[eternalban]

> My conclusion was that fantasy Interfaces are very much like the early web. Lots of moving parts

These designs all have quite a bit of 'hair'. There are some basic functional elements and then, like a salad, it is garnished with all those numeric registers and shifting rulers, and linear elements.

Since you are a designer, I'm sure you've had those moments with a wip composition that has all the visual metadata still visible and possibly found it more 'visually exciting' than the final cleaned-up product. Same thing happens with architectural design drawings. The 'compact/minimal intensity' of a conceptual sketch is, imo, partly due to the fact that relationships between elements are more explicit in the early stages and the composition feels more 'dynamic'. Same design in final form will simply not evoke the same emotional response and is rather 'static'. (my take on this.)