Evolving Screen Design: Star Trek and the Viewscreen

6/1/09 • 5 min read

This post was originally posted on June 1, 2009 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.

One of the defining design characteristics of a ship in the Star Trek Universe is the forward viewscreen. And in the J.J. Abrams reboot of Star Trek, the entire concept of the viewscreen has also been reimagined.

By looking at how our vision of the future has evolved, we can often learn more about how we as a society have changed. And I think by looking at how the concept of the viewscreen has changed over the last four decades, I think we can draw some conclusions about how we have changed as culture and where we are going.

The Original Viewscreen

In Gene Roddenberry’s original Star Trek TV Show, the view screen was primarily a giant screen showing the outside. Very rarely, the screen would be used to show scientific data.

At the time, in the late 60’s, that concept was enough to seem futuristic. TV’s were still a relatively young technology. A screen that size providing live pictures with the ability to show content from the ship’s computer… That was the future. Computers were room-sized devices with limited capabilities. The whole concept would have seemed very advanced.

The expectation was that interaction with a large viewscreen would be passive. It was something to watch, more like a TV than a computer interface.

To the big screen and back to the small screen

When the Star Trek series moved to the big screen in the late 70’s and into the 80’s, the viewscreen concept was only slightly refined. The expectation was still that the viewscreen provided a passive experience. Some odd touches were added, like a digital clock over the screen.

With the success of the movie franchise, Star Trek: The Next Generation launched into syndicated television. Because the series took place even further in the future, they took the established concepts and “enhanced” the technology. The viewscreen evolved, but only from a technical level. The screen was now “holographic.” (Note: I’m assuming this means the images were more realistic.)

The way the crew actually used and interacted with the screen was still passive and static. And through the three series that followed, the viewscreen never really did much more than provide pretty pictures.

Reimagining the Viewscreen

When Abrams and crew started work on the reboot, they faced a challenge of honoring the style of the past and while projecting a modern, futuristic feel:

We had the weird challenge of having to take a 43 year old vision of the future and make it a current vision of the future. I wanted the movie to feel as tactile and tangible and as real as possible, but given what our computer interfaces are like now, its preposterous to assume that hundreds of years from now there won’t be some version of holographic screens and things that seem almost ubiquitous now in science fiction.

-Abrams in an interview with Memory Alpha

We as a culture have evolved to expect more from our “viewscreens.” Many of our TV channels have crawls and information graphics. Look at what CNN produced during the elections or what ESPN News does on a daily basis. Our computers provide constant updates. Even our cars and phones have interactive interfaces. We expect modern screens to do more than just show us pictures. We expect them to inform us.

That old concept of a passive viewscreen has been discarded in the new Star Trek movie. The giant viewscreen acts as a heads up display for the ship. Warnings, current speed, the health of the away team, status of the ship and more appear over the top of the screen. And the information that is provided is contextual, only appearing when needed or applicable.

We have become a viewscreen culture

Looking at the new Star Trek viewscreen, it feels futuristic. And what that really means is that it feels like a radically advanced version of where we are now.

I think that we have become a viewscreen culture. We have become comfortable interacting with screens in a way that wasn’t comprehended in the late 60’s and wasn’t fully understood even in the 80’s and 90’s. In fact, we are more than just comfortable. We now expect our screens to provide us information and feedback.

As the web, digital television, phones and computers evolve, our cultural expectations of the screens and surfaces around us with continue to change and evolve. We as designers are already starting to see this. People expect more from their web sites and other digital interfaces. They expect these tools to interact with them. To provide the information they need when they need it.

What designers need to remember is that this is just the beginning. People will continue to become more and more comfortable with screen-based content. And we must continue to push the limits of the medium to provide the interaction and capabilities that our society is beginning to expect.

Bob Wertz is a creative director, type designer, Ph.D. student and researcher living in Columbia, South Carolina. He’s been blogging since 2008.

To build an InShow Cube

11/29/08 • 4 min read

This post was originally posted on November 29, 2008 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.

InShow is AIGA South Carolina’s annual design competition. While most design competitions have plaques, statuettes, acrylic blocks and other mass-produced awards, InShow has the “cube.”

Every year, the cube is manufactured from a different material. It’s been aluminum, concrete, cardboard, acrylic, ceramic and wood and is always roughly 5 inches.

This year’s cube

The cube for the 14th Annual InShow was manufactured out of electrical boxes and carriage bolts.

I actually built the prototype for this year’s show as a backup for last year. The wood cubes had been shipped, but there was a slight possibility they would not arrive in time for the Gala. So I went to Home Depot and assembled a quick prototype from off the shelf parts. Something we could assemble quickly if the wood awards did not arrive.

However, the wood cubes did arrive in time, so the electrical box prototype was saved for the 2008 show.

The challenge of the custom award

I was at least partially involved with the last five cubes: cardboard, acrylic, ceramic, wood and now electrical box cubes. And I’ve learned a lot from the process. There are several specific challenges to building a custom award.

Find a material. For the InShow cube, we use a new material every year. And every year, we go through a bunch of concepts and ideas. The cube needs to have a certain aesthetic value - after all it is an award - so the material needs to look nice when completed. And budget is an issue, too. An expensive material or process can completely throw the budget off.

The parts for the electrical box cubes came off the shelf from local hardware stores. We debated a few finishing options - like using duct tape to hide the gap between the boxes or some different combinations of parts. But in the end, we went with the cleanest execution of the concept.

Now make 60. It’s one thing to make a prototype. It’s another thing entirely to make 60 awards. Whatever concept you settle on has to scale. Building 60 cubes can be a massive undertaking, especially if you don’t think it through completely. Part of the design process is figuring out the most efficient way to build a larger quantity.

However, 60 is also too small of a number to be efficiently produced using a large-scale manufacturing process. So much of the work is done by hand.

The only scale related issue with the electrical box cube was finding enough electrical boxes. This is not a commonly used box size and is not stocked in large quantities. And with 2 boxes per cube, we were looking for 120 boxes. I had to buy all the stock at three different hardware stores to find enough boxes.

Whose award is it? The hardest and most time consuming part of building a custom award is personalization. The award has the name of the winning firm and title of entry. We also have a handful of judge’s awards that need to look a little different than the regular award.

I used a Dymo 3-D label maker to put the names on the awards. On the prototype, I used black labels and spray painted a black InShow logo. I wanted the label to look more intentional and so I experimented with different combinations. I finally settled on silver labels - which meant I had to spray paint the completed labels. I was a little more time consuming, but I felt the more subtle effect from silver labels on the silver box was worth the extra effort.

I changed the color of the InShow logo from black to dark gray (although most people still thinks it looks black). The special judges awards sported magenta logos - an accent color we picked up from the Call for Entries mailer.

So what’s next?

I have no idea.¹ Lots of concepts have been thrown around, and every year, it becomes that much harder to find another concept. But inevitably, someone will come up with a material and an execution that will work.