I said this very clearly before and was downvoted into oblivion, but I think it needs to be said:
This article advocates for some balance between flat design and skeumorphism. Granted, the article is written decently well, but it does not go into any detailed analysis as to where that balance should lie.
It simply states: Hierarchy should use composition and color. Cool -- basic design principle, check. Beautiful, readable typography? Yes -- sure. Strong emphasis on content, not ornamentation. OK. I've read this 1000x times already. What is new? Where are the analyses or case studies to support the principles?
We need to start talking about where the balance lies and why it lies there. Different interactions will require different balances to find optimality.
> it does not go into any detailed analysis as to where that balance should lie
That's very much part of the point. From the article:
Without strict visual requirements associated with flat design, post flat offers designers tons of variety to explore new aesthetics – informed by the best qualities of skeuomorphic and flat design.
Well then this is just post-modernism applied to flat design. An amorphous ball of nothing that has no rules so do whatever you want. Want drop shadows in two directions, cool, cause we can do whatever we want now!
I'm not buying it. Post-modernism has been exposed as a joke by fake academic paper generators. Design loosed from it's moors is called experimentation, not post-flat, or whatever's cool right. Please, experiment, just don't claim you've re-invented magic.
I also don't like that it's harder to tell if shift is on or off, now. Pre iOS 7, at least it went blue. Now it goes from black on white to white on gray, I still couldn't tell ya which is which. The case of the keycaps changing with the state of shift would fix that, too.
DL;DR: the current 'flat design' fad is a reaction to skeuomorphism overuse and abuse. Flat design isn't really the solution either, since close adherence can hinder intuitiveness. Therefore, a compromise the author calls "post flat design" is a fusion between the two styles with a focus on content and intuitiveness rather than implementation.
Personally, I don't know if "post flat design" is the solution, but I'm sick of flat design. I prefer skeuomorphism, but agree with the author that it has been overdone: I don't need a photo-realistic leather binder for my note-taking app, for instance.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that design, like fashion or any other type of art can't be rationalized or justified using scientific like processes.
What "looks right" today looks out-dated and clunky tomorrow. There usually isn't any logic behind it, only changing tastes.
Flat looks/ed good because we were so entrenched in a skeuomorphic world and were sick of it. Just like wearing baggy jeans with teens morphed into skinny jeans, or grunge music supplanting glam-rock, tastes of humans change over time and no matter how hard you try to break it down and analyze why one art replaced another, there isn't usually an answer to be found.
Extreme flat design has brought about horrible interfaces (see iOS7) yet it has also brought wonderful innovations due to it's tendency to break free of the physical world.
Were gradients and company names without vowels of the Web 2.0 era superior to the ones prior? No, but it felt right because of where we had come from. I suspect that trend will continue forever.
There wont' ever be a "final" design aesthetic that we all agree is the best, and art will never reach some sort of pinnacle that will never be surpassed.
Make your own art, don't worry about what is trending ... you might find yourself on the "right" side of design if you focus on making your art the best it can be.
I agree. But is interface design wholly in the realm of art? It's not a case of "this art will be viewed by a thousand people and some will get it and some won't." It's a case of "hundreds of thousands of paying customers need to know where on the screen to touch to open a new tab."
One of the things I appreciated about the past 20 years of Web design is that a set of traditions and conventions slowly formed, such that a user of one site could quickly figure out how to work the buttons or menus of another site.
Though there are some conventions now in flat and mobile design (like the hamburger icon to symbolize the menu), the steps one must learn to trigger actions on different devices -- touch that symbol over there, swipe to there, tap with two fingers here -- often feels more like some sort of conjuring of a spell than operating a device.
"But is interface design wholly in the realm of art?"
You're right, it isn't completely but every interface has an element of art. Interfaces exist in the art world as well, for example architecture and sculpture can be "used" as well as looked at.
Business design introduces another wrinkle but I would argue it's impact should be considerably less. A consumer should have the same needs/wants as a "user".
Speaking to your comment about conjuring spells .. I too grow weary of "swipe interfaces" that expect you to fondle the screen in order to discern how to navigate. It's very gimmicky and only had a place when the first touch screens were being rolled out. How that touch interfaces have matured it should be obvious (and no not a overlay instructional walk-through tutorial) how to use your app/website.
I would disagree. I think good design is timeless. It's why eras where design was preeminent like "art-deco" and "Hellenic Greece" still resonate so strongly with audiences today.
I think design aspires to a Platonic ideal of simplicity, function and form, but that the fashions of the time influence how that aspiration is expressed.
It's why Steve Jobs and his vision were so successful in my opinion, paring the complexity of modern consumer electronics and attendant functionality back to what a user actually wants and needs from a device. If you disagree, I'd be interested to hear why (re: simplicity, not so much Steve Jobs) as I use external opinions to shape and refine my own.
Then why does design move on, evolve or change about-face? Also how do you know that your design is good, and will stand the test of time? I think what you're witnessing is design that still appeals to your modern tastes. This I attribute more to luck than some superior logic.
"design aspires to a Platonic ideal of simplicity, function and form"
If you believe that than you're throwing out an entire category of design that isn't simple. Some design is incredibly complex ..even messy yet at the time it's considered beautiful and rich because it reflects and invokes human emotions of the time.
Simplicity can stand the test of time because it lacks elements that we associate with the time which can fall out of taste. That doesn't make it better, it just makes it ... simple.
The best design reflects the current tastes of your audience, it does not need to be timeless or even make sense to future generations. Good design evokes an emotional response and that response is dictated by many factors which take into account context.
As great as the Eames Lounge Chair is, I think it looks like it was created in the 1950s. A better example of a timeless piece of design would be the Barcelona Chair, which predates even the Eames Chair. It still looks modern, nearly a century after it was created.
To the people discounting timeless design: yes most of contemporary industrial design is disposable, but some pieces from Braun and Apple will be considered classics.
I would never pay for a Picasso or a Van Gogh to hang in my house (because it's would be exorbitant and) because it doesn't evoke positive emotions when I look at it. Norman Rockwell does just that and he has since I was a kid, does that make his art better than Picasso's? Not to most people.
Just because ideas about how a chair can be designed remain popular doesn't mean that it stops being subjective.
Design can vary in terms of how "good" it is but even eras like art-deco will go through periods where it resonates more strongly with people. The factors for that can be any multitude of things.
Even using Steve Jobs as an example doesn't work. The design of the iPod/iPhone has changed drastically in just 10 years. I don't consider my 2nd generation iPod as "timeless". I can admit that it was great 10 years ago but today it's not so much.
That being said I do believe there's elements of science in design. The golden ratio perhaps or using concentric circles. It seems plausible that those could be less taxing on our vision to look at.
I don't know if that applies to flat design though.
"That being said I do believe there's elements of science in design. The golden ratio perhaps or using concentric circles."
I agree here too, but I don't think these concepts are enough to influence every generation of design.
I think it's wonderful that there are artists creating right now that have never heard of prior art or scientific principles like the golden ratio. Just think how hard it would be to create innovative art with an entire list of per-requisites and scientific requirements.
I would disagree. I think it can be rationalized, trends reflect the changing tastes of society - and the changing tastes of society reflect how society itself is changing. I think for a lot of art and fashion, the trends can be rationalized from anthropological, sociological, or psychological perspectives. For those ignorant about certain industries however, i'm sure trends can appear arbitrary. (and a lot of people try to follow what's fashionable without understanding why it's fashionable)
iOS 7 for example could have represented how our society has become sufficiently technologically savvy enough to not need the visual clues that comes with skeumorphism, e.g. people don't need the notes app to look like it's real-world counterpart for them to know that you take notes with the notes app. We as a society are so used to touch screens these days that we don't need skeumorphism anymore to remind us how things work.
Of course, there will never be a final design aesthetic as society and technology are constantly evolving. Yes, flat is just a trend, but it wasn't arbitrary.
> the trends can be rationalized from anthropological, sociological, or psychological perspectives
I'm not an inherent skeptic of the worth of the soft humanities, but it's pretty far fetched to claim that these fields can offer anything like a unified or even non-contentious view on design elements, or anything else for that matter. If anything, the virtue of these fields is based on the multiplicity of interpretation they offer. They ain't Newtonian physics, that's for sure.
No, the idea is that there are reasons for trends that have to do with people, culture and society. The fact that trends are a product of our very complex society means that the explanations for these trends can be studied from an academic perspective. Aesthetic trends aren't created by programmers, that's for sure.
Designers have been using animations to signal affordances in buttons and actionable elements. Drop shadows are still effective in doing this. Every design trend has been a reaction to the previous one. As interaction designers, we should always be thinking about the end user.
"Dust off your drop shadows and gradients, and introduce them to your flat color buttons and icons. Do your absolute best work without feeling restricted to a single aesthetic."
I feel like the author is admitting that they are completely constrained by the rules or whims of trend- and that breaking out of them is some kind of crazy paradigm shift- and that breaking them only involves mixing in the tired tropes of the last fashion into the tired tropes of the new one.
My experience is that its only the non-designers that feel constrained by fashion. The professionals push the boundaries - they are the ones that define it.
But in terms of the web... if you can't create it with CSS3, its not worth it IMO. All those extra little shadows and light reflections... yeaaa. No thanks.
More designers should learn CSS and build out little things like this themselves so they can see how far they can take it without using an image.
This article advocates for some balance between flat design and skeumorphism. Granted, the article is written decently well, but it does not go into any detailed analysis as to where that balance should lie.
It simply states: Hierarchy should use composition and color. Cool -- basic design principle, check. Beautiful, readable typography? Yes -- sure. Strong emphasis on content, not ornamentation. OK. I've read this 1000x times already. What is new? Where are the analyses or case studies to support the principles?
We need to start talking about where the balance lies and why it lies there. Different interactions will require different balances to find optimality.