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» What is flat design and its basic principles. Flat design and Material design: What is their difference Flat and material design differences

What is flat design and its basic principles. Flat design and Material design: What is their difference Flat and material design differences

A light and inviting design of a web page is considered to be the most correct. A flat website design style is appropriate in many cases. Simple interfaces often work better, and thanks to the general trend towards minimalism, the Flat direction is still relevant (Microsoft and Apple made their OS flat). By using beautiful flat colors in their designs, well-known companies never miss an opportunity to express their personality, draw attention to their brand, or increase conversions.

Examples of good Flat design

Beautifully and intelligently designed flat websites with easy navigation and a clear interface. Their thoughtful, rendered designs sell well and create a good user experience.

Launch

A unique grey-white-orange version of the flat. Microiterations look beautiful in an expressive UI with ghost buttons and parallax scrolling of blurry backgrounds. Scrolling effects, such as a sticky menu and overlapping the footer with the background of the page body, visually make the site more compact.

eTecc Interactive

The simple design of the website of an American agency does not look ordinary, because... made with high quality and taste. The old school of design works no worse than innovation, and can advantageously present the company and its services.

Nehora Law Firm

A clean, flat design with sophisticated elements gives the California law firm's website a professional look. The header and footer are beautifully designed. White and shades of gold on a dark turquoise background create a beautiful soft contrast. The user-oriented interface of the pages allowed the content to be organized.

Towa

The German agency's WordPress site has a nice minimalistic design with HTML5/CSS3 effects and . Pastel / gray-golden shades, color correction of photographs and modular layout helped to beautifully design the site in the form of a collage of interesting facts about the company.

Amazee Labs

The website of the Swiss Drupal developers has a laconic design with pleasant color combinations. Call to action elements are creatively designed, Flat and HTML5/CSS3 techniques are used.

Space Needle

The Space Needle is a symbol of Seattle. The site also has a main page with backgrounds. The scrolling is uniquely designed with lightening effects and mini-slides at the end.

Build in Amsterdam

The Dutch branding agency has a beautiful flat website with a custom navigation menu. The interface is nicely and stylishly designed, good.

The Yellow Conference

Optimistic content, bright yellow color and the site sets you up for positivity.

Joy Intermedia

Website of an international creative agency from Poland with a flat design using CSS3 and good UX. The site uses side and bottom panels and is easy to use.

Fuse Lab Creative

A well-structured, user-friendly American agency website with a convenient translucent side menu, a project panel and unobtrusive mini-intros on the main screen.

Chobani

A small b2b company has a nice and very user-friendly culinary website with a clean design based on HTML5. A fixed drop-down menu and an original four-level secondary navigation system help present the assortment.

Unique Flat Design and flat style

We have selected examples of unique flat style that prove that flat interfaces can be effective, interesting and attractive. By combining expressive graphics with a pleasant font contrast, adding a little animation and micro-iterations, you can not only make a creative or business website beautiful, but also show your individuality and express the main message with your design.

RJ Investments

Website of a British real estate agency with a stylish, laconic flat design in gray and white tones. The accent golden color adds soft expressiveness. Based on WordPress HTML5/CSS3, jQuery, SVG.

Tilted Chair

An expressively designed website – typography becomes more visually interesting when catchy colors return to the design with a minimalist and flat style. Eye-catching red headlines in the portfolio play the role of a “springboard”.

FHOKE

Clean, flat design and unique user interface of the site. Images in focus, incl. grocery stores with computers and iPhones (photos displayed in a separate layer look realistic).

Nation

A memorable, bright and dynamic website for a studio from London. The outline header on the compact home page will not go unnoticed, as will the spectacular ghost buttons in the portfolio/cases. Looping background video, photo backgrounds with blur and color correction, stylish animations, transitions, and page loading preloader are used. The expressive design in blue tones conveys the message of the reliability of the studio and the energy of the team.

Mayven Dev

Mayven Dev is a creative team of 30 coders/UX designers based in San Francisco. Their website is distinguished by a restrained design aesthetic, individual style, pleasant color schemes with expressive contrasts of white typography and animated contour graphics on an emerald background.

HughesLeahyKarlovic Agency

The clean and neat design of the American agency’s website immediately puts you in a positive mood. The navigation menu is uniquely designed: a hover effect with a color filter applied turns the background image into a looping video.

Satis Satellite Communications

Extensive website of the Russian satellite communications operator. The business aesthetic is implemented through a flat design style with outline illustrations.

Illustrations, effects and creativity in flat designs

Examples of dynamic designs, creative flat design and a successful combination of flat illustrations and animation. Modern Flat allows you to combine game design elements with realistic content for business websites.

Tectonica Studios

The designer uses flat graphics with gradients (a current web trend) and a block of bright flat illustrations on the main page. For an attractive division of sections - free space and animated graphics.

Pixity-land

A microsite with a classic Flat design uses scrolling animation, flat illustrations and video.

100 Years of Design

Creative web project of the AIGA design community. Flat colors indicate menu items, openable sections, navigation hotspots, and split windows with carousels of illustrations.

Drap Agency

A spectacular, eye-catching, colorful website for a technology-oriented creative agency. Design innovation and any innovations in the presentation of information are valued here.

Mobkii

Without flat illustrations with gradients, the Mexican agency's website would look boring, and the design would be too ordinary for web & application developers.

Ecodom Consorzio

Official website of an Italian company engaged in the revitalization of household appliances and recycling. Lively green design, interactive and dynamic effects suit the website of an organization with this type of activity.

Thing of Wonder

The project offers an opportunity to get acquainted with things interesting to curious people, the community and events to broaden their horizons. Starting with an abstractly designed home screen, the original design engages this audience.

Green Man

The site serves as a guide to the Welsh Festival. The yellow and green design and animation with creative flat graphics matches both the domain name and the positive goals of the project.

Read also: Color combination in web design - green websites

Amelia Thompson Portfolio

One-pager from Chicago. Amelia has an interesting portfolio of flat style work.

Read also: 30 stylish agency websites and personal portfolios of designers

DoneDone

The project management system website with a bug tracker is beautifully designed in Flat style. The bright colors, flat graphics/video and contrasting call button are hard to miss.

Peppermint

The creative website of the Polish digital agency uses geometric shapes and unimaginable animations, illustrations, photographs, and drawings.

Geex Arts

The website of a young Moscow web studio impresses with its high-tech, ultra-modern design and is included in the TOP 40 digital agencies. It is distinguished by a stylish navigation menu, effective transitions, interactivity, animation and good UX with non-standard solutions.

DAESK

The website of the German studio has an exciting marketing design in HTML5 and a non-standard navigation menu. Exciting acidic colors sell the product (time and attendance tracker). Hover effects with parallax scrolling capture attention on call buttons and social proof. After superbly designed reviews, the start page refers to customer cases/stories. Interactive on a vector background launches selling video graphics.

Fcinq

Website of a French creative studio: stylish flat design starts with a beautiful preload. What makes this design attractive is the color correction of photographs and unique color combinations.

D.F.Y.

Flexible Korean agency website with creative videos in the background. Modern clean design using html5/css3. The full-screen navigation menu has an impressive seamless transition effect.

Brave People

The Florida-based creative agency's past website redesigns have been featured in the creative TOP. Now Brave People has an effective design with a clear and compact flat interface.

Nea Media

The French toy & video game manufacturer used FLAT and web design style. The site created on WordPress surprises with its fashionable design.

Little Flyers

Australian children's themed site with rich flat colors. Contrasting sans serif fonts bring messages to the fore and combine with large design elements.

Ic creative

The website of the English studio stands out with large headlines with a call and CTA elements in accent orange.

FATbit

The voluminous website of web developers from India is made on Wordpress and is distinguished by its design diversity with micro-interactions and animated illustrations. In the header and footer, a flat red color accentuates the CTAs. The main page has fixed backgrounds with color correction, and supports dragging and dropping slides in carousels (first screen, social proof, promos on translucent blocks).

Domain Menada

Continuing a 100-year tradition of quality, the Bulgarian winemaker impresses visitors with a pre-loaded animated corkscrew. Dark flat design with soft contrasts, creative photo processing and unconventional solutions sells the idea of ​​​​the brand's elitism.

Frans Hals Museum

The website of the Dutch art museum has an unusual design in the Flat style with giant headings in sans font. Navigation icons help you understand the non-standard horizontal & vertical menu.

Meticulosity

Flat site of developers from the technology valley of New York state. Expressive, clean design with geometry and fixed backgrounds. Beautiful contrasts in the header, footer, sections with CTA buttons.

Landing pages and selling designs in FLAT style

The attractiveness and vibrancy of the home page or internal page help express your unique offering. Landing site design expands the possibilities of using Flat and increases the chances of further interaction with customers. The goal of sales and landing design is to ensure high conversion. An LP website or landing page is memorable with an interesting or unusual design.

What is flat design? This design direction is one of the most discussed on the Internet. In short, flat design is an extremely simplified style, the roots of which go back to minimalism. But this is not exactly minimalism, since this style can take many different forms depending on the design requirements. To better understand what flat design is, it’s better to go backwards and define what it definitely isn’t.

This is not 3D. 3D graphics itself allows you to get very realistic, but at the same time two-dimensional images. Unlike 3D, flat design doesn't pay much attention to details that create depth and dimension, such as shadows, highlights, and textures.

This is not skeuomorphism. Flat design emerged as an alternative to pseudo-volumetric design elements that imitated real objects or processes. Skeuomorphism involves the active use of various effects: shadows, reflections, reflexes and realistic textures. There is and cannot be any of this in flat design.

People first started talking about flat design in 2012-2013, when this style first appeared. The trend was very noticeable and caused a lot of noise, since Microsoft was one of the first to develop this direction. The release of Windows 8 with a new interface forever changed the design and largely predetermined the vector of development of the web, at least its visual component.

Apple did not stand aside either, which also abandoned pseudo-volumetric elements in the design of the interfaces of its devices. Microsoft and Apple created a new reality in which sites with outdated designs had no place. At the same time, Apple did not act as radically as its eternal competitor, and gradually got rid of elements of skeuomorphism.

Flat design itself is neither good nor bad, it’s web designers who make it convenient or inconvenient. But let's be honest, in its extreme forms, flat design doesn't look very aesthetically pleasing. Probably, the zone of best perception in this case is somewhere in the middle between flat and pseudo-volumetric elements.

It is quite possible that the trend toward extreme simplification that has been dominant over the past few years will be replaced by something else. There are some prerequisites for this - for example, the Material Design direction, created by Google designers.

COMPATIBLE WITH ADAPTIVE DESIGN

Microsoft and Apple's move away from skeuomorphism in interface design has had big consequences. The new style was almost immediately adopted as a new approach to UX. Since then, flat design has become a dominant trend that continues to be relevant. Today, flat elements are ubiquitous, we see them on websites, in applications and on the displays of various devices.

The principles of flat design apply to a wide range of design categories, but its strict grids and simplified graphics are best displayed on devices with small screen sizes.

The trend towards minimalism has greatly simplified the work of designers - it has become easier for them to design interfaces that display correctly on any type of device. In the case of pseudo-volumetric elements, everything was not so - sometimes the interface, which looked amazing on the desktop screen, turned into something incomprehensible on a mobile device.

One of the main advantages of flat design is its scalability. Flat elements look good regardless of size and, unlike pixel-perfect design, they are much easier to work with.

FLEXIBLE PLATFORM

Flat design, in its pursuit of simplicity, is characterized by good flexibility: all elements, as a rule, are created from homogeneous geometric shapes, which simplifies the creation of a balanced layout, where each module or block has its place. All elements are easily distinguishable and, importantly, during operation they can be quickly swapped without violating the original settings.

The grids also have a flexible structure that can be provided in a variety of configurations. This allows designers to create the most optimal approaches that best showcase the content at hand. The absence of restrictions and the need to adjust the grid if new elements are changed or added significantly speeds up the workflow.

READABLE TYPOGRAPHY

Flat design has significantly changed the way designers think about typography. The new style required a different approach to the choice of fonts and the quality of layout. As a result, the absence of shadows and various effects made the texts easier to read.

Flat design is characterized by the extensive use of sans-serif fonts, however, this is not akisoma and serifs can also look good in combination with flat elements. Serif fonts will be quite appropriate as a heading, and they can also be used in the main text, if the typography does not violate the compositional unity.

MINUSES

It may seem that flat design has no disadvantages, but this is not so. In their quest to emphasize clean lines and shapes, some designers fall into the trap of focusing on aesthetics while neglecting usability. A simple and beautiful design, in which there is nothing superfluous, is not always convenient, and such errors are especially pronounced when using mobile devices.

In flat design, it is often difficult to determine which element is interactive and which is not. Everything is the same, there are no obvious differences, all elements lie in the same plane. In pursuit of simplicity, designers may inadvertently hide or unwittingly disguise important features or actions, and the user, not seeing the usual prompts, may lose orientation on the site.

Let's take this site as an example. What elements in it are interactive. All? Or just some? Unclear. This can only be found out at random, but these are unnecessary movements, which is undesirable.

LOSS OF INDIVIDUALITY

For any brand, business or design project, uniqueness is of utmost importance. Whether it’s a website, an application, a booklet, a poster or a business card, the design must be original and well recognizable.

One of the disadvantages of flat design is its visual style. Using simple geometric shapes can often result in two completely different designs appearing very similar to each other. Designers who use flat elements are limited in their options because they don't have a large selection of acceptable options at their disposal. Recently, on the Internet you can see many clone sites that are not actually clones. It's just a coincidence. Moreover, the coincidence is unpleasant, since the site loses its much-needed individuality, getting lost against the background of other resources with a similar design.

Sometimes it gets funny. Looking at these pictures, you might think that we are looking at different sections of the same application. But no, designers Marco La Mantia and Simone Lippolis worked independently of each other. Basic geometric shapes and a white sans-serif font are used as the main design elements - a more than logical decision. But the result is disastrous - the same color scheme completely deprived the design of its uniqueness. And there are a lot of such cases.


CHASING FASHION

Flat design will remain one of the hottest trends for a long time, simply because it looks good on mobile device displays. But many designers choose flat not only because it allows them to quickly solve most problems, but also because of their desire to create something modern and fashionable.

However, in pursuit of fashion, you can make a serious mistake: if you mindlessly follow all the trends, it is quite possible to forget about the usefulness of design. A flat can be very beautiful, elegant and even graceful, but still the designer’s choice should be determined by functionality, and not by the desire for beauty. Sometimes the desire to “shove” something fashionable into a design only harms it, for example, long shadows, one of the most recognizable features of flat design.


Before us are the works of designers Alexander Lototsky and Erik Malmskeld. These are typical examples of using long shadows in design. Now this won’t surprise anyone, but at one time, and both works were created back in 2013, when flat design was just coming into fashion, the new visual style was very interesting and attractive. As a result, so many similar icons appeared that today the use of shadows is a formulaic and uninteresting solution. It was once fashionable, but not anymore. Shadows are like shadows. There is no meaning in them, they do not perform any useful function.

BAD CHOICE OF FONT

Every designer dreams of creating something beautiful and at the same time functional. But in pursuit of aesthetics, you can make poor choices that affect usability. An example is the craze for thin and light fonts. This type of typography looks clean and light, but it is also difficult to read.

Sometimes choosing a thin font is justified - for example, for use in headings. But when the main text is typed in the same font, it is often impossible to read it. Such errors are especially noticeable on mobile devices – the small screen size sharply reduces the readability of the content.

FLAT 2.0

Over the past few years, designers have experimented with flat elements and brought a lot of new things to flat design. The style is fully formed and like any other established style, it has its pros and cons.

At the dawn of its appearance, flat was distinguished by strict visual simplicity; there was no hint of shadows or structures. Even gradients were not held in high esteem, although they in no way contradict the principles of flat design.

But gradually designers began to move away from too simple solutions, trying to find some kind of compromise solution between flat and skeuomorphism. The result is a new style that some designers call Flat 2.0. Shadows, gradients, and even light, almost invisible structures gradually began to appear in design elements. Flat design clearly lacks depth, and designers have begun to use hybrid approaches. For example, visually arrange elements at different levels, experiment with shades and shadows. Another frequently used example of a hybrid approach is the use of not only icons and flat vector illustrations, but also photographs.

Google has done a lot to promote Flat 2.0. The Material Design Guideline is an attempt to create a new visual language that combines flat and three-dimensional design elements. Google's recommendations are very detailed and easy to follow. At the same time, Google does not insist on strict adherence to all the rules set out in the guideline - designers can experiment, creating their own original projects, which can combine a variety of elements.

CONCLUSION

Today Flat 2.0 is at the formation stage, but the direction in which this style will develop is already quite clear. No significant changes are expected - trendsetters Google, Apple and Microsoft are not going to give up flat. If there are changes, they will be insignificant - new approaches will appear, someone will come up with an interesting “trick”, attempts will continue to take the best from skeuomorphism. But in a global sense, there is no need to expect something truly new - flat design is a long-term trend and only a style that best suits new technologies that do not yet exist can displace it from its conquered positions.

Flat design is a key direction in design for the coming years, so we invite you to get to know it better and learn the 5 fundamental principles that form its basis.

Introduction to flat design

In Russian, flat design is translated as “flat design,” and it became an absolute favorite after Apple presented the iOS OS. The focus was on a minimalist approach to usability design. The focus is on user comfort. This is a pronounced protest against “squeformism” (visualization of objects as in reality). The choice fell on more simplified and at the same time simpler aesthetic solutions. Users, tired of realistic visualizations, greeted this direction with delight, and more and more web projects are moving to this format.

I would like to note that “flat” does not mean “boring”. Flat design solutions can be beautiful, they are more sophisticated, clean, free of redundancy, transforming into an “island of calm.” They finally make the content understandable. All that remains is to learn the basic principles in order to apply them in practice.

Principle No. 1: No unnecessary effects

“Flat” design does not strive to convey volumes, so it is based on two-dimensional visualization. This means that you will not see any shadows, reflections, or highlights with textures (with the exception of long shadows). Only the transfer of contours, and nothing more.

Principle #2: the simpler the better

It is recommended to use monosyllabic figures in the design, as well as to monitor the clarity of the contours, which is intended to emphasize lightness and weightlessness. In addition, such laconic elements imitate a sensor well, generating a desire to interact with the object (an invitation to press, touch). However, the simplicity of the elements does not equal the simplicity of the design as a whole - this only applies to the outlines. As a result, everything that the user sees is clear to him, and he can use it with ease.

Principle #3: Typography and its importance

Flat design calls for extreme caution when working with fonts. That is, their character must complement the design scheme without contradicting it. Moreover, in flat design, the font is also a key navigation element.

Principle #4: Color Accents

Not only font, but also color is an essential part of “flat” design. The vast majority of palettes are based on 2-3 colors, although, of course, there are exceptions. Usually rich and bright, but at the same time pure colors are chosen. As noted, there are no gradients or unnecessary transitions.

Principle No. 5: choosing minimalism

Flat design is a striking example of such a global trend as minimalism. Designers refuse unnecessary bells and whistles, move away from complex and implicit approaches to visualization, which bears fruit in the form of user activity.

Flat or almost flat? We are looking for a compromise!

In conclusion, I would like to note that today there is a synergy between flat and non-flat design. We are talking about an “almost flat” design. This is the most common application of the described concept, when, together with simple and concise elements and two-dimensional space, designers use 1-2 techniques for depth and perspective.

Also a trend in 2017 was Semi Flat Design - semi-flat design. Influenced by Material Design, it has become a little more spatial. Light shadows appear that make the design appear semi-flat. Flat design is still relevant today; due to shadows, it has become deeper and more complex, but the basic concept is not violated.

Today we will focus our attention on one of the most popular areas of modern graphic design, which is called flat design.

The famous artist Edgar Degas once said: “Art is not what you see, but what you let others see.” This also applies to graphic design, which can also be defined as an art that solves a specific problem. Graphic design has the ability to change mood and message through the slightest changes in shapes and shades, letters and spacing. Trends in this field that have become an integral part of everyday life, as they influence the decision-making process and solve problems of presenting a modern product, and also shape the tastes of users.

Today, the term “flat design” is used in graphics for many purposes and tasks that have common stylistic features. Flat design is a trend that has found many manifestations in the field of digital products, thanks to the laconic use of visual expressive means.

Nowadays, the term is widely used as the opposite of "rich design" due to the harmonious simplicity taken as the basis of this approach. The most notable feature that gives this movement its name is the use of flat, two-dimensional visual details, as opposed to highly realistic and detailed skeuomorphic images. Flat design has been actively developing over the past years, covering more and more areas of graphic design, which are finding wide and varied applications in the field of digital design for web and mobile interfaces. This approach can be seen as a style that promotes usability and visual harmony in user interfaces.


History of flat design

Obviously, flat design did not appear out of thin air. Its origin is usually considered to be the Swiss style. Swiss Style, also known as International Typographic Style or international style for short, is a movement that originated in the 1920s but was met with great criticism and then had a dramatic rebirth in graphic design in Switzerland in the 1940s and 50s. years, which became a strong foundation of mid-20th century graphic design throughout the world. The founders of this creative movement were Joseph Müller-Brockmann and Armin Hofmann.


According to the website Design Is History, a summary of the key features of this style is as follows: “…the style focused on simplicity, readability, and objectivity. The legacy of this style is the use of sans-serif fonts, grids, and asymmetrical layouts. Photographs also stand out as a means of visual communication. Major influential works were designed as posters, which were considered the most effective means of providing information.”


The posters presented as examples show that adherents of this style liked simple shapes, bold and strict fonts with a high degree of legibility, geometric combinations of details, flat illustrations and a clear visual hierarchy. Swiss design quickly became increasingly popular in different countries and received new life in the art of the early 21st century.

Although this style has received many expressions in the field of visual design for print: posters, stamps, cards, book covers, magazines, etc., it has greatly expanded its horizons in the digital design era, especially in the field of user interface design.

Websites and mobile apps have opened up an amazing and fruitful perspective for this minimalistic and functional approach to design solutions. The style was called “flat design”, which immediately became popular and began a new direction in graphic design.

The first step towards increasing the popularity of flat UI in digital products was made by Microsoft, this movement began in the early 2000s and developed widely in products in 2010, in particular in the development of mobile interfaces for Windows Phone 7. Key features of flat design such as intuitive simple shapes, bold, clear typography, bright contrasting colors, long shadows, lack of complex details and textures, took root well. The next surge in popularity of flat design occurred in 2013, when Apple released iOS 7 using the principles of flat graphics as the basis for convenient, intuitive interfaces. You could also say that some of the key principles of flat design found their way into Google's Material Design.


So the main features of flat design are:

  • simplicity of forms and elements;
  • minimalism;
  • functionality;
  • bold and easy to read typography;
  • clear and strict visual hierarchy;
  • a combination of contrasting colors that provides quick visual perception;
  • avoiding textures, gradients and complex shapes;
  • application of grid principles, geometric approach and visual balance.

Benefits of Flat Design

Fdat design has a number of advantages that determine its popularity and diversity in digital design. Among the most significant:

  • readability;
  • clear visual hierarchy using shapes, colors and fonts;
  • effective organization of fast and intuitive navigation in web and mobile interfaces;
  • easy scalability for responsive design;
  • negligible load for a digital system.

With all that said, flat design provides a wide field for creative exploration and stylistic concepts.


Flat design - application in practice

The variety of design styles available and evolving these days lends itself well to flat design due to its flexibility and artistic freedom.

Even at the initial stage of planning the overall layout, logic and transitions, the principles of flat design can be applied. Digital design tools and software used at this crucial stage allow designers to present clients and teams with a single layout of all application screens or web pages, and even this basic layout already has key visualization features typical of flat design. At this stage, it is ideal for quickly and efficiently displaying design solutions in a simple monochrome layout.


User Interface Design

User interfaces have definitely become a wide and favorable field for flat design. It has found its development both in abstract concepts of user interaction and in a variety of original interfaces, icons, interface elements and illustrations.


These types of illustrations provide additional support for digital products and tend to be more intricate in terms of detail and satisfy the aesthetic needs of users, while at the same time instantly establishing a connection to a specific topic.


Printed illustrations

The variety of purposes of modern flat design and its growing popularity in digital products have also influenced other areas of design, particularly the design for printed products such as posters and book covers, from which the approach originated.

Branding

These days, brand design has also successfully applied the principles of flat design due to its flexibility, with many products being presented on devices or receiving digital support online. Flat design in branding is often represented in logos and application icons.


All the facts and benefits mentioned about flat design definitely do not mean that this style has won over other design approaches. Any style and direction of design has its advantages and disadvantages. However, flat design has opened up new perspectives, especially in the field of custom solutions that present a harmonious balance of beauty and functionality.

Different styles in web design give designers freedom of creativity and make sites different from each other. One of the most popular styles today is flat design - a minimalist concept aimed at enhancing and simplifying the design of the page as a whole. In this article we will talk about the features of flat design and its principles, give examples and talk about the main problems of the flat style.

What is flat design

Flat design or flat design became a popular destination in the 2010s, when Microsoft released a new system in a minimalist style, in contrast to Apple's skeuomorphism - a design that emphasizes realistic effects.

Flat design implies minimalistic solutions and a simple user interface. Geometric shapes are often used, without imposing visual effects. Flat design creates the feeling of a stylish and modern resource and makes the content easy to understand. Let's look at the basic principles of flat design and the features of their application.

Basic principles of flat design

Principle 1. Nothing superfluous

This style is called flat because all the elements do not look voluminous. This effect is achieved by the absence of various decorative details: shadows, textures, highlights, gradient, and so on. It is based on simple shapes with two-dimensional images.

The contours of the forms are clear and concise. The emphasis is on the simplicity of the interface and content, both text and graphic. Thanks to such techniques, the design becomes light and weightless.

Minimalism and simplicity have contributed to the use of flat design to improve website usability. Clear structures and concise forms make the interface intuitive, allowing the client to quickly find the necessary information and take the targeted action.

Principle 2: 2D Graphics

Simplification affected not only forms and buttons, but also graphics. Flat design style - two dimensional illustrations, which are used as full-fledged images in galleries, sliders and other areas of the site.

Illustrations emphasize the simplicity of the elements, create a unified style for the entire site and add originality to the resource. Along with two-dimensional graphics, outline and solid icons are also used.

Photographs and other pictures are also used in flat design and design them as a separate area on the site. For example:

The peculiarity of such images is also absence of any extra prominent elements, design in the same style.

Principle 3: Readable typography

The flat style removed all unnecessary things from the design and brought the content on the site to the fore. Therefore, for the user it became it is especially important which one is used on the resource.

The absence of shadows and other decorative details led to the fact that the texts began to be perceived differently. Mostly flat design uses sans serif fonts for better user experience. This made the texts easier to read, and more attention was paid to the content and location on the site.

Sometimes typography plays the role of a navigation element. For example, the menu on the website is designed in a minimalist style and only the names of the sections are left. In this case, the text should be easy to read and noticeable to the user.

Principle 4. Color accents

Another feature of flat design is the color scheme used. This is predominantly a white background, one main color for the elements(often muted) and various color accents. This diagram can be seen very well in the following example:

Sometimes non-standard colors are used to distinguish the resource from other sites of similar subjects. Usually flat design uses pure shades, which creates a feeling of freshness and neatness.

Usually the palette includes 2-3 colors; several color accents are also used for small elements - details in illustrations. However, some designers deviate from the generally accepted rules for choosing a color scheme and use all the colors of their spectrum.

Principle 5. White space

To create a feeling of lightness, designers use not only pure colors, but also correctly distribute the space on the site. To do this, use the principles outlined by us.

The designer places elements taking into account spaces and air between them, as in this example:

Also special attention is paid to the composition of the site. As a rule, designers try to create a layout using to facilitate layout and improve the user's perception of the layout.

It is necessary to carefully monitor the use of space on the site and not overdo it. Sometimes designers add too much air between elements and the user gets lost on the page and does not understand how the site is navigated. The page turns into an endless collection of elements without visual motivation to scroll further, and the user leaves the site.

Usability for flat design

Flat design is a powerful tool for creating aesthetically pleasing designs. Using flat design:

  • text readability improves - users perceive text information more easily thanks to clear fonts and contrasting backgrounds;
  • content comes to the fore - in flat design there are no unnecessary elements that distract the user and interfere with perception;
  • site loading time is reduced - the page is not loaded by “heavy” elements and you do not risk losing customers due to long waits;
  • the navigation structure of the site is improved - a clear visual hierarchy structures the content, so it is easier for the user to navigate the site;
  • easy to adapt the layout to any device - a simple interface and arrangement of blocks using a grid helps developers for mobile phones, tablets and other devices;
  • you can make the site original and attract the user’s attention - flat design is a stylish solution for those who want to stand out among competitors and take into account the user experience.

However, despite all the advantages of the flat style, there are several problems that the developer must take into account when creating a website design.

Flat design problems

Despite all the advantages, users periodically encounter problems in using an interface based on flat design. Some designers get hung up on simplicity and aesthetic appeal and forget about usability. Let's look at some problems in user interaction and ways to solve them.