Why is everything so flat?

[danjuno]

Over the last decade and a half, it feels like flat, minimalist design is just sort of everywhere.

A good example of this would be comparing Windows XP/Vista/7 to the more recent editions of Windows: no shading, no detail, no depth, minimal customization. 11 slightly walked this back, but it's not just your computer desktop.

Pull up a snapshot of any site from the 2000's and compare it to now. I pulled up this forum as it looked when I joined in 2010, and while the difference is subtle, you can definitely tell the details are different. The "Modern CFC" theme in 2010 when we were hosted on vBulletin uses more varied shades of grey, as well as red pinstripes, whereas present-day Modern CFC XF 2.2 has more or less the same shade of almost-white over most of the page, with grey pinstripes (albeit still with some red accents). To be fair, some of the character remains, since as an old-fashioned ( I say this with love ) community message board, CFC is not under the same pressure to change for change's sake that a mainstream social media platform owned by a publically traded corporation has. Most social media platforms went from flashy, detail oriented designs in the 2000's with insane levels of profile customization to "Screw you, just upload an avatar. Maybe if we feel generous, we'll let you peasants have a banner at the top of your profile and a button to toggle dark mode."

The internet is perhaps the best example of this, but in the video I posted in the "what are you watching" thread that prompted me to finally get this off my chest, the narrator also talks about how chain restaraunts in the US mostly abandoned detailed designs to draw in customers in favor of a sort of sterile "airport bathroom" aesthetic, while their logos also follow the flat, minimalist trend in web design. This trend has only gotten worse with COVID, as many restaurants now seem indifferent at having customers come in and eat, when a large share of customers seem to order take out or use delivery apps, but I feel like this break towards austerity started with the Recession.

So, what do y'all think? Is the flat design trend of the last decade a simple fad that will cycle out in time? Is it (as I suspect some of my fellow lefties on this board would suggest) a symptom of late stage capitalism, as companies take self-cannibalizing austerity to it's natural conclusion? Is it something else entirely?

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I get a bit depressed at times when I think of those tens of thousands of Invision-style smileys that are gone now and very hard to find except at the older forums that are still hanging on. I used to be on staff at a smiley-making forum that had an archive of over 15,000 smileys, most of them Invision. There are some older smileys I can pinpoint as to who created them and when.

For instance, here's my old Spud avatar:

The base Spud was created about 15 years ago on the smileygenerator forum by a guy named balaam, who's from a town in British Columbia. He owned that forum and basically turned us loose with the generators to create whatever we wanted, and was generous with custom requests. I'm not sure who created the scooter, but I took that, Spud, the sunglasses, and the facial components, and put them together to create this little smirking potato guy. There's another set of Spud smileys that shows him sitting on a couch - as a "couch potato."

 

[Farm Boy]

Phone UIs and tinyscreens.

 

[Gorbles]

I swear this discussion has come up before.

Everything goes on trends. For example:

Phone UIs and tinyscreens.

Apple's early iOS popularised a 3D bubble-style UI that was popular for about half a decade, so no, not really.

There was a time when every company did things differently. This is less the case now as every company chases the success of their peers by imitating changes that have a positive impact on a (public) company's evaluation.

But that's just one factor.

Another is that flatter, cleaner designs are both more accessible and more performant. The old style of doing things online was full of badly-compressed images and the like. Personal preference aside (and full disclosure: I prefer the way it's going vs. how it used to be), a lot of effort has been put into UX principles (and accessibility, with the latter being something the Internet is finally starting to make happen in the past few years).

Does this also mean more sites look the same? Yes. To save costs, a lot of companies also use site builders, and these often use the same actual technologies underneath, resulting in a homogenisation at the product level. Certain products have gotten bigger and bigger (Wix, the more infamous WordPress, etc), taking up more and more market share.

It's expensive to do things well. It keeps on being expensive. And there's positive research associated with flatter / cleaner UIs. So there's a bunch of capitalism in there, but also some good stuff too.

I don't think the current trend is a fad. I think it's here to stay for a while unless someone figures out at a technical level how to make a more involved / busy set of design principles work with less effort than the current market trends.

And of course you can always prefer whatever you want. But accessibility in the modern Web is real and comes up against enough lack of care and investment as it is. It's not just "can a screen reader navigate your page properly", it's things like dark mode, contrast between text and the background (in any theme or colour combination), stuff that has a real knock-on effect on how much effort it takes to make something look both good and compliant.

And then of course there's the whole "product needs to look fresh" logo redesigns that companies seem to love doing every few years. I don't know what goes on there or what companies get to do the consulting I'm a fan of simplicity and clear UX in a website, not in logos or other aesthetic forms of expression!

 

[Valka D'Ur]

it's things like dark mode, contrast between text and the background (in any theme or colour combination), stuff that has a real knock-on effect on how much effort it takes to make something look both good and compliant.

If it wasn't for dark mode, there are so many sites I wouldn't be part of anymore. I use it as much as possible, whether here, on FB, the fanfiction sites, YT, as many forums as I can.

I visited my Photobucket account recently, and holy crap, whoever runs it these days has made a horrible mess of it. We used to be able to customize a lot of things, but now it's absolutely hideous, with images just stuffed in there and none of the nice, organized and clean look it had before.

 

[Gorbles]

Photo bucket forcibly deactivated my account and now sends me spam I can't opt out of to spend money to re-activate it. I don't know what happened but I'm assuming the company was cannibalised by some profit-maximising vulture.

(no disrespect to actual vultures)

 

[EvaDK]

In the early days of the internet, some developers and website creators added all kinds of crap to their products, because they could. In the following phase, developers held back and focused more on higher speeds, easy navigation, multi platform/browser compliancy and just basic functionality. Next phase, another fad emerges and then another and so on.

It's always been like this no matter what sector you look at.

 

[Samson]

Over the last decade and a half, it feels like flat, minimalist design is just sort of everywhere.

What do you mean by flat? I think examples would help.

Pull up a snapshot of any site from the 2000's and compare it to now.

It is not actually from the olden days, but my news agglomerate of choice harks back to the simpler days of the internet. Whether it is my eyes getting worse, my tolerance for distractions getting lower or site design getting "busier" (I so hate embedded videos) I so much prefer reading plain text that I can freely change the size of. Is this "flat"? Is flat good?

Phone UIs and tinyscreens.

Apple's early iOS popularised a 3D bubble-style UI that was popular for about half a decade, so no, not really.

Just because it may have taken a while for the world to figure out how much more difficult cosmetic embellishments make to a UI on a small screen does not mean it is not true.

 

[Gorbles]

Just because it may have taken a while for the world to figure out how much more difficult cosmetic embellishments make to a UI on a small screen does not mean it is not true.

The flat design trend emerged around the middle of the 2010s.

One of the major movers during that period was Google with its Material design, which was / is a cross-platform set of design principles. Not mobile-specific and indeed Google leveraged it more with Google Docs and GMail / Google Search than it was able to with Android (which has the whole open source ecosystem with different vendors excessively customising the UI and UX).

Source: I work in mobile software and observed the trends at the time in real-time.

 

[Samson]

The flat design trend emerged around the middle of the 2010s.

One of the major movers during that period was Google with its Material design, which was / is a cross-platform set of design principles. Not mobile-specific and indeed Google leveraged it more with Google Docs and GMail / Google Search than it was able to with Android (which has the whole open source ecosystem with different vendors excessively customising the UI and UX).

Source: I work in mobile software and observed the trends at the time in real-time.

So just from wiki:

Material Design uses more grid-based layouts, responsive animations and transitions, padding, and depth effects such as lighting and shadows.

I think I may have a very different understanding of what "flat" means than everyone else.

 

[Farm Boy]

Apple's early iOS popularised a 3D bubble-style UI that was popular for about half a decade, so no, not really.

I'm reading it, but I don't get the disagreement. You type the "no" then go on to say things that I find compatible with "yes."

So, presently, I'm at "????" w/e.

I'd read more.

 

[Gorbles]

Material Design uses more grid-based layouts, responsive animations and transitions, padding, and depth effects such as lighting and shadows.

I think I may have a very different understanding of what "flat" means than everyone else.

Look at the example on the same Wiki page. Shadow use is very sparing. Most elements are clean and flat.

I'm reading it, but I don't get the disagreement. You type the "no" then go on to say things that I find compatible with "yes."

So, presently, I'm at "????" w/e.

I'd read more.

Bubble UI ain't flat, iOS was the huge driver of mobile phones and tiny screens. So phones with tiny screens don't really relate.

 

[Samson]

Look at the example on the same Wiki page. Shadow use is very sparing. Most elements are clean and flat.

I am comparing the image just next to the text I quoted with the one from the version before (Cards?). I am still no closer to understanding what "flat" means.

Spoiler Material Design and Cards Images from wiki :

Bubble UI ain't flat

This I agree is more busy

Spoiler Bubble UI :

 

[Gorbles]

Yeah I'm not explaining it well, sorry.

The old Apple bubble-style UI had gradients on everything. Buttons popped from the page based on gradient alone, as well as having colour. This often muddied the contrast between the text and the background, specially on smaller UI elements. Absolutely fine for bigger ones.

Here's an example:

The UI you've provided in the spoiler I actually like. It's flat design with visual interest and flair. It's more where we're moving to at the moment.

 

[Samson]

So flat means literally without "3D" elements? Now I understand. I never liked them and always turned them off in windows when I had to use it.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

Because flat just looks cleaner and better. I remember when Windows XP first came out with the curved edges and stuff and it was just... odd. We got used to it eventually but I like how 10 returned to the flat style of old.

 

[danjuno]

I swear this discussion has come up before.

Everything goes on trends. For example:

Apple's early iOS popularised a 3D bubble-style UI that was popular for about half a decade, so no, not really.

There was a time when every company did things differently. This is less the case now as every company chases the success of their peers by imitating changes that have a positive impact on a (public) company's evaluation.

But that's just one factor.

Another is that flatter, cleaner designs are both more accessible and more performant. The old style of doing things online was full of badly-compressed images and the like. Personal preference aside (and full disclosure: I prefer the way it's going vs. how it used to be), a lot of effort has been put into UX principles (and accessibility, with the latter being something the Internet is finally starting to make happen in the past few years).

Does this also mean more sites look the same? Yes. To save costs, a lot of companies also use site builders, and these often use the same actual technologies underneath, resulting in a homogenisation at the product level. Certain products have gotten bigger and bigger (Wix, the more infamous WordPress, etc), taking up more and more market share.

It's expensive to do things well. It keeps on being expensive. And there's positive research associated with flatter / cleaner UIs. So there's a bunch of capitalism in there, but also some good stuff too.

I don't think the current trend is a fad. I think it's here to stay for a while unless someone figures out at a technical level how to make a more involved / busy set of design principles work with less effort than the current market trends.

And of course you can always prefer whatever you want. But accessibility in the modern Web is real and comes up against enough lack of care and investment as it is. It's not just "can a screen reader navigate your page properly", it's things like dark mode, contrast between text and the background (in any theme or colour combination), stuff that has a real knock-on effect on how much effort it takes to make something look both good and compliant.

And then of course there's the whole "product needs to look fresh" logo redesigns that companies seem to love doing every few years. I don't know what goes on there or what companies get to do the consulting I'm a fan of simplicity and clear UX in a website, not in logos or other aesthetic forms of expression!

Interesting point about accessibility. The arguments I had previously read in flat vs. skeuomorphic design is that gradients on important functions like menus and buttons made for better accessibility, which certainly lined up with my own experience as someone who is neurodivergent, but maybe it depends a bit more depending on how the style is used?

 

[Gorbles]

Interesting point about accessibility. The arguments I had previously read in flat vs. skeuomorphic design is that gradients on important functions like menus and buttons made for better accessibility, which certainly lined up with my own experience as someone who is neurodivergent, but maybe it depends a bit more depending on how the style is used?

Yeah I guess it depends on how strictly (the generic) you define flat design. For example drop shadows are useful, but they also need some kind of purpose. The same goes for a single static gradient vs. a full-on bubble / fake 3D effect.

It's a similar argument for transitions and animated effects - does it get in the way (e.g. just to be there / be cool, which was a lot of 00s web design), or does it complement the purpose (e.g. an animation that corresponds to the force and / or duration of a touch event)?

For example, I mentioned logos earlier. A lot of companies do skeuomorphism poorly there - the designs tend to skew abstract (not always bad) or a complete "chasing trends" redesign (often bad, imo).

This is a good piece on good iconography for a longstanding brand (Mozilla):

Firefox: The Evolution Of A Brand – Mozilla Open Design

Branding and brand design for Firefox. Brand identity and brand expression. Firefox web browser brand evolution. Masterbrand and product brand system.

blog.mozilla.org

There's a part 2 but unfortunately it's more captured by The Brand - this one is more nuts and bolts.

 

[Gori the Grey]

my tolerance for distractions getting lower

This is part of my answer to danjuno's question. Precisely because we now spend so much time online our lives are visually cluttered. So I think we crave simplifications where we can find them.

 

[danjuno]

This is part of my answer to danjuno's question. Precisely because we now spend so much time online our lives are visually cluttered. So I think we crave simplifications where we can find them.

I suppose that would make sense for some folks. Though, aside from growing up in the 2000's, I suspect my ADHD might have something to do with my preference to skeuomorphism, since even "bad" skeuomorphism (sloppiness) provides more visual stimulation than "bad" flat design (blandness). Sort of how people describe not being able to look away from a train wreck.