Everyone Wants Change for the Wrong Reasons

Flat design is becoming a huge trend, but most of its followers are missing the point.

Flat design can not be traced back to any specific item, but I feel it is safe to say the the recent obsession over flat design came into fruition when Microsoft launched the Windows Phone platform in October of 2010. Before that Microsoft offered Windows Mobile for phones, a clunky, un-inspiring operating system which tried too hard to look somewhat like Windwows. At that time, the smartphone market, was quite different: Apple still had most of the smartphone, RIM was still relevant, and Android was playing catch-up, taking about 25% of the smartphone market. Windows Phone offered clean and refreshing approach to the smartphone, which filled the home screen with constantly updating tiles, and lacked the textures that filled other operating systems, including Windows 7. Most people initially called it a disaster, as the operating system lacked many features that seemed necessary for it to become viable, but after an update in early 2011, people actually started to pay attention to it as a viable platform. In a recent report, it still remains in a distant third to iOS and Android, but has overtaken Blackberry, which was the only major player in the smartphone market before 2007.

Since then, Microsoft has been bringing the Windows Phone design language to most of its products, most noticeably Windows 8, and Google has been updating its products with “Holo” design language, which follows a flat design. Web sites have started to refresh their old designs to become more flat, and some companies have been updating their logos to look more flat and modern. In fact, the only major tech company that has remained somewhat immune to the trend appears to be Apple, which remains a textured and rich as ever (one could also include Samsung, but I don’t as their designs make me sick). This brings us to now, where rumors are now flying that Apple will redesign iOS to adopt a flatter design language, and I think that this could be horrible news.

Anyone who has had the misfortune of reading or hearing arguments between Microsoft and Apple fanboys will probably have heard something along these lines:

Apple is losing their innovation. iOS is stale and boring, and Microsoft is the only company that is pushing their OS into the future. iSheep.

You can push this kind of talk out of your mind, knowing it is just the rambling of fanboys, but these ideas have started to make waves. People who have earned more respect hear this, and then write about it on a prestigious blog, which then gets spread my tech news sites, and eventually ends up in popular culture. A majority of people now believe that if Apple does not redesign their OS, they are going to be completely irrelevent by the end of the year. This has now led to the endless redesign concepts of iOS.

The picture I put above, which I founf on Dribbble, is a pretty good example of what a lot of the redesigns of iOS look like. People have removed textures, gradients, shadows, and almost any realistic effect you can think of, and then they add a few features they have been wanting for years. Some of the concepts are actually thoughtful, and could be plausible for an OS that one might actually use. Unfortunately, I have seen only two or three of those. The overwhelming majority of these concepts are made by people who have never designed anything in their lives, and think that flat design just means not having any textures or gradients. Unfortunately, this is what a lot of people are starting to believe.

There are two sides forming in this argument, the extreme skeuomorphic supporters, and the extreme flat supporters. The extreme flat supporters want no textures, no gradients, and no shadows. Everything has to have a lot of white space, there can only be a few colors, and there can’t be any ties to the really world. After all, it’s digital, right? On the other hand there are the skeuomorphic supporters, who apply textures to every little thing. If it doesn’t look like it could exist in real life, then you are not applying enough textures and gradients. Both of these sides have produced some good designs, but a good amount of them are awful.

I realize that I may be exaggerating the problem. There are a lot of good designs out there, and there are still some designers that don’t fall into these categories. Unfortunately, this group is growing much smaller. Designers tend to pick a side and stick with it, mainly interacting with other designers that have picked the same side. They rarely venture into the other side, as it is unfamiliar.

On the bright side, I still see some design that has a good amount of both skeuomorphism and flat design. A good example of this is Google’s iOS apps. They have a clean, white design with nice colors and white space, but also have subtle textures, shadows, and gradients. OSX, or at least some of it, it also a good example. There are subtle gradients all over the operating system, even though the linen texture is starting to take over certain parts. This brings me to my main point.

Don’t hate skeuomorphism just because it is skeuomorphism. Hate skeuomorphism if it is bad design, unintuitive, or is used in a lazy manner. Many people hate the iOS design just because it has textures on some of the menus, and has gloss over the icons. This is completely preposterous, and has no justification. The same thing goes for haters of flat design. Some people call design boring and uninspired just because it lacks a texture or a shadow. I used flat design supporters in the subtitle because I am seeing this more and more often.

To wrap this up, I have a word to designers that might be reading this. Don’t make your designs flat because you like making flat designs. Same thing goes for skeuomorphism. Study the problem, come up with the best solution, and then design for that solution. Don’t overwhelm the user with unnecessary elements, and don’t take away so much that your design becomes unusable. Design is not about showing off that you can make really realistic textures, or that you can take away as many things as possible, it is about providing the best experience you can for people that are using what you designed. As long as you keep that in mind, you can produce designs that are timeless.