Flat Design

If you’ve never heard of flat design before you’re probably not alone. But you have most likely seen it. The Android Holo design language is arguably a flat design approach, but more recently — and more prominently — the Microsoft Metro design.

I have always liked clean design with lots of white space and margins. To me it feels sophisticated and professional.

For a good breakdown take a look at this post by Sacha Greif. For more examples, see this Tumblr tag: flat design

Apple — during the Scott Forstall years — has been widely know for its skeumorphic (and somewhat controversial) approach. Something they seem to have shifted way from when Jonathan Ive is leading the way.I never really liked it. But I also really didn’t like to ugly styled apps of the Gingerbread era of Android. At least Apple’s approach was beautiful.

Everything changed with Holo; for me Holo has made it simple to make good looking apps.

I recently read a good blog post discussing flat design and one thing that struck me:

Aesthetic (how something looks) properties do not wholly describe the overall design of a thing. “Design” as a descriptor represents the process, intentions, and execution of an idea, and aesthetics makes up a very small part of that. To distill our discourse on design down to the aesthetic choices is seriously disturbing — it discredits the most important considerations we as designers must make in order to create good design.

Basic? Yes. Why that got my attention probably tells you why I’m not a professional designer ;)

(Originally published 2013–04–24)