

Are you ready for iOS 7? Get flat in 7 days. - jenntoda
http://blog.scoutzie.com/post/52631288358/ios7-flat-design-fast-professional

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potatolicious
Let's hang on for another hour or so and see the thing first, yeah?

There are many conflicting and competing definitions of flat design. It's
generally agreed that Apple will go flat, but nowhere near as flat as Win8 or
even a lot of the web.

Don't worry about anything until you see the keynote. If you want to mesh with
Apple's new visual design, you really can't do anything without _seeing_ said
visual design.

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aroch
Oh, pish! Why wait when they can make all the sweet, sweet ad money from
linkbaiting

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posabsolute
Yes! Please follow every design steps Apple make so all apps look like the
other one and individuality has completely disappeared.

Seriously a well thought app is a well thought app, you don't need to go flat
just because it will be the next 6 months crave before textures pops back
again....

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freshyill
I don't get this flat vs. skeuomorphic debate. They're not necessarily
opposites.

Skeuomorphic doesn't necessarily mean photorealistic. Flat doesn't necessarily
mean white text on bold colors. I believe you can have a design that is both
skeuomorphic _and_ flat, though I don't expect them to do that.

I think it's safe to say Apple will move away from skeuomorphism, but that
doesn't necessarily embrace some pure form of what we've been calling "flat"
design.

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aliston
Assuming that Apple does go flat, my understanding was that it will be, for
the most part, taken care of for developers. Unless you were already doing a
lot of custom skinning, building for iOS 7 with native widgets should just
"work," no?

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marknutter
Flat is such a ridiculous design fad. Good design implements both flat and
"skeuomorphic" (another word I wish would just go away) elements. Can we stop
running back and forth from one side of the room to the other?

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jenntoda
Yes, good design is how it works. We aren't against skeuomorphism and don't
think flat is opposite of it either. In fact there can even be flat
skeumorphism. I think Layervault's post on flat interface design, and Sacha
Grief's flat pixels post are the best out there to read up on what IS flat
design. Or Almost flat design.
[http://layervault.tumblr.com/post/32267022219/flat-
interface...](http://layervault.tumblr.com/post/32267022219/flat-interface-
design) [http://sachagreif.com/flat-pixels/](http://sachagreif.com/flat-
pixels/)

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fla
We will finally be able to jailbreak our iDevices again!

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stevewillows
Does having a flat UI allow the apps to scale better between phones and
tablets?

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nooneelse
I'm not in the domain, so this is probably naïve thinking, but it seems to me
it could lend itself that direction.

Considering that many skeuomorphic designs involve a layout which spatially
mimics some particular object. One can't scale that up and down in size to fit
on any screen without also changing the size of the actionable interface areas
(buttons, toggles, and such). And since the controls have their meaning
implied/explained to the user by where they are on the layout of the mimicked
object, rearranging the location of control areas takes away from the meaning
that the mimicry is made to communicate. If the physical object mimicked is
larger than the screen, and the layout and control area sizes must be
preserved, then scrolling the entire view or something like it is needed.

With a flat interface, the actionable control areas can be grouped, for
example by type (do they alter something global, domain related, context-
specific, or only a single item). Membership of a control in a type could be
communicated to the user by something like grouping all the controls of that
type together in a box with a particular background color. Since the scope
meaning of the controls is encoded by which color box they are each in, but
not at all by where in that box they are, nor necessarily what shape that
color box is, nor the box's location relative to any other color boxes which
hold controls of different types, then the color/type boxes can be reshaped
and reflowed to fit many screen sizes while keeping the size of the controls
themselves constant (easy to hit with a finger, or mouse, or whatever).

Edit-addendum: Of course, this line of thinking simplifies skeuomorphic design
too much. Such designs allow for more conceptual or cartoonish representations
of the controls from familiar objects, so that the scaling factor used for any
given control doesn't have to correspond to the scaling factor of other
controls or the overall mimicked object. Still, flat design gets a great deal
of rearrangement of controls for the price of the user learning to associate
the box with color scheme foo as holding things that change the global context
of the app. And the amount a user needs to learn can be smaller still. Even
just using the principle of up-and-to-the-left is more general while down-and-
to-the-right is more specific can give flat designs some structure (enough for
many uses) while allowing a great deal of rescaling of the screen.

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jaigouk
iOS7 icons make my eye soar. Seriously... I wish they spent more time with UI
and make whole thing consistent.

