The only thing Cubase has going for it, design-wise, is its dark theme.
The rest is a hot mess of terrible font choices, pixel hairlines, inconsistent scrollbars, inexplicable gradients and gloss, fugly skeumorphism and corner radii that looks like it was mashed together from several different apps.
If it were as bright as Cubase SX, Studio One or Sonar X3 (the Console), I’d probably be in Sonar right now. Both Studio One and Sonar are better designed, they’re just a bit too bright for late night work.
Since about 50% of my DAW screen, at any given point in time, is showing various plugins, most of them ugly, too, the lesser of the evils is Cubase – ugly, but dark.
That, btw, is a terrible slogan.
“Cubase. Ugly, but at least it’s dark.”
Some of the ugliest plugins ever designed are also my favorite:
Lexicon PCM Native
Waves Gold Bundle (but has an excuse, as most of it was designed in the 90’s)
Meldaproduction Plugins
Blue Cat Audio
Nomad Factory Plugins
Voxengo
There are some very nice skins for the Arranger and Console, but the stuff that’s not skinnable (everything else) is worse than the worst designed thing in Cubase. And not just ugly, design-wise, but a mess of parameters and overly complex UI elements / features.