Is it just me, or are many of the Waves Plug ins getting pretty cheesy looking. They are beginning to remind me of many of the free plug-ins market. 

I try not to judge software on eye candy.  Of course I own Reason which looks really cool and I own Live that has as 8 bit look.  

kitekrazy1
I try not to judge software on eye candy.  Of course I own Reason which looks really cool and I own Live that has as 8 bit look.  

Case in point? SONAR's Sonitus plugins.

silvercn
Is it just me, or are many of the Waves Plug ins getting pretty cheesy looking. They are beginning to remind me of many of the free plug-ins market. 

Which one looks cheesy in your opinion?

Yeah some of them do have that look, the Butch Vig Vocals plug certainly had a look of it's own, but I do love what it can do for you, the new Greg Wells stuff also, I have Piano and Voice, going to demo the new Mix one shortly, but again I di like what Piano and voice can do.
 
Normally I don't really care so much about the look, as long as it is functional and does a good job, but I could never stomach the Melda plugs look, it was almost nauseous to me, couldn't stand them, had the total bundle and ended up giving them away to a friend.

Oh yeah.. I get that the artist signature plugins do tend to look somewhat dramatic. I only own the vintage type plugins.. In any case, they sound awesome!

I wouldn't have thought Waves plug-ins were appearing more and more like free plug-ins. Many free ones are horrid-looking. For Waves, as from what I've read and felt, it's all about human flow. When the first Q10 was released, the main concept was set that you could simply click-drag a ball on the EQ graph and adjust it quickly. Obviously, you can accurately adjust nearly (if not all) settings on a Waves plug-in by double-clicking on each control.
 
There's also many 'emulation' plug-ins Waves offers, which not necessarily are powerful, but offer up a very closely mimic'd hardware emulation of products from Neve, SSL, UA, etc. What you're paying for there is all the talent and hours spent getting those emulations to fool their respective hardware owners, much less the Waves customers.
 
It's all about what you don't see, however, that makes Waves so powerful. Take the CLA, Kramer, Maserati, or JJP Signature plug-ins. Simple, they appear. Complex and powerful they are. 

Now, that I said that, there just might be some ugly-as-sin free plug-ins that offer some serious power. I just can't immediately think of any.

I tend to prefer the look and feel of plugins which have been designed with onscreen use in mind as opposed to looking as "real" as possible. The Valhalla plugins are a great example of beautiful & functional design IMO. 3D buttons and knobs are starting to look a little old fashioned to me.

sharke
I tend to prefer the look and feel of plugins which have been designed with onscreen use in mind as opposed to looking as "real" as possible. The Valhalla plugins are a great example of beautiful & functional design IMO. 3D buttons and knobs are starting to look a little old fashioned to me.

I agree, that I like usefulness and screen/flow friendly vs. classic look. The Elysia compressor is a fiddly thing because they chose to make knob adjustments wacky and more like actual hardware. Sonoris is a great example of eye-friendly vs. eye-candy. DMG is another I like pretty well. FabFilter is bordeline eye-candy, but Valhalla, is total apathetic to looks. Much like Algorithmix plugs, and as easy to work with as they are, I think they just don't have a great artistic designer inhouse (joking). But it shouldn't matter what they look like. Consumers won't know.

To be fair, many of the most popular Waves products date back to a time when little thought was given to making plugins look pretty. Or worse, photo-realistic. Function before form, that was the rule of the day back then.
 
Sadly, few developers follow that principle anymore. ValhallaDSP being a notable exception.