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There has been a growing tidal wave of flat designs on the web, and recent trend reports have confirmed that they’re only increasing in popularity. By eschewing the design limitations of skeuomorphism and embracing the limitations of digital experiences, flat design has the potential to create great UX. Confusing landing pages, unclear menus, and slow websites all contribute to high bounce rates.
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What is Flat Design (and how do I do it)? — SitePoint - SitePoint
What is Flat Design (and how do I do it)? — SitePoint.
Posted: Tue, 21 Jan 2014 08:00:00 GMT [source]
It incorporates design principles such as minimalism, visual hierarchy, and bold typography to make user interfaces easier to navigate and understand. The icons above show just some of the icons in use in 2021, including last year's controversial Google icon rebrand. The danger here is that because they are all following the flat design trend, and using bright colours to elevate their designs, they are almost becoming too similar (as we explored in this piece). This just goes to show that there's a fine line between following trends such as flat design, and standing out from the crowd. Usually, when we see examples of flat design in action, we’re looking at icons, illustrations, and other graphic design elements.
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It features clean, open space, crisp edges, bright colours and two-dimensional illustrations. There’s also a lot to be said for the clean design choices — from the elegant typography to the all-white background — that really allow the colorful images to pop. You’re already sacrificing a lot of the fine details in a graphic or icon when you flatten it out. If you don’t find a unique way to distinguish between graphics that have different meanings and purposes, you’ll create huge issues for your visitors.
Flat Design: An Evolving Trend
Studio Bagaz' are visual storytellers who transform any concept into a unique visual language with some magic and fairy dust. One of the top flat website design examples, Studio Bagaz' displays bold and eye-catching design elements. Large text, large images and large buttons and icons are pretty much the norm, thanks to even the earliest projects using flat design. The hamburger icon and hidden navigation was born out of flat design because designers were trying to strip elements out of the visual flow.
Flat design has all the key attributes that make a site as functional as it is beautiful. It recognizes that a sense of familiarity is important to the user experience, but it creates this sense in a way that fits with the medium. At the same time, it’s able to adapt to new discoveries, trends, and ideas. Flat design brings us a step closer to a new paradigm of digital design, where the functionality and aesthetic are in complete harmony. Otherwise, flat design can be too minimal — to the point of being unclear to new visitors. An ecommerce shoe store using a shopping cart icon to represent the digital shopping cart matches user expectations, but using a high heel might create confusion.
When flat design is taken too far it may include the removal of raised buttons, underlined and colorful hyperlinks, and action text alongside icons and buttons. These are classic indications of something a user should interact with. Some examples of “overminimalism” include Google’s icon redesign in 2020, and Microsoft Windows 8.
Flat design is a minimalistic, 2D approach to web design
Whitespace is a must if you want to successfully achieve the clean, clutter-free aesthetic that flat design is renowned for. Flat design 2.0, also known as semi-flat design, is flat design but with a few practical features added back in. Designers subtly show users what to do by adding depth and context to areas of the website or app that they want users to interact with. As we’ve seen in our complete guide to animation, it’s a great way to show users how to interact with your design. Animations can also be used to keep visitors entertained while something loads, or to provide feedback. Aside from the logo, the only part of the above-the-fold that has any color is the hero image.
Everything is clear and understandable, and the design relies mostly on colours and icons to give meaning. The copy is concise, and the UI aspect of searching for an ideal flight is obvious. To design an effective flat site, all design elements must be centred on this idea of simplicity. This raw functionality forces a site's focus to be on user experience, so websites that employ this design style successfully are likely to receive positive feedback as being user-friendly.
Another heavy influence of today’s flat Web design can be found in the history of Minimalism. The term “minimalism” is sometimes used interchangeably with today’s flat design, but minimalism was popular way before the Web was even a thought. The Swiss style (sometimes called the International Typographic Style) of design is the main period of design that come to mind and deserves attention for any discussion on the history of flat design. The Swiss design style was the dominant design style throughout the 1940’s and 1950’s from which it originated in Switzerland. Material design took the best parts of flat design and then added back subtle touches of dimension. The concept focused on enhancing usability and user interaction by merging the digital world with reality using tactical effects and realistic motion.
With less complex images and a simplified design, most flat websites hold the fastest loading times. Easy to read native fonts help web crawlers easily index a flat website as well. Flat design removed those clunky design choices, making websites faster, easier to read, and more compelling for users. Over ten years later, we still use flat design in websites, UIs, graphic design, and apps.
Several bold colors are the background color for different homepage sections, blending well with the centralized images of different canned products. I love how the Kurly Creative website highlights its unified website design by creatively reusing colors, typography, line designs, and shapes. While flat design seems new and exciting, and is a fastly growing trend, it isn’t nothing new in the course of design history. With influences from Swiss design and Minimalism, flat design is just a reincarnation of its print ancestry in our digital lives. Microsoft’s dabbing in flat design started before the current “Metro” design aesthetic was dubbed Metro. In trying to compete with Apple’s extremely popular iPod, Microsoft released the Zune media player in late 2006.
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