Lost in the flat design craze

This paper gives a deep thought to the flat design which is now popular all over the world. Peony flowers are really beautiful, but if the world is left with peony flowers, how would you feel?

This article originates from medium, this article when the original text in a few days time has obtained 364 recommendations, the Chinese version by Heaven Zhuhai Rudder compiles. This paper gives a deep thought to the flat design which is now popular all over the world. Peony flowers are really beautiful, but if the world is left with peony flowers, how would you feel? Here, let's start with the lyrics from the famous band, "Glorious Years": "The beauty of the colorful flashes, just because it does not, separate each color ..."

The popularity of flattening

The great UI design flattened for 2013-2014 years, designers put countless pixels on the flat UI.

This time is the visual design of the great transformation period: began at that time, the modern sense of Microsoft's aggressive Metro style, popular in the release of iOS7 and flattened competition into the white-hot state, and said that will be flat to maximize the most comprehensive implementation, may be counted Google's material The design language has been launched.

The flat design not only reign the physical design, but also dances heartily on its grave, wiping away all the hypotenuse, shadows and grim inscriptions left by its Tombstone (editor's note: These three are the characteristics of the physical and chemical design).

This is the natural progression of design technology--development, change, and then popularity--all of which are unavoidable. Perhaps the sun will change in the future for these wonderful designs. It's an unrealistic game to Sando what the future design trend will look like, but it's a very meaningful thing to see where we are and speculate about the direction of the future trend.

Current visual design Status survey

The following is a list of the current visual designs we use in software:

1 are heavily impacted by iOS and material design, and visual designers often follow their hips.

2 use a flattened square with minimal shading, which often holds a large image or video as a background and uses a headline text.

The 3 content contains a large amount of negative space (negative spaces), and the grid layout gives it a low density of information, focusing on bold and bright fonts.

4 to the boundary, the edge between the block and the block is gradually excessive from light white to the vibrant crimson, while the picture tends to be softer and less saturated.

5 often use blur effect and cold glow neon effect. These uses are very effective in marketing advertising, but they are not necessary for interactive product design.

6 in a situation where visual design tends to be more straightforward, the concepts of "freshness" and "elegance" are more often embodied in the form of smooth animation and gradient effects.

In general, most of today's visual design languages are focused on simplicity and ease of use. There are, of course, many other design trends, but these are generally the direction in which the final effect of the design is aimed. He reflects the aesthetic of visual design has reached a more mature level in the course of decades.

Some people think that this minimalist design trend indicates that our user maturity has reached a level: the user is born to know how to interact through the UI, they do not need to bother to find the design of the era of the need to use the slope to imply the user's button. Users no longer need these auxiliary materialized ways to guide us in how to operate the UI, so designers can play more freely to express their style without having to worry about the user's learning curve. Eventually, the screen of the mobile device can be made smaller to accommodate these simpler and more approachable designs. (Editor's note: Here the editor sniffs more of the author's rhetorical tone)

Commercialization of visual design packaging

But when you squint a lot of these apps, you don't think they're too nasty, okay? Do you really not think they look very beautiful, but long time feel uninteresting?

When all the products think that the most fashionable way to design is essential, then these products will become some of the same unified packaged goods. These yesterday seemed very fresh and pleasant applications will soon feel tacky. And this kind of design way of imitation cost is extremely cheap this fact and further let this aesthetic toward single: You just insert a blurred picture into the background, add some Helvetica Neue in the middle of the above, then you basically have completed the half of this design!

So what are some of the other flaws that we have here? For our generation, the Internet and its surrounding technologies are the main force driving our culture forward, and all these designs are, in fact, very beautiful as peony flowers. But who wants to live in a world of peony?

If the current design style is due to the advent of the technology of touch-screen devices, it means that if there are new technologies, it will trigger the birth of a new design style.

The development of science and technology leads the transformation of design aesthetics

If this style of design is really the result of new technology, then we can look back at this time to see the history of the past may be able to find the answer, to look at other areas, to see how the field of the designers of the changes in technology and how to deal with.

Early in the 20th century, French architect Le Corbusier found a rather novel building technique to enhance the compressive strength of concrete: reinforced concrete technology. The discovery allowed him to build buildings that had previously been structurally impossible, only a few reinforced concrete pillars are needed to support the building, which makes the house extremely time-saving and simplified, and it also allows Le Corbusier to find an architectural style that stunned the people at the time. , all the parts that were previously considered essential were superfluous, even annoying, in front of the method.

Although the impact of this innovative design style is prehistoric, but we are now looking around, we actually do not see all the buildings below are a few reinforced concrete pillars to support AH. Why is this? One of the reasons for this is that although these innovations often look good, and sometimes it is wonderful to look at them alone, the city becomes very monotonous and lifeless if all the buildings are this way. Le Corbusier once had a dream called "the City of Glory"--built in Paris all the same style of 60-storey high-rise summer, if it was true to him, then I believe that this will be a social and aesthetic catastrophe above. This is not just a form of modernization that cannot be tolerated, let alone if it is done, the Parisian design style will not be able to influence so many other great cities in the future.

Another choice to make a city is a more bottom-up, organic, and a way of blending architectural styles into one stove. Urban planners and critics Jane Jacobs in her wonderful book, "The Life and death of the Great American city," that "there is an urban planning scheme that is more repulsive than complete ugliness and disorder, and this odious scheme is To achieve a seemingly orderly illusion by ignoring or suppressing the real order in which we are struggling to be revealed.

The endless follow copy of the same design style, even if this style is how wonderful, people will feel uninteresting, and even feel ugly. This view is also appropriate for the visual design of software, and if all the software now looks like one, we lose the chance to appreciate some of the ingenuity of other styles.

Like the city we live in, we actually live in the digital space of the Internet. The sense that these spaces give us is very important, so if we need to make these spaces different, we need to be balanced in terms of functional considerations and less restraint in the form of presentation. Diverse and rich design aesthetics will make each product unique, through this way to let us find the true meaning of design.

So how do you do it next?

So it's important to ask a few questions, and let's try to imagine what a new era of more mature software visualization design should look like:

1 in the context of our desktop, those panels that support dragging and dropping above look like a good addition to 2D lattice devices. Many aspects of today's design are actually affected by the design style of handheld devices such as tablets. So in this sense, flat design should actually be seen as a touch-screen device of the original design style, perhaps touch screen equipment above the application should be long such. Touch-screen Equipment These new technologies have rocked our hearts and influenced the way we designed them. So how can the technological equipment easily replace the characteristics of how it will affect our view of the future visual design style? How long can a flat design dominate?

2 each wave of tidal current will actually trigger some corresponding changes. According to the natural characteristics of the ebb and flow of a tidal current, sooner or later one day "less is more" is no longer tenable. (Editor's note: The author should be for the previous said flat design into the current all the people flocking to the design style of the situation, that should not only a design style, but should diversify development). The 90 's desktop computer publishing software has caused a large number of CEN-poor electronic magazine flooding, the 2000 PC like home appliances as a general let us into the world of pixels, now we came to our touch screen equipment and flat design style of the era. What's the next wave? Believe me, there must be another wave.

What does the world of 31 more aesthetically pleasing software look like? Maybe it's a world where your credit card provider's software and your sock subscription service software no longer look like the same application? Once a style becomes incredibly popular, There will be other types of style to stand out and try to take another road. Then perhaps the next wave of fashion is a trend of design diversification.

The digital information we are interacting with Internet devices is becoming increasingly fragmented, and this information is often presented in a fragmented form of "cards". Perhaps many of the future applications are already available at the operating system level (Editor's note: Imagine a scenario in which most features of social software and games are already included in the OS layer, and what developers need to do is invoke a different API will be able to run in a well-designed interface, then do you think that the application of QQ and the "Diablo" game in the absence of the operation will look much different? If so, will this cause the visual UI design to be much the same? Or will there be an action against this trend being advocated?

Technology is spreading around the world as fast as wildfire. If there were another world of billions of netizens, what would they eventually look like if they brought to them the styles, tastes, and cultural influences that are so different from the flat designs we now have? Is it the same friends as we are now flat design style unified rivers and lakes?

So what, or which design styles will come true in the future? I am afraid to make an assertion here.

Perhaps the future of the new design style will not come to the world in a stormy way, and more is a quiet way of doing things with the wind sneak into our design thinking. After all, in desktop metaphors (Editor's note: Desktop metaphor, one of the main features of the graphical user interface, is the fact that in the real world there are already known things as a blueprint, the digitization of the computer as a UI to abstract out to make people feel like working on a real desk.) After a long period of time, the realistic design style that truly represents the real world has come to our eyes. So who dares to judge that the present minimalist design style of the digital object will not accompany us for a long time to come?

Although, I myself to this is a very skeptical attitude!

You may have your opinion on this, and the editor is very welcome to give your opinion in the contact form provided below.

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