Skeuomorphism is a design where there look of an object used for a function is copied in a tool performing the same function.
Like early electric lights where made to mimic candelabra, lemon juice is put in a container in the shape of a lemon or the ‘call’ button on a smartphone has the icon of an analog phone on it.
In the latter case there’s a word thing going on. With the telephone as with the floppy symbol on the save button, there is a point where more people have never used the depicted object. There is a certain point in time where the symbol is used longer than the actual thing.
If that’s the case, can we still call it skeuomorphic?
Judging by skeuomorphic icons that got stuck in the past, they usually get stuck with the last iteration of tech that is single-purpose and unambiguous.
For example, the icon for “train” is most often a steam train, even though they haven’t been common for a very long time. But there’s nothing else that looks like a steam train, while a diesel/electric train just looks like a generic box when on a small, low-resolution icon.
The disk icon for saving got stuck because it’s the last piece of storage tech with a clearly recognizable shape. SD cards are just rectangles, hard drives or SSDs also don’t really have a clearly recognizable shape (especially not to someone who has never taking a PC apart).
But the floppy disk icon won against e.g. drum storage (which is sometimes still used as an icon for databases) or tape storage, because it was newer and more widely used.
The landline phone icon wasn’t replaced by a smartphone, because the smartphone isn’t single-use. It’s ambiguous what e.g. an app with a smartphone icon would do, since a smartphone can be used for a ton of different things.
So in short, an icon gets stuck with the
- newest tech
- that is single-use
- that has a clearly recognizable shape
From then it stops mattering whether the tech depicted is still in use or even known by the youngest generation. It’s now not the “floppy disk icon” but the “save icon” instead.
I think up until which point you would still call things like that skeuomorphic is entirely subjective, depends on how you want to define it. These things will always be of skeuomorphic origin, at least.
It’s a very interesting process indeed. I imagine these designs will morph over time into something else, as their original meaning does not matter anymore since no one remembers it vividly, and all that matters is them being widely known and distinctly recognizable. Just like it happens with words changing over time.
I’ve frequently wondered what the phone icon will be when the current meaning is lost in time. Will it be an icon of the device you’re using? That doesn’t make sense. Maybe a person talking? Not sure.
The problem is that modern smartphones do so much that phone use is a vanishingly small part of their actual use patterns. So if you want an icon to indicate “make a voice call”, it’s probably more confusing than clear. Whereas an old fashioned phone headset indicates exactly and only that purpose.