Do You Know What A Squircle Is?

You may or may not have heard the term squircle before, but if you are in the design business, you certainly already know that a squircle is a shape between a square and a circle. But that doesn't mean it's a square with rounded corners. Oh no! In the graphic above, the figures are a square, a rounded square, a squircle, and a circle. The difference between a rounded square and a squircle is that a squircle doesn't have any straight lines, whereas a rounded squard retains the straight sides of a square. Which you prefer is up to you, but plenty of people find it more pleasant to see continuous curves of a squircle.

One place you've seen squircles are in dishes, because a squircle-shaped plate can hold more food than a round one, without the sharp edges of a square plate. They've also been associated with Apple products. But what I see when I saw examples of squircles are cathode-ray TV screens. Commenters at Metafilter point out that this shape is also known as a superellipse, in case you want to explore its mathematiucal formula.

(Image source: Webflow)