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by ianstormtaylor
5019 days ago
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I agree with people arguing that flat design's run the risk of not giving users enough information to know what are buttons and what aren't. That is one of the biggest challenges to using a flat aesthetic. It's easy to take for granted how much information gradients and drop shadows provide to the user. Which is why I've appropriated your style of combining flat UI with drop shadows for depth. The drop shadows add just enough dimension that they can be used to express hierarchy without making the interface dishonest. What I love most about flat design is that it forces you to simplify, since you aren't giving the user as much visual information. The flat aesthetic magnifies any clutter, because objects and shapes don't communicate their "possession" as much, so having too many pieces on the page at once doesn't work. Remove a line here or a drop shadow there. Make your text more succinct. It's awesome. It might even be a good challenge for startups, just because it forces you to focus your product more. A huge bonus for me to flat design is that I'm not constrained by my earlier true-to-life decisions like gradients and drop shadows. Before I started using a flat aesthetic, I'd often run into situations where I couldn't place a button or a plane right where I wanted it, because it would contradict the other dimensionality that my gradients and drop shadows were creating. I'm glad to be rid of those constraints now (or almost). Though, I'm always scared that we'll a/b test a gradient-filled button on our call to action and it'll crazily out-perform our flat one. --- It might depend on who the interface is for. But it also depends on what the interface is for. LayerVault is a perfect example of an interface that needs to recede when a user is viewing their own work. You don't want your flashy buttons competing for their attention. Similarly, with Segment.io, I don't want all of our UI to be competing with the data we show in graphs. |
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That button can still be really good. It can be like reading pages of Hemingway longing for all the adjectives. When they show up, they're such a treat. The girl in the red dress in Schindler's list is another great example. It blows the flat aesthetic, but gives mountains of importance.