I'm quite sick of the hordes of Flat Design submissions clogging the HN frontpage.
The issue here is that skeuomorphic UIs are commonly mistaken for "realist" UIs. Any application that resembles a calendar, whether it has fake leather stitching or not, is a skeuomorph. Any presentation software that creates slides that look like old 35mm projection slides, is a skeuomorph. A trash bin is a skeuomorph. A word processor that emulates a sheet of paper, with margins, is a skeuomorph. Any application that emulates an address book is a skeuomorph, even if it doesn't look like a real book. Its functionality is still skeuomorphic.
Flat design does not change skeumorphism; it merely reduces the textures used to their bare essence. It's impossible to do away with skeuomorphism completely, because many of the things we actually do on our machines correlate with things we do in reality.
And whoever proposes such a change is grossly out of touch with reality.
Personally, while I think ornamentation like how the old OS X Aqua UIs looked and Windows 7's Aero, is dated and clunky, the newer interfaces of OS X and Windows 8 desktop mode actually reach a fair point between flat and ornamental, bar the awful Address Book, Game Center, Notes, Reminders, and Calendar in OS X. It's folly to reduce everything to completely flat; it's a usability nightmare and I've seen power users struggle with some flat web designs on a tablet.
The solution is to keep light gradients, light drop shadows, and some gloss. Just enough to keep a good level of usability, while not adding excessive ornamentation.
The current Flat UI designs are just designer laziness. Just take a look at Google's marvelous implementation. We can do better.
> The solution is to keep light gradients, light drop shadows, and some gloss. Just enough to keep a good level of usability, while not adding excessive ornamentation.
I agree intensely with this. I have always preferred designs without excessive ornamentation, but at the same time I like a little gradients and border radius. Border radius gets me especially.. you can have flat design with border radius -- but you don't need a border; just use border radius by itself. The kind of flat design that is all about sharp edges and boxes is so ugly.
Perhaps you forgot to read the very last section, titled "Almost Flat Design"
>A style more designers tend to agree on is “almost” flat design.
>In almost flat design, the basic theme of the flat style is used but some effects are added to the design scheme. Buttons, for example, may contain slight gradients or drop shadows. Designers typically pick one effect and use it exclusively in an almost flat project.
>This style allows for a little more flexibility than some of the rigidness of the no effects thought behind flat design.
Designers like it because of the added depth and texture. Users like it because the style is a little less sharp and can help guide proper interaction...
It seems that many flat designers would agree with your proposal to keep "just enough" ornamentation.
It's a writer just seeking to milk the whole "flat design" thing even more by categorizing small variations as a whole design movement. It's no coincidence that a company selling a kit has the most blog posts dedicated to it. flat and almost flat design have the exact same aesthetic.
Moreover, pegging designers to a trendy aesthetic is ridiculous.
That's not necessarily laziness. You can create quite-good-looking flat designs in 10 hours. But it takes you 100 hours to create an amazing-looking non-flat design. That's what's great about flat design: cost / value ratio.
Let's say you can A) spend 1 hour implementing some sorting algorithm or B) spend 10 hours implementing a 1% faster sorting algorithm. Most of the time A) is better thing to do and it has nothing t do with laziness. But there are of course situationd where B) is better, for example, when the 1% improvement will result in $1M increase in profits.
The thing is, the flat designs created in 10 hours don't look good.
Google's semi-flat interface that they're pushing out everywhere is good design. It's clean, simple, but also contains sufficient visual cues to be usable at the same level as 3D designs.
Any design that's worth a damn will take a while to create, regardless of whether it's flat, semi-flat, or 3D.
I created these: http://shoutkey.com/excavate, http://shoutkey.com/modify in quite a short time. I could have paid $5000 for a professional design, but it would be (let's say) 20% better. For my project, it doesn't make sense to pay $5000 for 20% better design.
Where are you getting $5000 and 20% from? It would take a skilled designer no more than an hour or two to polish that up. I mean, you switch from all-caps title text to regular case - why? YOU could polish that up and make it look immensely better with maybe 15 minutes more work and thought.
I already don't like to-do apps, but I wouldn't even download one that didn't look fun, interesting, new and beautiful. Simple as that.
The $5000 and 20% were just illustrative. I'm not going to polish it up, because I decided to go with the second design.
You don't seem to like it but I think it looks quite good. Majority of people who've seen it liked it as well, but you can't please everyone of course.
The issue here is that skeuomorphic UIs are commonly mistaken for "realist" UIs. Any application that resembles a calendar, whether it has fake leather stitching or not, is a skeuomorph. Any presentation software that creates slides that look like old 35mm projection slides, is a skeuomorph. A trash bin is a skeuomorph. A word processor that emulates a sheet of paper, with margins, is a skeuomorph. Any application that emulates an address book is a skeuomorph, even if it doesn't look like a real book. Its functionality is still skeuomorphic.
Flat design does not change skeumorphism; it merely reduces the textures used to their bare essence. It's impossible to do away with skeuomorphism completely, because many of the things we actually do on our machines correlate with things we do in reality.
And whoever proposes such a change is grossly out of touch with reality.
Personally, while I think ornamentation like how the old OS X Aqua UIs looked and Windows 7's Aero, is dated and clunky, the newer interfaces of OS X and Windows 8 desktop mode actually reach a fair point between flat and ornamental, bar the awful Address Book, Game Center, Notes, Reminders, and Calendar in OS X. It's folly to reduce everything to completely flat; it's a usability nightmare and I've seen power users struggle with some flat web designs on a tablet.
The solution is to keep light gradients, light drop shadows, and some gloss. Just enough to keep a good level of usability, while not adding excessive ornamentation.
The current Flat UI designs are just designer laziness. Just take a look at Google's marvelous implementation. We can do better.
Much better.