teamai-test/.teamai/skills/common/web-design-engineer/references/style-recipes/y2k-retrofuturism.md

y2k-retrofuturism — Y2K / Frutiger Aero Retrofuturism

• School: Specialty / Genre
• Vibe: Late-90s / early-2000s techno-optimism: chrome, glassy bubbles, jelly translucency, lens flare
• Best for: Fashion / music / nostalgia-coded products, creative campaigns, anything referencing 1999–2005 internet
• Touchstone: late-90s Apple iMac G3 ads, Windows Vista Aero, the original iPod aqua buttons, MySpace pages

Palette

• Ground: electric ice blue #A3D5FF or chrome silver #E0E4EA
• Glass accents: cyan #5FC9F8 → magenta #FF66C4 (the iridescent / oil-slick gradient)
• Chrome: brushed-steel highlights at #C4C9D2 to #F2F4F8
• Acid green pops: #A8FF00 (used sparingly)
• Ink: #000000 or #FFFFFF depending on ground

Typography

• Display: a chunky rounded sans with personality — Frutiger, Eurostile, or Sharp Grotesk in heavy weight; sometimes a chrome-effect treatment
• Body: friendly humanist sans like Frutiger or Avenir at 14–16px
• Numerals love an LCD / digital-readout treatment for hero counters
• Underline + sparkle treatments common on link hover

Spacing: 4 / 8 / 16 / 24 — packed but bubbly

Radius: gummy — 16 / 24 / 32 / 9999 (full circle). Buttons are pill-shaped jelly bubbles.

Shadow: heavy and colored — glossy reflections, drop shadows like 0 16px 32px rgba(95, 201, 248, 0.4). Inner highlights to simulate glass.

Motion: bouncy springs, glow pulses, lens flare sweeps. Anything that recalls early-Flash interactions.

Signature moves

• Glassy translucent buttons with an inner top highlight (faking aqua / lozenge)
• Iridescent oil-slick gradients on hero / character imagery
• Chrome-effect type with sparkle overlays
• Lens flare or specular highlight on any glass surface
• 3D / dimensional UI elements (the OS-X-Aqua dock effect)
• Floating circular orbs / bubbles drifting in the background

Avoid

• Sharp corners
• Muted / earthy palettes — Y2K is bright and synthetic
• Restrained typography — Y2K is exuberant
• Anything that reads as "tasteful 2020s minimalism"

AI prompt seed

Y2K retrofuturism scene, chrome silver and ice-blue iridescent gradient background, floating glass orbs with cyan and magenta oil-slick reflections, lens flare in upper right, single bright translucent pill-shaped button, late-1990s techno-optimism vibe, 16:9.

Don't use when

• The brand has no nostalgic / retro / playful claim
• The audience is enterprise / professional — this recipe is consumer-fashion-music coded
• Long-form readability matters (Y2K is for moments, not for reading)

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Same school — Specialty / Genre: mid-century-modern
Browse all 25 recipes: INDEX.md