Frutiger Aero: the Windows screen saver design trend taking TikTok by storm

The retro-futuristic' mid-2000s look harks back to a time of technological optimism

What do tropical fish, bubbles, green fields and dewdrops have in common? They are all visual markers of a mid-2000s aesthetic that is taking the TikTok generation by storm, amid a wave of nostalgia for a time when technology was seen as a path to a brighter future.

Dubbed Frutiger Aero by design gurus, the trend is named after the Swiss typesetter Adrian Frutiger whose lettering featured widely in early colour computers, and Windows Aero, a visual style embraced by Microsoft's 2006 Vista software, with its screensavers depicting electric-green grass and impossibly blue skies.