[nchlswu]

yet another trend that has its merits and draw backs. There will undoubtedly be designers and designs that go too far with this approach and those who do it well. I feel like this is well along the lines of minimalism for the sake of minimalism. Not enough differentiation can become very confusing and over minimalistic aesthetics which espouse "function over form" often end up doing the opposite.

I find it funny that the author refers to this as "flatland," when one of the most prominent uses of that word was probably by Edward Tufte when he was exploring how data visualizations allow an escape from flatland. The same lesson applies here. Skeumorphism isn't necessarily the solution, but overly flat designs aren't either.... flatness is what you want to escape from.

[egypturnash]

I would submit that the most prominent use of "flatland" is probably the book of the same name. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatland

[nchlswu]

ah. I had no clue that's where it originated from. thank you for pointing that out!

I can still say that Tufte was probably the most prominent to use it in a design sense (but I'm probably wrong about that as well..)