About Star Trek LCARS
LCARS — the Library Computer Access and Retrieval System — is the touchscreen interface Michael Okuda designed for Star Trek: The Next Generation in 1987. Built from softly-rounded color blocks and sweeping curved "elbow" frames, it reads from a pure-black backlit console: warm orange and tan capsules glowing beside cool violet and blue ones, with thin colored rails and right-aligned numeric tags threading between them.
The system is resolutely flat — no gradients, no bevels, no skeuomorphic chrome. Its identity lives in the geometry: pill-shaped Okudagram buttons, generous black negative space, and the iconic elbow that bends a header bar down into a sidebar in one continuous radius. It is a fictional UI that became one of the most recognizable graphic languages in television.
- Origin
- Los Angeles, California (Paramount Studios)
- Era
- 1987 onward (TNG era); within the 1950–1990 design window
- Key figures
- Michael Okuda · Denise Okuda · Rick Sternbach
- Movements
- Television production design · speculative interface design · flat color-block graphic systems
Star Trek LCARS design spec
Colors
Typography
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