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We have witnessed many trends, but flat design is among the most talked-about topics by different communities globally concerning design. This phenomenon has changed the visual world and is broadly recognized everywhere. Let's understand exactly what flat design is and why this phenomenon is omnipresent.
In 2013, Apple released iOS 7. With this release, iOS was finally free of skeuomorphism. For the first time, they unveiled a clean, minimalist interface that would change the course of digital design. Of course, its most noted appearance is as part of flat design, but that is by far not where it originated.
Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.
- Steve Jobs
Flat design is on the same philosophy as this famous quote from Steve Jobs. It eliminates unnecessary decoration, focusing instead on function and clarity. It brings simplicity to this complex digital world. This article discusses flat design's history, key features, benefits, challenges, and future.
Introduction to flat design
What exactly is flat design? At the core, it is a minimalist approach to the UI that focuses on being simple, intuitive, and usable for the digital interface. It can be described and defined by clean interfaces with breathing space. It brings in a level of readability, focus, and openness much needed to scan the content within one glance.
It is primarily digital art with a minimalistic approach, mainly used in 2D illustration style. In flat design interfaces, everything is meaningful, and all non-essential features are eliminated.
History of flat design
Despite the flat design being hot off the press, its history traces back to the Swiss Style of the 1940s and 50s. Swiss-style design emphasizes cleanliness, readability, and objectivity in graphic design. The same applies to user interface (UI) designs.
Also, it was not until early 2010 that the term "flat design" gained popularity, although Microsoft practically used it much earlier. For example, in early 2006, Microsoft released the Zune media player. Practically, though, its use used the same flat design principles. Later, in 2011, the Metro design of Windows 8 made flat design mainstream.
The popularity of flat design maxed out when Apple dramatically shifted from skeuomorphic designs to flat design with iOS 7. Suddenly, the whole world started talking about the minimalistic approach to design and how flat design has dominated mobile applications, websites, and brand logos.
As users became more experienced, they required less skeuomorphism design. Skeuomorphism was the only design used to mimic real-life objects for many years. A user did not need an app that looked like a physical calculator to understand what the app does. This shift in paradigms opened up clean and efficient interfaces for designers.
Flat design vs Skeuomorphism
To get an idea of what flat design essentially is, it's helpful to position it in a historical context next to its predecessor, skeuomorphism. Skeuomorphic design attempts to mimic real-world materials in digital interfaces. Flat design, on the other hand, bases meaning and functionality on clear typography, bold colours, and basic icons.
Here's a quick comparison:
Skeuomorphism: 3D effects, textures, gradients, realistic representations
Flat design: 2D elements, solid colours, minimalist icons, emphasis on typography.
While skeuomorphism may make interfaces intuitive, even more so for new users. Flat design, on the other hand, presents a much cleaner and modern look that many may find pleasing to the eye when they've become comfortable with digital interfaces.
Characteristics of flat design
Flat design has five defining features: 2D elements, simplicity, bold colour usage, typography, and whitespace.
- 2D elements become popular with flat design. Gradients, shadows and textures create the illusion of depth and take away the simplicity. The flat design promotes flatness, using simple shapes and icons that symbolize objects and clarity in actions. All this makes sure the designs are scalable well on different screen sizes and resolutions.
- Simplicity forms the core, and minimalist design is at the heart of flat design. Every element is meaningful, and anything that does not contribute to the user's comprehension or experience is minimized or completely removed. This simplification dramatically diminishes cognitive load and, in turn, makes it far easier to understand and get around interfaces. If you examine the old skeuomorphic designs, you will notice that these icons were rendered very detailed and near photograph-like. In flat design, icons are stripped down to their bare essentials. For instance, an icon with the shape of a camera can be made very easily, not necessarily as an elaborative rendering of a camera. Colour usage in flat design is characterized by intense, saturated colour palettes.
- Without shadows and gradients, the structure becomes an important tool in guiding users through colour in the visual hierarchy. Bright saturated colours are generally presented in bold combinations in flat designs. Colours in flat design can be grouped related to elements and priorities, pointing out the most important actions or creating a sense of brand identity. Of course, consistency plays a huge role here. You can refer to your brand bible for that.
- Typography plays a central role in the creation of flat design. With fewer visual elements on the page, choosing fonts and how they are used becomes important to convey information and create visual interest. Flat design often favours sans-serif fonts for their clean, modern appearance. Many web interfaces have emerged using different typography and additional experiments, and sometimes those experiments work. A flat design works wonderfully when setting up a font hierarchy to help lead the user.
- Ample Whiespace or negative space has been utilized to add more clarity and structure. A whitespace is basically an empty space between elements in a design. Proper whitespace makes sure the interface does not appear cluttered. Makes the content more readable. It can attract attention to important information on the page.
These five features make the experience friendlier for the user, reducing interface noise. This enables users to more easily navigate the pages and improves the business's core KPI.
The roots of flat design lie in several influential design movements in the 20th century. Understanding this will give more context on why flat design still works like a fresh trend.
Swiss Style
Swiss Style or International Typography Style is one style that originated in Switzerland back in the 1940s and 50s. It emphasizes readability and objectivity with a clean style of design in graphics. Some of the key principles that take place within Swiss Style include:
- Grid layout
- Sans-serif typefaces
- Clarity and legibility
- Bold typography
- Ample use of Whitespace
This movement brought about a principle gesture for the minimalistic ideology that flat design follows regarding digital designs.
The International Typographic Style has profoundly influenced graphic design as a part of the modernist movement, impacting many design-related fields, including architecture and art.
Bauhaus
Bauhaus is the name of the school founded by Walter Gropius in Germany in 1919. It profoundly impacted modern design. It is typified by the phrase "form follows function" and by simplicity and rationality, all characteristic traits that follow through the ideology of flat design. More concretely, the influence of Bauhaus on flat design is seen through:
- The use of primary colours
- Geometric shapes
- The rejection of ornamental elements
- Underline the core elements of flat design
Modernism
The formation of flat design was influenced by a broad movement encompassing various types of art in the early to mid-20th century. Modernist principles that also influenced flat design included:
- Dislike for traditional forms and ornamentation
- Focus on simplicity and clarity
- Utilization of abstracted forms
- Belief in design's ability to make a positive contribution to society
These historical movements were a stepping ground for flat design by establishing simplicity, functionality, and clarity principles. Flat design is, in some respects, a digital version of those ideas suited for modern user interfaces. From these historical influences, designers can understand the rationale behind flat design and help to develop more thoughtful, effective interfaces.
Benefits of flat design
Beyond aesthetic appeal, flat design provides users and designers with many very practical benefits. Let's discuss some of the key advantages:
Clean Aesthetics
Flat design's minimal approach brings clean aesthetics to appeal to users on many levels. This aesthetic, of course, reduces visual clutter and makes interfaces feel less overwhelming.
It also creates a sense of sophistication and professionalism, helps content pop forward, and improves readability and focus. "Good design is as little design as possible," Dieter Rams and that really shows up in flat design. The flat design creates beautiful and functional interfaces by wiping away all the extras.
Speedier Loading Time
As our world is becoming more mobile-first, speed comes into play. Here are the ways by which flat design contributes to a faster loading time:
- Less bandwidth is required for simpler graphics
- Fewer HTTP requests are needed as there are fewer image files and grahics on the page
- Vector graphics, commonly used in flat design, scale really well for anything being rendered across devices
For example, when Google implemented "Material Design" design language based on flat design principles, it published huge gains in page load across their properties.
Better Responsiveness
Flat design lends itself to responsive design, which is critical in the multi-device landscape. Simple, geometric shapes scale quickly across different screen sizes, and vector graphics will ensure an image is crisp and clear at any scaled resolution.
Grid layouts, which have become a signature of the flat design style, are compatible with a vast array of devices.
This should ensure that the user experience remains consistent, regardless of whether they access your site with their smartphone, tablet, or desktop computer.
Challenges of Flat Design
With numerous advantages, flat design comes with its challenges. Understanding potential pitfalls helps designers create better interfaces.
Shadows and Gradient Depth Cues
The lack of such cues sometimes results in:
- Difficult to distinguish clickable and non-clickable
- Too flat becomes stagnant without proper execution
- Creating a hierarchy is daunting
To resolve this problem, designers commonly employ very sparse use of shadows or colour differentiation in "Flat 2.0" designs to strike a balance between the need for flatness and usability.
User Experience Considerations
At times, flat design, particularly, over-uses aesthetics over usability. Some of the potential problems:
- Lack of affordance: visual hints that suggest how to use something
- Decreased discoverability of interactive elements and hard to tell apart the numerous types of UI components. Jakob Nielsen, perhaps the most recognized usability consultant, said, "Flat design hides calls to action."
Designers should be cognizant of these limitations and thus find ways to clearly express interactivity under the constraints of flat design.
Best Practices to Implement Flat Design
Here are some best practices to use the flat design with minimum hassle
Colour utilization
- Maintain a coherent and consolidated colour palette.
- Colour can be employed to indicate hierarchy or draw users' attention.
- Subtlely make use of gradients or shadows when necessary.
Clean typography
- Body text is legible and usage of sans-serif fonts.
- Contrasting font sizes and weights to give a sense of hierarchy.
- Suitable contrast should exist between the text and the background colors.
White space usage
- Do not fear white space- the difference makes it more readable and focused.
- White space will be utilized to divide and align related elements and different parts or sections.
- Find the balance for using lots of whitespace content, and put a balance that will bring out a harmonious page look.
Future of flat design
As we enter the future, it can be very much seen that the flat design is evolving rather than vanishing. Here are some trends and predictions:
Flat 2.0" or "Semi-Flat Design - The concept brings about soft shadows and depth, integrating other philosophies, such as Material Design, concentrating more on micro-interactions and animations on current flat limitation.
Mass homogenization, in a way, will take place since all interfaces adopt the same aesthetic and are flat. Creating that special brand identity becomes challenging because of the tightrope walk adopted by flat design. If the design becomes too flat, users get bored.
However, these fundamentals will likely remain intact with their roots in flat design, which revolve around simplicity, clarity, and functionality. As Massimo Vignelli said, "Good design is timeless," and the nature of flat design encompasses this kind of eternity.
Flat design has transformed how we work around user interface (UI) design. This started from the root of Swiss Style and Modernism till the current dominance of digital interfaces, which is how flat design stood the test of time.
As we will see, flat design has many advantages, including a clean aesthetic, quicker loading time, and responsiveness to all types of devices. On the other hand, it brings several problems to the table, mainly in usability and uniqueness.
The road to an effective flat design comes with a good understanding of its principles and thoughtful application. Effective colour utilization, readable typography, and the intentional use of whitespace can help craft beautiful and functional interfaces.
Of course, much time is still to be passed by; however, the future of flat design promises to have more depth and interactivity in its applications, but it will not lose its core simplicity. Inevitably, as the technology develops and the expectations from the user increase, so will the flat design usage.
Whether you are a designer, marketer, or entrepreneur, understanding the principle of flat design will be very important in the everyday digital life scenario. Mastering the principles and best practices of the concept would help create the most aesthetically pleasing yet excellent user experience interfaces.
Remember, good design is not just about keeping up with the trend. It's about making solutions come to life for your users. Flat design is an incredibly powerful part of your arsenal of design tools. Use it wisely, and you will be well-equipped to create compelling digital experiences for the next years.
You can create stunningly beautiful and friendly interfaces once you understand flat design principles, benefits, and challenges. Excellent design is about the balance between aesthetics and functionality, and that is where a lot of power lies within the walls of flat design, which is the starting point in the digital communications design framework.
