What Skeuomorphism Is (And Isn’t) | SachaGreif.com.
Like many buzz-words, ‘skeuomorphism’ has been a hot topic for quite a while now, and over time has become a very generic term that grossly embraces a far wider spectrum than it once did. The trend came about particularly when Apple started including leather textures within applications. People didn’t like it and while their criticisms may have been completely valid, the crowd took this fancy new word and generalized it to be “anything with a texture”.
There’s more to it than that, chances are if you’re a Web designer the majority of your designs in recent memory have utilized skeuomorphism.