On Design

January 30, 2015 by John Doe

I have a certain philosophy about web design - it should be simple, easy to digest and usable. While I am aware that these are the basic tenents of modern day design, it certainly feels like a lot of places have forgotten that. Some sites feel like they've just stuck an alarming amount of widgets, information, ad space and other such nonsense to the point where it becomes information overload.

This is why I welcome the renaissance of flat, more European-esque design, and Google's Material design guildlines. I believe they're forcing designers to take a step back and re-evaluate what really needs to be surfaced, what needs to be exposed. The emergence of the user experience field has also helped greatly accelerate this. Before, it almost felt like a lot of UIs had an engineer "let's throw everything on here without regards to layout because we need everything here" approach to them. Or an "let's add in a lot of unnecessary color and graphics because it looks cool!" approach (which far too many people were guilty of in the 90s).

While some may think that flat design is far too utilitarian or spartan to be effective, I think that is a necessary step. By stripping things down to their core elements, designers and engineers can work together to, like I said earlier, re-evaluate what goes into an app and how it is laid out. It's taking a page from the Bahaus school of design - form follows function.

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