6 ms·

You clearly weren't around 10 years ago, where the discourse was all about APPLE'S SKEUOMORPHISM IS SATAN and FLAT MATERIAL DESIGN IS THE ONE TRUE WAY all the t

You clearly weren't around 10 years ago, where the discourse was all about APPLE'S SKEUOMORPHISM IS SATAN and FLAT MATERIAL DESIGN IS THE ONE TRUE WAY all the time. Alas[1], flat won, so people probably talk about it less. [1] I know its a lot easier to fuck up skeuomorphic stuff, but now everything's boring shit...

kitsunesoba 4y ago
I don't have anything to back it up, but I think "flat is easy" has a lot to do with how strongly it was advocated for and popularized back then. Skeuomorphism takes a great deal of skill to craft — technical skill in e.g. Photoshop, artistic skill to make it tasteful, and UX skill to make it usable. In contrast, anybody with even a passing understanding of HTML and CSS and can draw monochrome squares all day long, and the need for graphics software is minimized or in some cases removed entirely. In a world where time to ship is everything (as it was at that point), flat was a natural choice for projects driven by technical types. Way faster and cheaper to slap Material Design on it and shove it out the door than it is to hire a designer to come up with a unique, eye-catching skeuomorphic design that set your product apart.
- jhatemyjob 4y ago
  This could not be further from the truth. Steve Jobs and Scott Forstall were the ones pushing for the realistic icons (not "skeuomorphism" btw, Scott is on record saying he hates the word "skeuomorphism"). It was a cabal within Apple, lead by Jony Ive, that was pushing for flat. When Steve Jobs died in 2011, and Tim Cook fired Scott Forstall in 2012, that cabal all of a sudden had way more leverage. And so, in 2013, iOS 7 was released with the flat design. It's as simple as that.
  - kitsunesoba 4y ago
    For iOS/macOS specifically, yes, but the comment chain seemed (to me at least) to be discussing the trend towards flatness in the wider industry, which had been in motion well before Apple got on board.
    - jhatemyjob 4y ago
      That's not true either. The only notable example you can come up with is Google Chrome. And let's not sit here and pretend that Google was what all the designers were copying. Google's design has always been that terrible flat stuff. Google Chrome's icon, for some reason, used the "realistic" design for only 2 years before changing it to match the rest of the company's icons. The "wider industry" was copying Apple. Tons of icons changed from "realistic" to "flat" in 2013, which was a direct reaction to iOS 7.
      - fredoralive 4y ago
        You're forgetting stuff like Metro, introduced with Windows Phone 7 in 2010 (then infamously Windows 8), and Android was getting flatter from around 4.x in 2011. The trend was definitely moving towards flat UI, and people really were criticising Apple for not following it. Apple wasn’t really a leader in this stuff, certainly not on an OS level.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        jhatemyjob 4y ago
        You gotta be kidding with the Windows Phone example. It was always irrelevant. And Android at the time was an iOS knockoff.
        eightysixfour 4y ago
        To think the Metro Design language didn’t influence tech design would be a mistake. The evolution from Zune, to WP7, and W8 clearly influenced Material and other flat design.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
- mike_hock 4y ago
  Weirdly enough, complicated graphics were all the rage when they were a massive resource drain and pushing the limits of the hardware at the time. The second they became cheap enough to be actually feasible, they fell out of favor and were replaced by bland, amateurish design that could run fine on 90s hardware. I guess they found other ways to make software bloated and slow and didn't need the UI for that anymore.
  - endgame 4y ago
    And yet: modern apps are so badly written that the computer struggles to render monochrome rectangles, while 90s hardware rendered buttons with bevels, obvious cues to interactivity, and shortcuts that were actually discoverable.
- scarface74 4y ago
  You’re over thinking it. The issue with skeuomorphism was that you had to have a pixel perfect design targeted to one resolution and screen ratio.
wolpoli 4y ago
It's amazing looking at the staying power of flat design. 10 years ago, some commentators on HN were calling flat design a fad. 10 years later, we only evolved to flat 2.0 with saturated hue on buttons and bit of shadow around buttons. Oh we got some cute superfluous animations.
- xcrunner529 4y ago
  [dead]
rvense 4y ago
I feel the same way. I'm so bored with this stupid Helvetica-kitsch.
- fredoralive 4y ago
  I may not be the greatest fan of flat design, but how dare you besmirch the good name of Helvetica. It’s a good proper font. The fact that every company feels the need to commission their own vanity font, which will inevitably be a generic soft humanist sans serif that is indistinguishable from any other company's generic soft humanist sans serif vanity font, now that is the true scourge. :-)
pigsty 4y ago
Closer to 15 years ago. Flat is a meme that simply will not die. People were posting on HN over a decade ago about how flat was over the hill and we’d soon move past it. It’s insane how it’s stuck for so long and still doesn’t have any real sign of going away.

kitsunesoba 4y ago

I don't have anything to back it up, but I think "flat is easy" has a lot to do with how strongly it was advocated for and popularized back then. Skeuomorphism takes a great deal of skill to craft — technical skill in e.g. Photoshop, artistic skill to make it tasteful, and UX skill to make it usable. In contrast, anybody with even a passing understanding of HTML and CSS and can draw monochrome squares all day long, and the need for graphics software is minimized or in some cases removed entirely. In a world where time to ship is everything (as it was at that point), flat was a natural choice for projects driven by technical types. Way faster and cheaper to slap Material Design on it and shove it out the door than it is to hire a designer to come up with a unique, eye-catching skeuomorphic design that set your product apart.

jhatemyjob 4y ago
This could not be further from the truth. Steve Jobs and Scott Forstall were the ones pushing for the realistic icons (not "skeuomorphism" btw, Scott is on record saying he hates the word "skeuomorphism"). It was a cabal within Apple, lead by Jony Ive, that was pushing for flat. When Steve Jobs died in 2011, and Tim Cook fired Scott Forstall in 2012, that cabal all of a sudden had way more leverage. And so, in 2013, iOS 7 was released with the flat design. It's as simple as that.
- kitsunesoba 4y ago
  For iOS/macOS specifically, yes, but the comment chain seemed (to me at least) to be discussing the trend towards flatness in the wider industry, which had been in motion well before Apple got on board.
  - jhatemyjob 4y ago
    That's not true either. The only notable example you can come up with is Google Chrome. And let's not sit here and pretend that Google was what all the designers were copying. Google's design has always been that terrible flat stuff. Google Chrome's icon, for some reason, used the "realistic" design for only 2 years before changing it to match the rest of the company's icons. The "wider industry" was copying Apple. Tons of icons changed from "realistic" to "flat" in 2013, which was a direct reaction to iOS 7.
    - fredoralive 4y ago
      You're forgetting stuff like Metro, introduced with Windows Phone 7 in 2010 (then infamously Windows 8), and Android was getting flatter from around 4.x in 2011. The trend was definitely moving towards flat UI, and people really were criticising Apple for not following it. Apple wasn’t really a leader in this stuff, certainly not on an OS level.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - jhatemyjob 4y ago
        You gotta be kidding with the Windows Phone example. It was always irrelevant. And Android at the time was an iOS knockoff.
        eightysixfour 4y ago
        To think the Metro Design language didn’t influence tech design would be a mistake. The evolution from Zune, to WP7, and W8 clearly influenced Material and other flat design.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
mike_hock 4y ago
Weirdly enough, complicated graphics were all the rage when they were a massive resource drain and pushing the limits of the hardware at the time. The second they became cheap enough to be actually feasible, they fell out of favor and were replaced by bland, amateurish design that could run fine on 90s hardware. I guess they found other ways to make software bloated and slow and didn't need the UI for that anymore.
- endgame 4y ago
  And yet: modern apps are so badly written that the computer struggles to render monochrome rectangles, while 90s hardware rendered buttons with bevels, obvious cues to interactivity, and shortcuts that were actually discoverable.
scarface74 4y ago
You’re over thinking it. The issue with skeuomorphism was that you had to have a pixel perfect design targeted to one resolution and screen ratio.

wolpoli 4y ago

It's amazing looking at the staying power of flat design. 10 years ago, some commentators on HN were calling flat design a fad. 10 years later, we only evolved to flat 2.0 with saturated hue on buttons and bit of shadow around buttons. Oh we got some cute superfluous animations.

xcrunner529 4y ago
[dead]

rvense 4y ago

I feel the same way. I'm so bored with this stupid Helvetica-kitsch.

fredoralive 4y ago
I may not be the greatest fan of flat design, but how dare you besmirch the good name of Helvetica. It’s a good proper font. The fact that every company feels the need to commission their own vanity font, which will inevitably be a generic soft humanist sans serif that is indistinguishable from any other company's generic soft humanist sans serif vanity font, now that is the true scourge. :-)

pigsty 4y ago

Closer to 15 years ago. Flat is a meme that simply will not die. People were posting on HN over a decade ago about how flat was over the hill and we’d soon move past it. It’s insane how it’s stuck for so long and still doesn’t have any real sign of going away.