There is this notion of the 'uncanny valley' where a rendering/expression of a human gets too close to the real thing. There is a similar space in design where dissonance between what is possible and what is shown jars the senses.
Escher used this to great effect, creating scenes that you eyes initially perceived as 'normal' but began to sense a 'wrongness' or 'otherness' which as you looked more closely became apparent.
This would have worked better as an exercise if he had done an advertising type pitch for a tri-corder or what ever the Stargate equivalent is. But by using the next generation of a product that is already out there and known for its design, and adding in features which are currently science fiction (and physically impossible [1]) the designer causes the brain to go "urrrk?" and the whole thing collapses.
[1] For example, iPhones use a touch screen based on capacitance. Graphene is a conductor. A transparent graphene cover would shield the phone from being able to see any change in electric field (it would, at best, be diffuse across the conductor) and render the touch screen inoperable. Try this fun experiment, put a piece of paper over an iPad and watch your gestures go right "thru" it, put a piece of foil over your ipad, and note how you can do anything.
Graphene isn't the best choice, but the point was to illustrate a currently unseen level of tensile strength, not as a blueprint for manufacture. Wouldn't that be a fun device to have?
We tend to ignore humor on HN, but this is one person's imagination at work, and I applaud that.
Per my point about a tri-corder (a clearly fictional device) had he made his project "more clearly fictional" it would have avoided that uncanny valley. Basing it on the iPhone was not a good choice for me. A friend of mine was doing the computer graphics thing and initially all of his "models" were real actresses (he used stills from films to figure out the models) and it was hurting his portfolio because the 'goodness' of his modelling skills was being subverted by the 'wrongness' of the model (people recognized the actress and then saw things "wrong" in the models of them). I suspect that is the case here is well.
Anyway, dude has some skills.
The screen however is very reminiscent of Atmel's XSense touch sensor, which I'm keen to play with[1].
The wolf in sheeps clothes special pleading I'll leave alone.
Is he an electrical engineer who can say for certain that the retina display can actually be manufactured in this edgy way?
No, he's just a guy with Adobe Illustrator.
So... why should I care what he thinks?
I'm not sure why you thought that I didn't understand that Retina is a marketing term, or why it's relevant to the point I was making.
He is a fucking graphic designer and that’s exactly how you should judge this.
It's like you hand me an album of somebody scratching at a violin for 80 minutes and tell me that the point was the album art, he's "not a musician" and "not advertising himself as one", gosh.
Excuse us silly engineers that got distracted by the actual content of the damn link. Guess we didn't see the trees for the forest.
If the point is to have a portfolio piece as a visual designer, Make a brochure for something that already exists, or that is unique and doesn't exist. This is an uncanny valley of being unimaginative yet impossible and that distracts me (and many readers here) from everything else.
This fucking thing is some stupid fun. Nothing more. I’m not sure what this cynicism burning with the power of a million suns shit is all about. Why do people behave this way?
None of the assets look original, and there doesn't actually seem to be any graphic design involved. The entire thing looks to be a showcase of non-existent industrial design skills.
Hows that for judging it based on graphic design?
But to be honest, what really annoyed me was a designer who proposes a Retina2 type screen yet in his showcase work here, uses low resolution fonts. It's just hard to give any serious thought to a designer who overlooks one of the most critical -- yet trivially easy to do right -- aspects of a prototype design.
I agree with this wholeheartedly.
My secondary negative reaction to this, though, is that I think there's a certain conceit in putting this design together and calling it the "iPhone 6". Whatever merits these drawings might have, they could be showcased just as well by making up an arbitrary new name for it and calling it an evolution in smartphone design in general — rather than hijack Apple's branding just to draw attention.
Yes, god forbit he also being somewhat pragmatic...
http://www.johnnyplaid.com
Designers do this stuff because they have ideas about how devices and interfaces can change and they explore those ideas. It doesn't seem to me that Johnny is making claims about inside information. He's using his visual talents to create mockups of what might be possible in the future.
The medium is different, but the process isn't any different than sci-fi writers setting stories in the future or me making UI wireframes for an application. It's just ways of exploring what could be done.
The last point is to realize that this is most likely just personal portfolio work. Some of us have github profiles and others have PSD's. Just think about the exposure Johnny is getting out of this and how it might get him more work in the future. That's the best reason for him to make this.