I'm not going to say designers should avoid "flat design" as an aesthetic style, but as I've already said here on HN I'm one of the designers who prefers some three dimensionality. Even more than that, I like texture. Always have. When I see a completely flat background color on a page it usually seems dull. There's a reason people build homes with a bit of texture on the wall. A completely flat paint on the wall with no texture at all just feels, well, blank.
The Flat Design Era
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Re: The Flat Design Era
#22I can't help but feel like this is just the next obvious cycle in design fashion and as such it's not something to get so worked up about. "The Honest Design Age" strikes me as an absurdly grandiose term. I like the more prosaic interpretation, which is that certain graphical idioms have become so commonplace that in order to stand out visually, you need to do something different. Fashion.
In a few years, designers will start to get tired of looking at and creating flat designs day in and day out. They'll add little flourishes and write blog posts proclaiming "The Era of Living Design", where designs have all the spark and texture of real living things.
I mean, it's absolutely great that these folks are so excited, so passionate about design. But I don't think it has to be so cosmically meaningful for it to be exciting.
And this is not to say that Layer Vault is poorly designed. It's just that it can be a good design without every non-flat design being bad or dishonest.
Re: The Flat Design Era
#23Nowadays, I tend to avoid gradients because it's so easy to mess it up. It's not only about choosing 2 colors, it's about eveything that happens in between. Putting some text on top of it requires to be readable on both colors, and everything in between. Buttons can have depth without gradients. Check the ones on http://www.facebook.com . A flat background color, a subtle 1px light on top, a subtle 1px shadow on the…
I don't see any buttons on facebooks page. Just links, some with hover color changes. Are those the "buttons" you speak of?
Re: The Flat Design Era
#24yet another trend that has its merits and draw backs. There will undoubtedly be designers and designs that go too far with this approach and those who do it well. I feel like this is well along the lines of minimalism for the sake of minimalism. Not enough differentiation can become very confusing and over minimalistic aesthetics which espouse "function over form" often end up doing the opposite.
I find it funny that the author refers to this as "flatland," when one of the most prominent uses of that word was probably by Edward Tufte when he was exploring how data visualizations allow an escape from flatland. The same lesson applies here. Skeumorphism isn't necessarily the solution, but overly flat designs aren't either.... flatness is what you want to escape from.
Re: The Flat Design Era
#25Nowadays, I tend to avoid gradients because it's so easy to mess it up. It's not only about choosing 2 colors, it's about eveything that happens in between. Putting some text on top of it requires to be readable on both colors, and everything in between. Buttons can have depth without gradients. Check the ones on http://www.facebook.com . A flat background color, a subtle 1px light on top, a subtle 1px shadow on the…
"A flat background color, a subtle 1px light on top, a subtle 1px shadow on the bottom, and a darker border all around." This is exactly how Windows 3.1 was drawing its UI. :) (not that there is anything wrong with that)
OT but I have a theory that the 3d button (which "depressed" when you clicked it) is the entire reason behind Windows 3's success. I can't remember if System 7 predates it but certainly the 3d effect on its buttons were less pronounced, and GEM was entirely flat.
Re: The Flat Design Era
#26Flat design reminds me of magazine layouts. Which I see as a good thing.
Re: The Flat Design Era
#27I think this trend is representative of the fact that technology got way ahead of itself for a spell, and it is now under renewed pressure to connect with people outside of the extra-savvy.
To me this trend comes really naturally when you're trying to expose the function of something, rather than make something appear to function in 'space' or with certain 'materials'
Re: The Flat Design Era
#28Microsoft seems to be the biggest current proponent of flat design, and I must say it's not so great for usability. When I see this: http://www.istartedsomething.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/... I have no idea what is and is not a button. I suppose it's all a button. But there are zero affordances in this UI. This is now finding its way to Microsoft's websites. On outlook, I can't quickly find the buttons to do key…
I find your comment unfair and I am not even a MS user.
Usability is so much more about how it work, not just how it look.
All design systems will have some learning curve. A learning curve where you have to understand that everything a button is pretty close to being easy to learn.
So in my mind, the problem you seem to think there is is a pseudo problem. I.e. it's not actually a problem.
The Map is not the territory.
Re: The Flat Design Era
#29Nowadays, I tend to avoid gradients because it's so easy to mess it up. It's not only about choosing 2 colors, it's about eveything that happens in between. Putting some text on top of it requires to be readable on both colors, and everything in between. Buttons can have depth without gradients. Check the ones on http://www.facebook.com . A flat background color, a subtle 1px light on top, a subtle 1px shadow on the…
I don't see any buttons on facebooks page. Just links, some with hover color changes. Are those the "buttons" you speak of?
I think you're looking at the wrong page. If you go to facebook.com while logged out, the "Log In" and "Sign Up" buttons use the technique described by the above poster.
Re: The Flat Design Era
#30"Email us and we’ll add you to the list." The words "Email us" are not a link or anything, so I'll need to seek out this information. This was posted to Tumblr with links available for following LayerVault's Tumblr blog, or visiting another post within the same blog announcing LayerVault 2's release. While the announcement post does have a link to email press@layervault.com, I'm not looking for press kits. At least this page actually contains the link for LayerVault.com.
Visiting LayerVault's website, there's no immediately apparent way to contact the company other than signing up or contacting support; the Support link can be found in the footer navigation. When going to the Support page, I see a partial phone number (but pixelated because only premium customers get to call, haha!) there is an actual email for support, but I don't want support.
Usually the About page will have some contact information, so let's check that out. I see Twitter handles for the two founders, and a picture of NYC.
Why do you guys invite people to email you, then make that process as difficult as possible?