Material Design Guidelines for Dark Mode

I have a deep rooted issue with design and designers.

In 90’s, skeuomorphic trend was picking up steam reaching a climax in mid-2000’s. Web 2.0 design elements were springing up, taking advantage of css; while UI elements sought transparency and blur (Windows Vista). That trend passed and then we had the whole Material design boom in 2012-2015, the entire web was sabotaged by Bootstrap. Color themes and palettes were very popular. Cookie-cut banners, slideshows, carousels, headers, etc. Post bootstrap world saw some radical shift in small circles: monospaced fonts, brutalism, vintage homage and low-res shenanigans whilst the mainstream design kept on drinking the material koolaid up until 2016.

Boom comes in Stripe with sleek blue-purple gradients, smooth animations, Bumla-lizing the entire fucking internet. It is 2019 and every new Saas service looks like Stripe, following trends like a mindless herd. The rest unfortunate (or unskilled to match Stripe standards) are still catching up with single page scrolling websites with full-width banners, stupid jumbotrons and loud obnoxious typography.

Traditional graphic design has largely been “solved” by the 1960’s - aka, the International style or the Swiss style for majority of needs. Of course you’re not gonna have Univers on a grunge band poster. For the curious, google some posters by Josef Muller-Brockmann from the 50’s - they still appear to be designed in 2019. That’s timelessness (or cynically put, blandness). He exemplified great understanding of contrast, scale and hierarchy in design to convey information. I recently watched Dieter Rams’ documentary and he is just completely disappointed by majority of design in the world. I am not a designer but I feel the same way. Rams’ design will never be “outdated” because his principles of design weren’t based on trends.

Let’s go Dark Themes! Also, next year is the death of jumbotrons. Mark my words.

You've highlighted all very well. The reason I posted these guidelines though is because I found they at least reasoned really well about it. Their guidelines follow a logic that's hard to deny.

And OLED surprisingly saves a lot of power on Dark Mode, so it's kind of our duty to follow suit.

The saddest part of the (pseudo-)loss of the skeuomorphic design was the fact that many very talented designers found themselves underused, tweaking gradients, while their icon design was an art.

Although I really dislike the look of Material (especially when used on websites), design systems like it allow us to create consistent user experiences across applications. They might not be ground-breaking in terms of the history of graphic design, but we care more about usability and accessibility. UI design is not progressing in Hegelian fashion towards a utopic ideal, but rather it is continuously adapting to new formats, devices, and environments. Much of design is concerned as much with limitations as it is possibilities. (Anyone remember 256-color web-safe palettes?) I'm not entirely sure what you are not happy with in modern design- that it is not static? The constant exploration of design possibilities on new platforms, from phones to VR, seems quite necessary and important to me...

I'm just not a fan of Material. I've tried to like it, but it just won't stick.

I know a lot of people think Material=Professional. But I think Material looks more like a small business using a drag-and-drop home page builder. Yes, that goes for the Android interface, too.

I never understood the hatred for skeuomorphism. It's intuitive. It's pretty. It's colorful. It's artistic. A bunch of stacked squares isn't any of those things.

Fortunately, I still have a launch day iPhone that I occasionally use for music, and it can't be "upgraded" out of its skeuomorphic splendor.