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Material Design Color Tool

material.io

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Re: Material Design Color Tool

#31

Post by ehnto »

Griffinsauce wrote: post #17
ehnto wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's most impressive trait is that it is a holistic approach to UI and design. There aren't many "systems" out there for that. However I agree, there isn't much new and impressive in it and the evangelistic design chatter it created, much like the Flat Design trend, gets very stale and can stifle good conversation on the topic.

What's sad is that people see it as an endpoint. While the thing is obviously meant to be a starting point, a baseline of "good design" that you can expand on if you wish, or stick to if you have better things to do. It moves the baseline from zero design to "good" .

Which was the great thing about flat design too. It brought basic good design principles to the discussion. Whether you liked the asthetic or not, the core guiding principles were the real win.

I feel like the creators of the Material Design site simply sought to formalize those principles and build upon them, which I think they have done a good job of.

Re: Material Design Color Tool

#33

Post by jasonlfunk »

duiker101 wrote: post #9

Uhm interesting. Seems like a good tool but either I'm using it wrong or it's very weird that it doesn't seem to provide an option for the accent color. here's some other similar tools that I collected over time https://www.sankk.in/material-mixer/ http://flatuicolors.com https://www.materialpalette.com

I figured it out. You have to click the 'Primary', 'Secondary' boxes in the bottom right.

Re: Material Design Color Tool

#34

Post by stuaxo »

DanBC wrote: post #26
maaaats wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a user it's super un-intuitive, though. At least how gmail, calendar, maps and other google apps are on Android at the moment. I mostly click and pray.

It's interesting that lots of people on HN say the same thing: I don't know how to perform an action; there are no affordances in the UI. But Google is a data driven company and they must, surely, have scads of data on this. They must know what their users are trying to do and how they're trying to do it, so why are Google interfaces so hard to use?

They can't get data on what goes through peoples heads before clicking an action, only if it was clicked or not.

Re: Material Design Color Tool

#35

Post by jacquesm »

z3t4 wrote: post #30
jacquesm wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HHGTTG. Excellent reference, if you're going to spend time on picking the 'right' colors rather than just any set of half decent colors and then move on you might miss out on that important little thing called functionality without which it really doesn't matter what color it will be. Once you're established and you're tuning the last 0.3% of the market that you might catch if only you used the 'right' colors you can…

take a look at the drink buisness. the look of the bottle is very important. you can argue its actually more important then whats in it.

That's confusing branding with functionality.

Re: Material Design Color Tool

#36

Post by jacquesm »

dspillett wrote: post #29
jacquesm wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HHGTTG. Excellent reference, if you're going to spend time on picking the 'right' colors rather than just any set of half decent colors and then move on you might miss out on that important little thing called functionality without which it really doesn't matter what color it will be. Once you're established and you're tuning the last 0.3% of the market that you might catch if only you used the 'right' colors you can…

The legibility tab is more generally applicable though. " tuning the 0.3%" could be significant then that 0.3% are people with significant vision problems. You still don't want to be spending more than a moment on that in early design, but with a tool like this covering the issue might only take that moment so you don't have to make alterations later when early design decisions/accidents are baked in and harder to ch…

Yes, and it would be enough to have one set of styleguides to cover all apps. In fact, I would very much prefer that. All the 'cool' looking stuff can be extremely confusing because you need to re-learn at least that part of the UI over and over again. It's a kind of mental form of lock-in.

Re: Material Design Color Tool

#37

Post by blowski »

MikeAMartinez wrote: post #8
blowski wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it makes much of the internet look like it belongs to Google.

I think this is the ultimate goal from Google's perspective at least

I'm not convinced it's their ultimate goal, or even one of their goals at all, since poor implementations could water down their branding. But it is definitely a side effect.

Re: Material Design Color Tool

#38

Post by shardinator »

foldr wrote: post #14

"And the wheel," said the Captain, "What about this wheel thingy? It sounds a terribly interesting project." "Ah," said the marketing girl, "Well, we're having a little difficulty there." "Difficulty?" exclaimed Ford. "Difficulty? What do you mean, difficulty? It's the single simplest machine in the entire Universe!" The marketing girl soured him with a look. "Alright, Mr. Wiseguy," she said, "if you're so clever, yo…

"No problem", replied Ford with a certain 'snap' in his tone. "Make it any color you like. As long as it's black".
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