The times of the flat

The times of the flat (2010)

Designing more layouts takes more time, so luckily we decided to streamline the process by ditching fancy shadow effects and getting back to the roots of design by prioritizing the content. Fine photography, typography, sharp illustrations and thoughtful layouts is how we design now. Simplifying visual elements or so called Flat design is also part of the process. The main benefit here is that much more thought is being put into copy, into hierarchy of the message and content in general. Glossy buttons are replaced by icons and that allows us to use vector images and icon fonts. Web fonts deliver beautiful typography. The funny thing is, the web was close to this from the very beginning. But well, that’s what the young years are for.

The bright future (2014)

The holy grail of web design has been to actually make it visual and bring it into the browser. Imagine that designers simply move things around the screen and a clean code comes out! And I don't mean changing the order of things, but having full flexibility and control! Imagine that developers don't have to worry about browser compatibility and can focus on actual problem solving!

Technically there are a few new concepts that support the move into that direction. New units in CSS like vh, vw (view port height and width) allow much greater flexibility to position elements. It will also solve the problem that has puzzled so many designers – why centering something vertically in CSS is such a pain. Flex box is another cool concept which is a part of CSS. It allows to create layouts and modify them with a single property instead of writing lot of code. And finally web components is an even bigger take. It is a set of elements bundled together, i.e. a gallery, signup form etc. That introduces an easier workflow, where elements become building blocks that can be reused and updated separately.