Flat icons might be a trend

Creative Bloq has a pictoral from late last year as a rebuff to the swell of "flat art" for the UI.

back to actual art with icons. The backlash might not take; I don't really care, but the work is definitely worth a minute or two.

I was wondering how some of the techniques used could be emulated in Xara. Rik Datta is well known for this treatment:

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A picture can say a thousand words. You limit your scope, and the picture can say about 8 words :)

Hand-held devices didn't go to 300dpi to show solid colors. Look at what the gaming industry is doing.

My Best,

Gary

It's like the fashion industry. Change for the sake of change. I like flat icons. Then again, I like 3D icons.

Interesting observation about “change for the sake of change”, oG.

In advertising, that’s the last recourse, the most desperate move when you have no real improvement to the core of the product. Like changing your logo, giving away 10% free, and adding sugar to Wheaties, something General Mills never did until they realized that kids don’t eat cereal for breakfast and it’s the Boomers who want Cap’n Crunch and Rice Krispies Treats.

Superfluous change—changes because you don’t have anything better to do—is a mixed blessing. As far as icons go, the Flat Look exposed designers to a different approach to iconic symbolism, a different style you might say, and some welcomed it while others hated it. I have to question the wisdom of Steve Balmer on the Flat icon look, though.

I believe what he was trying to do is unite interfaces across devices. A Windows-style Desktop is impossible to navigate on a tab or SmartPhone and when you design for the Desktop and your audience is mobile, you fail to communicate. Conversely, making this simplistic, minimalistic motif the default for all devices was bound to irk some Desktop users and Microsoft should have realized we’re not going to embrace huge, honking flat, 2-color icons on a 1280 x 1024 and higher resolution screen.

I think the “one size fits all” redesign of the UI in Windows 8 had some merit, but I can’t believe it floated in focus groups. The only thing I feel it really accomplished was to validate a Minimalist approach to desktop icons. And like you, at the same time, many iOS icons went over-the-top and are wonderful art, but you never see the detail in ‘em on a mobile device, they take up too much space to show the full detail the artist put into them, and they’d be better served for the time being as gallery pieces.

My Best,

Gary

I admire and wince at the same time, at this music icon.

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