Material Or Flat Design – What Should You Opt For?

A lot has been discussed about implementing Material or Flat Design recently. Flat Design is not among one of the trends only because it is a part of Microsoft but also because of its number of other designing advantages. It’s been much appreciated by designers all over the globe. Since then, a number of companies have gone behind this trend. In general, Flat Design is a minimalist user interface category that has numerous applications in different graphical UI as in website designs.

On the other hand, when we talk about the Material Design, it gets a bit difficult to distinguish it from the Flat Design as one is related to another. The primary difference lies in the fact that Flat Design is based on the design trend that people have adapted to while the Material Design is not specifically the design trend. It is a list of guidelines to be followed by the designers to have a certain specification in the design.

What Is The Difference?

Well, this is not possible to conclude that there is any specific difference between the two. However, after reading this blog, you will have a conclusion what a Material or Flat Design is. But you won’t be able to exactly figure out any difference between them on any ground. Instead, you can relate them based on their applications.

Let’s try to compare them individually.

 

Flat Design

Flat Design is the simplest design and doesn’t have much of scope for styling and has a three-dimensional illusion. The main emphasis in flat design is in the interconnection of the icons, its typography and the use of colors. Additionally, simplicity is of prime importance in flat design.

 

Key Features:-

• In flat design, appearance is not of much importance instead, the focus is on the functionality.
• It allows responsive designing leaving much of scope for the designer as well as the users.
• No useless graphical and animated elements are present and it ensures the decrease in loading time.
• No skeuomorphic elements are present which ensures speedy readers’ progression in the content of the website.

 

Disadvantages:

• Flat designs are simple but not always effective, they do not leave much room for the creativity
• A lot many features are not present which are very much required for the modern age designs

 

Material Design

Material design is a set of design standard guidelines proposed by Google and it has a number of interesting features. The most popular one that makes it distinct is the use of the Z-axis. All the skeuomorphs from Material Design are removed. Material design is totally based on the concept of using multiple layers from innumerable image editors and it separates them by drop shadows, bevels, and animations.

 

Key Features:

• Material design provides a number of built-in animation options that eliminates the need to handle it manually and allowing to use animation in the design.
• The guidelines provided for Material Design are specific so you don’t need to explore it yourself.
• The three-dimensional program makes it easier to make any interaction between various elements of the design.
• It provides a unified experience no matter what device you are using.

 

Disadvantages:-

• It makes difficult for you to stand apart with your website and the systems won’t be able to provide the intended frame rates.
• As these design principles are developed by Google, there is not much that you can do it yourself with your own creativity to stand apart.

 Why Google Introduced Material Design?

We at Oodles Studio specialize in cutting-edge UI/UX design for mobile apps or websites with material and flat design applications. Our designers are the expert in creating apps and websites with up to date design trends, making use of advanced tools to provide our clients with best in class products.