What Is Flat Design?
More and more people are jumping into the Flat and Responsive design trend wagon and we love it! There’s no wonder why this is a trend that’s growing stronger each day. Are you new to these concepts? You’ve come to the right place to start diving into this style.
Flat design bases its strength on improving the user experience; it’s a practical, minimalistic design style that makes everything more accessible. It all started with Windows when it morphed from “Vista” to “8”, and suddenly the platform that was once well known for a handful of gradients and graded transitions changed to become squared menus with sort of a “grid” style.
So, what elements make your design flat? Vibrant colors, no gradients, a lot of use of “white space”, simple and large “sans-serif” typography and symbols made from simple vectors. If you are still not convinced, the best part of “flat” is that can be easily adapted to other platforms like cellphones or tablets.
This is why responsive sites love flat design. If you are not familiar with “responsive design”, it’s a way to make your site adaptable for different platforms with coding. Remember when Apple also changed from Skeuomorphism to Partial Flat design?
Now that you know the basics, here are some tips for you so you can achieve the best out of your Web Flat and Responsive design:
1. Use basic and simple geometric shapes.
Triangles, squares, polygons, are your best friend. But don’t only use these shapes to compose your design; you could also focus your design around the shape.
2. Go back to the start.
Remember grid design? You should go back to it! It may seem slightly like beginners’ design, but it will help you achieve the flat look, however, don’t be afraid to break the rules if needed.
3. Limit your gradient use.
Gradients are beautiful, but flat design is not really a big fan of them. Limit to solid colors for a clean-cut direction.
4. Sans Serif is king.
Even though we’ve seen flat design with Serif typography, Sans Serif is king.
What are your opinions about this particular design trend?
Source: MSM DesignZ, Inc. is a Westchester social media company based in NY specializing in advertising, web and graphic design, and SEO.