Check out the new trend in design called Flat Design

Originally written by James Richardson on 1/26/2014

There are many designs out there that have specific button styles, colors, and design specs that make those designs stand out above the others. For example, the iPhone, Blackberry, Windows 8, bootstrap, and jQuery design styles are all different ways of "skinning" your website to a specific "look and feel". "Flat Design" is a type of style that is becoming popular these days.

What is "Flat Design"?

"Flat Design" is the use of more simple graphics that have less gradients, shadows, patterns and other effects used in the web industry. Microsoft is popularizing the Flat design in their new Windows 8 operating systems user interface. The "Flat Design" concept focuses on usability and readability as opposed to the flashy effects of the previous static, non-responsive website designs.

More human readable and simple.

Readability is the key to reaching today's market. Rifling through mass walls of text is causing the user bounce rate to increase. The simpler, easier to navigate and read websites are gaining popularity faster. This is due to the capability of delivering the content to the end user faster. "Flat Design" helps deliver the content on mobile devices much faster than the more graphic intensive websites.

Is simpler better?

Of course this question is simply a contest in the differences of opinion, I can say, the simpler the graphic representation the better. People can retain information longer and faster if it is said concisely, with accuracy, and readable. There have been many instances where I was trying to read information on a website, and just could not get through it due to an overuse of graphics, or just plain bad design style. An example of this is wainwrightapartments.com. The site has a Paralax style background that moves text across a moving background. It's too difficult to read. "Flat Design" has a simpler approach.

Flat UI Free User Interface Kit

A great tool to get your "Flat Design" on, is the Flat UI Free User Interface Kit. This kit will help a designer speed up the flat design process. It's very cool and free to download.

Links for more information

Ultimate Guide to Flat Website Design

25+ flat UI kits for web designers

What is flat design?