Bored of Flat Design

Is anyone else bored of flat design yet? I’m tired of seeing the same uninspired, generic, template-style sites that are being churned out.

In all honesty there are elements of flat design that I love:

• the simplicity
• the lack of images required / being able to style flat sites almost totally with CSS
• the use of white space

Things I hate about it

• lack of usability around form controls
• lack of depth
• lots of new sites looking identical / templated

When flat first started making waves in the design community and on sites like Dribbble I believed it would be a short loved fad. A necessary step, as skeuomorphic design had gone too far (although I’m still jealous of the Photoshop skills of the designers that we’re able to create that type of work). My assumption was everything would be stripped back and then gradually designers would add little touches and flair to evolve it.

It does seem that with Google’s Material Design there is a some sense coming back, starting to see subtle shadows indicating depth and buttons beginning to look “clickable” again, which is great. But, it’s definitely not solving the issue with sites looking like they were produced as part of a regurgitated factory process.

I’m interested to see what the next phase is. My wife is a graphic designer and she’s finding a nice balance between flat design and the shabby chic style which has become popular in interior design. I like the combination and wonder if there are other areas of design that can be drawn from to create more inspired and unique sites.