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The Flat Design Era

layervault.tumblr.com

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Re: The Flat Design Era

#71

Post by mnicole »

nonrecursive wrote: post #22

I 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 w…

This. There's been a lot of pseudo-shitting on gradients recently, and I don't understand it. Like you said, these things aren't inherently bad or should be avoided, they're often just overdone and done poorly to begin with, much like the grunge brush era of the late 90s & early 2000s and the ushering in of what people saw as shiny, bubbly "Web 2.0" thereafter.

Trends are not indicators of best practice, and they cannot be applied to just any site at random and work as effectively as they did on another. I love LayerVault and think Allan Grinshtein is a great designer, but this post was a little too much for me.

Re: The Flat Design Era

#72

Post by dpark »

jhermsmeyer wrote: post #67
dpark wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For sure, Google doesn't seem to be headed toward "flatland", which was my point. Even Google, who seems to be clinging to "restrained skeuomorphism" uses flat, clickable elements in many places. I seriously doubt that they'd do so if their usability testing showed that users don't understand them. I've got to say, I don't understand why people keep mentioning drop shadows, though. Drop shadows seem fairly uncommon.…

> I've got to say, I don't understand why people keep mentioning drop shadows, though. Drop shadows seem fairly uncommon. Even Google only uses them for mouseover. Put your cursor in the search field. More shadowy goodness there. Click on your avatar in the upper right, the popover has a prominent (too prominent IMO) drop shadow. It's everywhere. As to mouseover, I agree it's for confirmation. But if we need to confi…

> Put your cursor in the search field. More shadowy goodness there. Click on your avatar in the upper right, the popover has a prominent (too prominent IMO) drop shadow. It's everywhere.

I should have been clearer. I was referring to drop shadows on buttons.

I have to say, though, I think the search box picking up a drop shadow is the perfect example of gratuitous affordance. Putting the focus on the search box turns the border blue. Does anyone actually need the drop shadow? Alternatively, if users need the drop shadow, do they need the blue border. Do they need either one, given that the cursor appears?

> As to mouseover, I agree it's for confirmation. But if we need to confirm functionality with drop shadows and gradients - what message does that send about usability?

Tells me that they aren't really needed in the first place. And given the increasing prevalence of touch devices, I'd say that making your UI clear without resorting to mouseover effects has become a requirement.

> One thought is that perhaps we should have the drop shadows and gradients there to begin with.

If they were there to start with, the designers would no doubt have added some other hover indicator. People have grown to expect hover changes (especially with web UIs), and indeed UIs seem awkward without them. However they should still not be necessary to indicate that something is clickable.

Re: The Flat Design Era

#73

Post by abrowne »

nkwiatek wrote: post #11
mikecuesta wrote: post #8

Flat design certainly has it's place in the world but it's important to keep in mind that ultimately it's just another aesthetic. Distressed, Glossy, Flat, Matte, Woodsy, etc, these are all just styles that lay on top of what is good information architecture and interaction design. It's not about flat design being right or wrong, it's more about whether it's appropriate for the job/task and audience/market. There are…

"Flat design" is, yes. It's just a horrible label for a much broader concept, which is "form follows function", "clarity", "honesty". Skeuomorphism is an easy target because it is dishonest by definition. Things that appear "cutting edge" or "high quality" today will, in a few years, seem dated, clunky, and pointless. By contrast, pick up a copy of Die Neue Typography and see how well not just Tschichold's designs, b…

Interestingly, Tschichold later changed his mind and thought Die Neue Typography was too extreme, and adopted a lot more traditional design.

Re: The Flat Design Era

#75

Post by notJim »

goldfeld wrote: post #59
notJim wrote: post #53

AHHHH!! How can you write an article about design when your buttons don't have HOVER STATES [1]? AGH, am I the only person in the world driven crazy by this? UI should respond , dammit! 1: http://www.layervault.com/

On desktop, yes, but how would a flat design respond on mobile/touch interfaces? I'm genuinely interested in approaches.

Obviously mobile browsers don't have hover states, but that doesn't mean that desktop browsers shouldn't.

Re: The Flat Design Era

#76

Post by vbl »

You don't have to subscribe wholesale to either approach, and there are lot of ways to combine elements of all-of-the-above when the situation calls for it.

I like the idea of digital brutalism - celebrating the materials, if you will - but the damn thing still has to be easy to use. It'll always be a moving target and that's good.

Re: The Flat Design Era

#77

Post by chrisdroukas »

goldfeld wrote: post #60
pdenya wrote: post #58

Flat design looks lazy more than anything. I appreciate the effort good design takes and sometimes it's best to just get something simple out there quickly but I'd rather see browser defaults than styled buttons that purposefully have no hover states and callouts that really don't call out.

Simple doesn't equal lazy. "A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing else to take away" --Civilization IV voice-over guy.

> Civilization IV voice-over guy

That would be Leonard Nimoy - best known for his role as Spock in the original Star Trek.

Re: The Flat Design Era

#78

Post by hcarvalhoalves »

MartinCron wrote: post #41
hcarvalhoalves wrote: post #34

There's a balance to be struck between affordable and honest (not kitsch) design. To get it just right is where the devil is. For examples look no further than Apple's iOS (borderline kitsch) and Microsoft's Metro (reduced affordance). I think one UI that gets this balance done very well is Facebook.

iOS, taken as a whole may be "borderline kitsch" but there are sections (contacts, find my friends) that have both feet solidly planted in kitsch territory.

Yes, they crossed the border on a few apps, but most of the default ones use skeumorphisms positively (the page flip on maps is a good example).

The big damage comes from 3rd party apps that don't get skeumorphism right.

Re: The Flat Design Era

#79

Post by chrislloyd »

LayerVault, Svpply & Art.sy have been a major inspiration of mine. When I first saw LayerVault 2 it was shocking and amazing and I hope others have the same reaction.

An upcoming (da da DA) Minefold release will convert the entire site to "Flat Design". One thing that goes hand in hand with "flat design" is clear simple writing. I've spent the better part of the last month brainstorming names and finding clear, simple ways of explaining what we do.

Re: The Flat Design Era

#80

Post by icebraining »

goldfeld wrote: post #60
pdenya wrote: post #58

Flat design looks lazy more than anything. I appreciate the effort good design takes and sometimes it's best to just get something simple out there quickly but I'd rather see browser defaults than styled buttons that purposefully have no hover states and callouts that really don't call out.

Simple doesn't equal lazy. "A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing else to take away" --Civilization IV voice-over guy.

«Have you ever looked at a modern airplane? Have you followed from year to year the evolution of its lines? Have you ever thought, not only about the airplane, but about whatever man builds, that all of man's industrial efforts, all his computations and calculations, all the nights spent over working draughts and blueprints, invariably culminate in the production of a thing whose sole and guiding principle is the ultimate principle of simplicity?

It is as if there were a natural law which ordained that to achieve this end, to refine the curve of a piece of furniture, or a ship's keel, or the fuselage of an airplane, until gradually it partakes of the elementary purity of the curve of a human breast or shoulder, there must be the experimentation of several generations of craftsmen. In anything at all, perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away, when a body has been stripped down to its nakedness.»

-- Antoine St. Exupery, Wind Sand and Stars.

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