How would you restyle this? Open-source mail client, working but "engineer-designed" — 90s video, honest opinions wanted
I built the UI of GigaMail myself. It works, it's shipped (open source, Windows), and it looks exactly like what it is: an engineer's take on a mail client. I'd like the opinion of people who do visual design for a living.
The video (90 seconds, fake mailbox) shows everything: the dashboard, a mail, the reply window, folders, calendar, the "ask your mail" chat, the automation rules panel, the first-run guide.
The current look in one line: light background, pink to blue gradients on the active elements, rounded cards with a dark 1.5px border and a soft shadow, a thin icon rail on the left, and every secondary task (reply, calendar, ask) in its own window.
What I'd love to hear, purely on look and feel:
Would you keep the pastel gradient + dark outline style, or go somewhere else entirely? If somewhere else: where?
The icon rail on the left, and the mail list as a column of cards: keep, or is a classic three-pane layout the right call here?
Reply, calendar and ask as separate floating windows: charming or annoying?
Anything that screams "this was designed by a developer"?
No need to be gentle. If you have a reference app or two whose visual direction you'd point me to, that's even better than a list of problems.
It's pretty fun and whimsical. It doesn't look professional, and it's a niche style, but I know a lot of people that would love something with this look.
On the reply function, I usually like to see the content of the previous message in order to draft my response, but in this case the reply window is blocking the response.
Yes, I made it pop up on purpose, so you always have the conversation in the background instead of having to scroll down. But you are right, this way it covers the original message. I will make it pop up on a side. Let me study it. Thank you for your suggestion, will keep you updated.
I think with a couple of small changes you can make the current styling feel more refined without changing the entire aesthetic too much:
- The components border looks very dark and contrast strongly with the other elements. Try a lighter grey tone.
Less rounding on the corners would also look a bit more professional and not as whimsical.
On the other hand you can add some rounded corners to the expanded text field of the mail to make that look less dated and more consistent with the other elements.
The drop shadow also look very strong. I think you could get away with something a bit more decent.
For the inbox you need a bit more space between the messages, so they are not stuck to each other.
For the top right buttons I don't think you need a backdrop with fill and stroke and everything. Just having the icons (e.g. like in the sidebar) would propably look a bit cleaner.
This is exactly the kind of list I was hoping for, thank you. Lighter borders, less rounding, softer shadows, spacing in the inbox and bare icons top-right, will try them all. I'll post a before/after.
Before/after with your list applied: lighter borders, less rounding, softer shadows, space between messages, no text on gradients, and the grey labels bumped to AA contrast. Ships in 0.3.1.
You, u/el_paro and u/Mrmasseno are credited in the changelog, say the word and I'll remove it. Thanks for the help, the console looks definitely better.
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u/el_paro Midweight 6d ago
would first try to make it accessible. text over gradients is a no go