Mike Rundle has some great advice on UI design:
The underlying secret to beautiful user interface design is realism: making 2D objects on your screen appear to sit in 3D space with volume, surface properties and undulations that might appear in real life. These faux 3D objects have highlights and shadows just like objects on your desk might have, and they have textures that emulate real objects from glass to sandpaper and everything in between. Designing beautiful user interfaces has more to do with the why than the how.
I would add the standard art-class caveat that you should draw what you see, but also know how to look. When you look at an object in the real world, there’s a lot of noise in your way (I don’t mean grain-noise; I mean artifacts of lighting, reflection, imperfections, etc.) The key thing to UI - wait, maybe the key thing to art - is stylizing the real world enough to convey only what you need to convey.
(via John Siracusa)
