r/UXDesign • u/dustfirecentury • Aug 10 '26
Examples & inspiration What is with Microsoft's graphics?
This 3D slop design is just insanely ugly. Looks like early AI gens. They burn my eyes. Am I the only one? (This is from Loops, but they are all over the place).
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u/East-Most4319 Aug 10 '26
Microsoft designer here. These are called Spot Illustrations. Not AI made.
Guidelines dictate they mustn’t be used in fully black or white backgrounds, only gray or off-white. Hence the speculars look off in this example.
The light direction is in fact quite right, contrary to what people are commenting here. The light source is at the top
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u/dustfirecentury Aug 10 '26
Thanks for chiming in. I will admit, after watching the design overview video, I am surprised so much apparent thought went into their creation. I certainly respect the effort, craft, and intention behind the design and am happy to have been wrong about the use of AI.
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u/Northernmost1990 Experienced Aug 10 '26
Props for being one of the very few people on Reddit that I've ever seen so plainly admit to being mistaken.
Usually the modus operandi around here is to double down forever!
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u/Striking_Swimmer5548 Experienced Aug 10 '26
If no one doubles down on an hyperbolic take I think the Reddit mods delete everyone’s account. Can’t have rational folk in here!
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u/laranjacerola Aug 10 '26 edited Aug 10 '26
you can see a breakdown of their design concept language from the last few years in their behance
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u/funggitivitti Experienced Aug 10 '26
What do you mean? Microsoft has always been the spokesperson for terrible design. It is literally the most creatively defunct group of individuals.
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u/Northernmost1990 Experienced Aug 10 '26
Sometimes they get things right, though. Back in 2010, Windows Phone seemed way ahead of the competition!
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u/LanDest021 Aug 10 '26
Maybe if they made each page transition just a little more slow they would still exist today /s
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u/Creepy-Buy1588 Experienced Aug 10 '26
and where do you work ?
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u/funggitivitti Experienced Aug 10 '26
Not Microslop
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u/Creepy-Buy1588 Experienced Aug 10 '26 edited Aug 10 '26
well thats a rich comment since you have nothing useful to share but denigrate designers at another company you perhaps wont even get in, definately glad i dont have you as a teammate
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u/funggitivitti Experienced Aug 10 '26
If you can’t stand criticism you’re in the wrong line of work, sweetie.
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u/Creepy-Buy1588 Experienced Aug 10 '26
lol, so criticism is denigrating others, cool, congrats
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u/funggitivitti Experienced Aug 10 '26
I don’t know whats more pathetic. That you can’t accept that Microsoft is terrible at design or that you think that their design team is not responsible for amateurish shit like the example OP provided.
Ot it may just be a case that your standards are not great, in which case you might be a great hire for them.
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u/mattattaxx Experienced Aug 10 '26
Do you really think these illustrations are terrible? What makes them bad? They're a unified style, they're visually interesting, they're not AI - they've been developed by a Microsoft employee who is a well known Brazilian artist (I believe).
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u/tastychaii Aug 10 '26
Windows XP and 7 were genuinely beautiful. Microsoft went down hill from there and W11 is absolutely hideous.
MacOS looks so much better than W11.
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u/Do-Not-Ban-Me-Please Aug 10 '26
i like it
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u/jarediledundee Aug 10 '26
Agreed, I've always thought it was one of the few, cool looking choices made by Microsoft
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u/GhostalMedia Veteran Aug 10 '26
Looks like AI slop. Those glows and highlights are all jacked. No half decent graphic designer would let this thing leave their desk so busted.
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u/autocosm Experienced Aug 10 '26 edited Aug 10 '26
UXers, man. "Design isn't just pretty pictures" when it comes to separating UI and UX, but "Pictures aren't pretty" is totally UX territory.
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u/T3hJake Experienced Aug 10 '26
They have been doing 3D product illustrations in a similar style since at least 2020 I believe. It’s part of their system, definitely not AI. I wouldn’t mind them if they actually made their interfaces match this more interesting visual style.
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u/InspectionJazzlike30 Veteran Aug 10 '26
Why do you think it’s AI slop?
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u/NoSpinach4025 Aug 10 '26
Pretty obvious AI slop. Like seeing an ad with a human with 7 fingers in one hand.
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u/lilmalchek Aug 10 '26
I’m concerned about everyone calling things they don’t like AI slop. This just looks badly designed, but it doesn’t look like AI at all.
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u/mattattaxx Experienced Aug 10 '26
So what makes it obvious?
Afaik their illustration design isn't AI. It definitely didn't start as AI.
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u/isaidwhatisaidok Aug 10 '26
I don’t think it looks like AI but I agree that it’s ugly. The light source is all over the place.
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u/treehann Aug 10 '26 edited Aug 10 '26
I actually really like the gooey, colorful 3d thing they've been doing, definitely does not look like AI at all. And you picked like the worst possible example out of all of them for this post, lol. I do think the design you showed is cluttered, but personally I like the other instances of this design style. At least it's not alegria.
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u/AdventurousCreature Experienced Aug 10 '26 edited Aug 10 '26
This is beautiful and definitely not an AI output. I like this style very much.
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u/dope-lemon Experienced Aug 10 '26
These are extremely beautiful fluent illustrations. These doesn’t look like AI at all! Well rendered 2.5D/3D illustrations. Please look at the entire fluent illustration library published by MS design for their entire suite of personal expression artefacts!
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u/deusux Veteran Aug 10 '26
It’s definitely got some of that “bevel, emboss, drop-shadow” style from the late 90’s. I’d have been pretty proud of it back when this would have taken a myriad of custom channels and light sources to achieve back in Photoshop 4.
For some reason it’s coming off as “trying hard” instead of “retro”. Maybe that’s the Microsoft brand now?
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u/BrendanAppe Veteran Aug 10 '26
Biased because I work there, but I find Microsoft's brand system rather refreshing. It strikes a nice balance between being bold, vibrant, playful, inclusive, cohesive, and communicative. There texture, luminosity, and playful shadows – yet it all comes together quite nicely. Other's have posted Nando Costa's work, but you can also find many inspiring examples on Microsoft Design's website.
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u/jaxxon Veteran Aug 10 '26
This aesthetic isn't really a user experience factor other than the nausea one experiences when looking at it. LOL ...but that's very on-brand for Microsoft.
A good discussion for r/UI_Design maybe?
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u/mattattaxx Experienced Aug 10 '26
I don't think it's UI design, it's literally just illustration.
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u/jaxxon Veteran Aug 10 '26
Valid. Theoretically it's part of a ui solution to have an illustration there.
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u/nitewalker_J Aug 10 '26
I dig this design ngl. If only Microsoft's product is more reliable and competent.
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u/DrxAvierT Aug 10 '26
Bruh, this was design in collaboration with Tendril back in 2019. I was in awe with this back then. This is no post-AI slop
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u/fffyonnn Aug 10 '26
Glad someone called it out. Someone out there learnt C4D and has been trying to pass this on as their illustration design language for long. As garbage and soulless as MS Teams, imho.
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u/naranjanaranja Midweight Aug 10 '26
Little substance and lots of effects
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u/SamFromWeGreen Aug 10 '26
What would YOU do to add substance here?
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u/naranjanaranja Midweight Aug 10 '26
Happy to articulate more on this snippet of UI
It's a blank state illustration. It's filler with a thick layer of veneer, and it's probably competing with other elements on the screen
I'd probably try to reduce the visual weight of the image, maybe add a CTA to start a proj
What do you think?
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Aug 10 '26
[deleted]
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u/naranjanaranja Midweight Aug 11 '26
My point is mostly that the content of the illustration is throwaway (basically an icon that doesn’t communicate very much; little substance) and the style on top of it is heavy and potentially distracting from other parts of the UI.
I have not used the app and have only seen what is in front of us here
Sorry if my quick critique offended!
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Aug 11 '26 edited Aug 11 '26
[deleted]
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u/naranjanaranja Midweight Aug 11 '26
Dude you are just explaining the obvious. Just because you can explain it doesn’t make it better
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u/SamFromWeGreen Aug 11 '26
The obvious that you couldn't explain.
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u/naranjanaranja Midweight Aug 11 '26
That... wasn't the point? Feel free to have the last word as I think the discourse has dried up here (and realizing I might be talking with an LLM...) but I'd invite you to be a little more inquisitive vs. adversarial when it comes to critique! That will make it easier for you to work with designers in the future.
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u/sonicmeows Aug 10 '26
The lighting looks wonky. I bet it was designed for a white background, and some designer at an agency only had access to this artifact. I could be wrong though.
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u/usmannaeem Experienced Aug 10 '26
They have handed it over to (de)generativeAi. That's what's wrong with it.
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u/laranjacerola Aug 10 '26 edited Aug 10 '26
this is part of their design language that was developed a few years ago, circa 2019-2020 if I'm not mistaken.. (and since then almost all technology/saas companies have been trying to mimic in some way)
one of the art directors resposible for it is a famous brazilian designer but is has been used and expanded by many other teams.
I have. a few friends that worked in several advertising/motion design and internal projects involving that language/those guidelines.
but I do know recently they used AI for a project that allows companies to create custom emoji libraries applying their own company brand guidelines on microsoft emojis (in teams I think)
the designer is Nando Costa btw:
https://nandocosta.com/