Amazing animated history of the iPhone in pure CSS

Paddi Macdonnell.
September 25, 2014
Amazing animated history of the iPhone in pure CSS.
thumbnailBy now, most Apple fans have their hands on an iPhone 6, and they do look pretty incredible — even if Apple have accidentally introduced curved screens. The iPhone is a wonderful example of iterative design; each model is an evolution rather than a revolution, and they all build on the previous design. Looking at the original iPhone, it doesn’t look much like the iPhone 6, but look at one model after the other and you can almost follow the design process as one refinement follows another. That history makes the iPhone a cool subject for vector transitions, and what better way to achieve that than with CSS? Enter this incredible pure CSS — no images were used at all — interactive animation of the history of the iPhone. Just scroll through the models one by one and watch the beautiful animation. The whole project was built by Stephen Griffin on behalf of Protect Your Bubble, who clearly loves his chosen medium:
Over the years CSS has evolved to include more and more capabilities which now include the ability to apply rounded corners, create colour gradients, and in modern browsers such as Chrome and Firefox, the ability to rotate, scale and even add blurs and other filter effects. The iPhone timeline piece makes use of these CSS features to create illustrations made purely of code. No images were used to recreate each iPhone, just empty HTML elements that have been styled purely with CSS.

Paddi MacDonnell

Paddi MacDonnell is a designer and entrepreneur from Northern Ireland, follow her on Twitter.

Read Next

15 Best New Fonts, July 2024

Welcome to our monthly roundup of the best fonts we’ve found online in the last four weeks. This month, there are fewer…

20 Best New Websites, July 2024

Welcome to July’s round up of websites to inspire you. This month’s collection ranges from the most stripped-back…

Top 7 WordPress Plugins for 2024: Enhance Your Site's Performance

WordPress is a hands-down favorite of website designers and developers. Renowned for its flexibility and ease of use,…

Exciting New Tools for Designers, July 2024

Welcome to this July’s collection of tools, gathered from around the web over the past month. We hope you’ll find…

3 Essential Design Trends, July 2024

Add some summer sizzle to your design projects with trendy website elements. Learn what's trending and how to use these…

15 Best New Fonts, June 2024

Welcome to our roundup of the best new fonts we’ve found online in the last month. This month, there are notably fewer…

20 Best New Websites, June 2024

Arranging content in an easily accessible way is the backbone of any user-friendly website. A good website will present…

Exciting New Tools for Designers, June 2024

In this month’s roundup of the best tools for web designers and developers, we’ll explore a range of new and noteworthy…

3 Essential Design Trends, June 2024

Summer is off to a fun start with some highly dramatic website design trends showing up in projects. Let's dive in!

15 Best New Fonts, May 2024

In this month’s edition, there are lots of historically-inspired typefaces, more of the growing trend for French…

How to Reduce The Carbon Footprint of Your Website

On average, a web page produces 4.61 grams of CO2 for every page view; for whole sites, that amounts to hundreds of KG…

20 Best New Websites, May 2024

Welcome to May’s compilation of the best sites on the web. This month we’re focused on color for younger humans,…