3 ms·

I really love the flat design trend. Does anyone know of any good photoshop/illustrator tutorials that teach this new trend?

• andrewmunsell 14y ago
  Choose some nice colors, and avoid layer styles entirely ;)
  • TheBiv 14y ago
    :) true, but I always tend to learn from the way people work going from nothing to a finished something (even if it's small). Maybe I'm thinking about it too much and I just need to do it!
• jongold 14y ago
  Read some books about Swiss design :) http://www.richardhollis.com/books-as-author-and-designer/swiss-graphic-design http://www.richardhollis.com/books-as-author-and-designer/sw...
  • TheBiv 14y ago
    Awesome find! Thank you sir!
  • antoniopratas 14y ago
    too bad web design wasn't around already in those days :) it would be akzidenz grotesk in every screen.
  • antoniopratas 14y ago
    but now I see, that most people that like the flat design "trend", probably have no notion of design history and never even heard about the international typographic style. And that worries me, a lot.
    • jongold 14y ago
      Some of us have though, and I'll talk for days about International Style to anyone who asks :)
      • TheBiv 14y ago
        How do I go about asking?
• markdown 14y ago
  I laughed out loud :)
• sgdesign 14y ago
  That's like asking for tutorials that show you how not to use shadows, gradients, and highlights. It's a bit of a contradiction…
  • Kerrick 14y ago
    No, it's a bit like asking for tutorials on good typography, use of color and negative space, and effective hierarchies.
• elou 14y ago
  The responses to this comment seem a bit unnecessarily condescending, but they share an underlying point - unlike the more realistic design trends, this one does not require Illustrator/Photoshop tutorials (except, perhaps for the icons, but that's more about learning precision with the pen tool). The flat design trend is more about an overal feel than exact design technique. Color plays an incredibly prominent role here - you'll notice that the same teal, dark blue, burnt orange, etc. shows up in the popular examples of "flat design". Note this UI set, the Layer Vault site, Built by Buffalo, Spelltower, etc. In comparison, Craigslist theoretically uses a "flat" design, but it would not be grouped in the same category because it doesn't have the same feel. If you start with a similar color palette and forgo the use of gradients and drop shadows, you will be well on your way. Typography plays a large role in this trend as well, although not as prominently. You'll notice the heavy use of sans serif fonts, although some examples (Medium sticks out in my mind) have nicely used serif fonts for body copy. Larger line heights and font-sizes (18px+ for base font size and line heights between 1.2 and 1.5 em) utilize white space well to make the design seem less compact - an excellent practice, because without other cues for depth, the flat visuals can look quite cramped. I would advise creating a dummy page and playing with these different styles. This trend is great for learning by doing, rather than learning by recreating (you don't need to get that perfect gradient to pull the design together). Tools like color.hailpixel.com can help you pull your color scheme together, and resources such as Symbolset.com can provide nice icon fonts that will tie your flat design together. You can also download the "What Font" extension to Chrome (do they have one for Firefox too?) to see the dominent fonts being used in these designs. I've been seeing Lato (http://www.google.com/webfonts/specimen/Lato http://www.google.com/webfonts/specimen/Lato) pop up a lot recently. Anyway, best of luck!