How to Integrate Retro Aesthetic into Your Modern Devices
I love retro aesthetic and long to integrate it into my life. However, using an Apple//e for my full time job and a brick phone instead of a smart phone can be…Cumbersome. Here are some tweaks I’ve made to help me get my retro fix.
Android Customization
I loved the Windows phone interface and found it to be very clean and straight forward. When the Windows phone died, I was beyond thrilled to find Launcher 10. After installing that, i used the Pip-Boy 3000 Live Wallpaper. Then i swapped some icons with 1-BIT Icon Theme. Launcher 10 makes it pretty gloriously straight forward and highly customizable. Launcher 10 allows you to colorize your icons - so dont fret when you see white icons using the 1-BIT Icon Theme. The hex code i used is #00D354. Additionally, a retro Smart Launcher Theme and Clock Widget styled like and LCD screen can create a killer retro LCD Android theme.
Retro Text Editing with Atom
If you’re not already familiar with Atom, its a free and open-source text and source code editor with support for plug-ins written in Javascript, and embedded Git Control, developed by GitHub. For my neanderthalic purposes, I just wanted a simple, retro notepad with tabs. To get the look you see here, follow these steps:
- Start Atom.
- Change your UI theme to “hacking-the-kernel-ui”.
- Change your Style theme to “hacking-the-kernel-ui”.
- Close Atom.
- Download the Pixel Emulator font.
Terminal Emulation and Windows Themes
Cool-Retro-Term is always the very first thing I install on a new Linux distro. The cool retro term does look nice. Scrolling is fast compared to an old terminal, but it looks right and it’s very configurable. It handles utf-8 too (unlike an old terminal…) so it lists my japanese files just fine. It’s very usable for everything. For desktop users, the Windows Green-Screen Theme is either awesome or very annoying - that’s for you to decide. Feel free to share your ideas for further retro adaptation!
Summary of Retro Integration Tools
| Platform | Software/Theme | Key Features |
|---|---|---|
| Android | Launcher 10 | Windows phone interface, highly customizable |
| Android | 1-BIT Icon Theme | Colorizable icons (Hex: #00D354) |
| Text Editor | Atom | hacking-the-kernel-ui, Pixel Emulator font |
| Linux | Cool-Retro-Term | Configurable terminal, UTF-8 support |
| Windows | Green-Screen Theme | Full system retro visual adaptation |