything a human does is art, whether it’s painting a landscape or steering a container ship through the Suez Canal. Whether it’s defending a murderer in a court room or building the courthouse. Creation is the human experience and creation is art.