How The 'Apple Wallpaper Index' Predicted the Neo-Y2K Bubble Pop & The Return Of Gradients, Chromatic Gradients, Pop-Art, Bryce-like Y2K Design
How The “Apple Wallpaper Index” Predicted the Neo-Y2K Bubble Pop & The Return Of… Gradients, Chromatic Gradients, Pop-Art, Bryce-like Y2K Design
I went through probably 300 different iterations and design changes in the last 2 days just because I’d later go back and say, nooo- it’s not good enough, it’s too generic, or it’s too AI influenced. I’m writing this blog because I think I finally have a muse.
All night I’ve been re-designing an app I’ve been building, starting with the most important intricate little details: the color theme and artistic style. I was exploring what AI mocked up, and frankly, while it is stunning in the fine lines and details that would’ve taken a designer weeks to get to scale and perform the way they intend, AI is able to design such beautiful sites and apps but they all have that AI slop look. A lot of them have the cyberpunk vibe and colors to it, or the newer gradients I’m noticing using subtle dynamic “orbs” moving slowly behind the page - I kind of like that look a lot frankly.
Regardless, it’s amazing how many ideas one can mock up today just based on an abstract artistic vision and clear expression of that abstract concept into words. That, honestly, is really difficult sometimes unless you draw it down as a wireframe first and perform the proper planning. When it comes to explaining art and design, I think that’s one of the more challenging things I’ve faced when trying to communicate with my AI agent. Usually it makes pretty good guesses on things that are more technical and science, but art and music - wherever or whatever is responsible for sparking that neuron in my creative brain is gnarly.
I also started drawing and sketching in my journal the other night. I was very shocked at how decent it turned out! I haven’t sketched in forever, probably since AP Art in high school honestly. Drawing ideas is so much easier to retain than writing sometimes.
The Apple Wallpaper Index
At first, I thought well.. if the IKEA Billy Bookshelf Index is a decent indicator of market trends, then theoretically, looking at Apple’s historical timeline progression of all iOS wallpapers over time paints a decent enough picture of where it’s going. Couple that up with Apple’s recent TikTok campaign introducing Neo and you can see that the Y2K classic gradient and old colorway from the original colorful Mac PCs with those shells are back.
What I didn’t realize until I was typing this and looking at the marketing photos of the MacBook’s wallpaper is that the old school gradients from the 2000s are making a comeback. I was following a forum thread about Y2K Futurism and there seems to be a movement and push for traditional digital art as AI is killing the cyberpunk vibe really quick with all the same looking aesthetic. What excited me the most is that Bryce renders and the same grunge tech abstract art that I loved to make when I was a kid is making its comeback!
Now, I really don’t think it’ll be completely like the old designs because let’s face it, some of the designs were a bit too “chaotic” or noisy with way too much brush packs and layers. Who knows, I could be completely wrong. What I do notice is that gradients are back, and pop art styles as well.
Neo Y2K Bubble Pop
I am guesstimating that the probability of the future of UI/UX for the next 5 years we’ll be seeing, based off of my “Apple Wallpaper Index,” is more gradients, chrome, maybe chromatic gradients, mixed with glass. Sort of like a “neo Y2K bubble pop” - if that’s even a thing. Spheres and orb designs were really popular in the 2000s because it was the easiest thing to render in Bryce or 3D Studio Max (and yet would still take HOOOOOURS to render). Now with three.js we can ask AI to create even more realistic objects through vibe designing with JavaScript as the paintbrush and it’s near instantaneous. Because AI is so much faster to use for making designs, I know it will empower digital artists to create their masterpiece quicker than doing it pixel by pixel, layer by layer, and then rendering it and waiting days on dial-up.
Testing the Prediction
How sure am I about any of this? Well, I’m familiar with the open source project from a Chinese student who made millions building what most of us who manage and orchestrate large swarms of agentic AIs do already. He was just wise to showcase it and got the right investor. 10 days… yea, that’s where all the money is going into these days.
I already had a smaller scale version of a swarm orchestrator that spins up agents, except just not to that scale. You can do this at a small scale using any AI model if you just feed it the proper data, the adequate amount, and yea. It identifies the appropriate subject matter experts, automatically identifies the teams necessary, and uses math to statistically calculate the minimum and maximum numbers to ensure the agents each took turns to converse in the quorum following psychology’s collective intelligence - not merely the sum of individual IQs, but heavily determined by the group’s interaction patterns, specifically how individuals talk and communicate. A high collective IQ is better predicted by the group’s collaboration process than by the average intelligence of its members.
See: Quorum
Oh yea, so I just used this to run the predictions about UI/UX and it says in 10 years apps will be using the “humanism” design. It’s interesting because the aesthetic is similar to some AI apps and themes now. I always thought those color schemes were off but now I wonder if they ran a prediction model way before going live and were like “yep! Trust the fortune teller that knows stats and probabilities from data.”
See the original blog if you want to see the AI design predictions: Terminal Blog #002
The AI Renaissance
This goes to show that as long as you have the passion and the creative mind to do something, it’s possible, even more now than before. The barrier to entry has been leveled but this also means the ability to be creative, think abstractly, and be an artist is even more in demand while also knowing one’s own limitations and gaps in knowledge.
I’m just excited to see where other artists who embrace AI to help express their inner creativity take it, and see where the UI/UX of apps and websites head to next. Of course this is also a great time for all artists as the world is seeking true genuine human emotion and creative expression through their works in the age of the AI Renaissance. After all, the Renaissance did occur following a period of rediscovery of old books that were once lost, which sparked society to see the world very differently, leading to arts, inventions, and more.
Now For The Harder Questions
Will the “Neo Y2K Bubble Pop” just be another trend again?
I wonder if DaVinci stopped to think “Hmm following this crazy plague, I shall call this the Renaeesancehe.” (jk, idk how old Italians would pronounce it then.)
This post started as an unedited Terminal Blog #002 - straight from the terminal, no word processor. The prediction engine referenced is Quorum, a multi-persona AI review plugin I built and published on the Anthropic marketplace.