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I would think around the first iPhone. In my opinion, flat design was "invented" as a cost saving measure. In fact the design of all other things around us fol

I would think around the first iPhone. In my opinion, flat design was "invented" as a cost saving measure. In fact the design of all other things around us follows a similar pattern - complexity and "vestigial" features are being reduced.

jameshart 11y ago
In my experience, it's harder to design something simple than to design something complex.
- asgard1024 11y ago
  Design - maybe. Craft - doubt it. The OP, as I read it, is talking primarily about craft being lost. Maybe I am cynical, but it's easier to hire couple students filling outlines all day than to have proper artists that can do coloring, shading.. This happened to architecture and interior decoration before. We have a nice railing in my house (Prague, middle class appartment block from 1890s) that would be too expensive to replace today, you would be lucky to find a blacksmith who can do that. Apparently, it was a normal thing 120 years ago. How come that with all the technology we have today, we can afford intricately crafted designs less and less? My only explanation is economic - people are cheap and so-called "simple" design is good enough. I think we are losing something. Instead having people skilled in craft we have them either unemployed or having some bullshit office jobs (I am no exception btw).
kitsunesoba 11y ago
It can’t be a coincidence that “flat” design became hip right around the time “HTML/CSS/JS for EVERYTHING” trend really started to gain momentum. Web tech is far more inclined toward flat, uncomplicated designs than it is the sort of detailed, nuanced, multi-dimensional designs that used to be popular. It’s trivial to create silky, sophisticated UIs in native software, but that segment of software engineers haven’t been the ones loudly blogging or writing lengthy design diatribes for quite some time now.
Someone 11y ago
I bet answers to that will differ, and correlate fairly well with age. For some people, it will be a few decades before that: http://www.kare.com/portfolio/03_apple_macicons.html http://www.kare.com/portfolio/03_apple_macicons.html. That was a time when an icon wasn't "a drawing showing one object or coherent group of objects", but "around a hundred pixels showing one object or group of objects".

jameshart 11y ago

In my experience, it's harder to design something simple than to design something complex.

asgard1024 11y ago
Design - maybe. Craft - doubt it. The OP, as I read it, is talking primarily about craft being lost. Maybe I am cynical, but it's easier to hire couple students filling outlines all day than to have proper artists that can do coloring, shading.. This happened to architecture and interior decoration before. We have a nice railing in my house (Prague, middle class appartment block from 1890s) that would be too expensive to replace today, you would be lucky to find a blacksmith who can do that. Apparently, it was a normal thing 120 years ago. How come that with all the technology we have today, we can afford intricately crafted designs less and less? My only explanation is economic - people are cheap and so-called "simple" design is good enough. I think we are losing something. Instead having people skilled in craft we have them either unemployed or having some bullshit office jobs (I am no exception btw).

kitsunesoba 11y ago

It can’t be a coincidence that “flat” design became hip right around the time “HTML/CSS/JS for EVERYTHING” trend really started to gain momentum. Web tech is far more inclined toward flat, uncomplicated designs than it is the sort of detailed, nuanced, multi-dimensional designs that used to be popular. It’s trivial to create silky, sophisticated UIs in native software, but that segment of software engineers haven’t been the ones loudly blogging or writing lengthy design diatribes for quite some time now.

Someone 11y ago

I bet answers to that will differ, and correlate fairly well with age. For some people, it will be a few decades before that: http://www.kare.com/portfolio/03_apple_macicons.html http://www.kare.com/portfolio/03_apple_macicons.html. That was a time when an icon wasn't "a drawing showing one object or coherent group of objects", but "around a hundred pixels showing one object or group of objects".