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<h1 id="the-death-of-personality">The Death of Personality</h1>
<p>2017-11-01</p>
<p>On September 18, 2013 truly original product design (everything from icon and app design to UI and experience interactions) began it&#8217;s fast decline into the abyss with the release of Apple&#8217;s iOS 7 update. It was called revolutionary. It was seen as a &#8216;new age&#8217; of design. I think it was a big mistake.</p>
<p><img src="/public/images/flat-design-tombstone_cfkyrq_c_scale,w_700.webp" alt="Flat design tombstone" /></p>
<h3 id="stepping-backwards">Stepping backwards</h3>
<p>Let me start off by saying I understand where they were trying to take mobile app design as a whole. &#8220;Less is more&#8221;, &#8220;cleaner UI to let the content be the focus&#8221;, &#8220;more touch based interactions&#8221;. The problem is that they cranked the dial too far in the other direction.</p>
<p>Because of this, a large movement was created based around the idea that skeuomorphic design is garbage, flat design is the future. And everyone drank the kool-aid without a single objection.
I&#8217;m using this ironically.</p>
<h3 id="icons-with-no-identity">Icons with no identity</h3>
<p>Do you remember Instagram&#8217;s original app icon and UI? Do you remember how everyone initially praised it? Show those old designs to the same designers who loved it only a few years ago, and they will now laugh at how &#8220;bad&#8221; it is.</p>
<p>Unfortunately the same can be said for Apple&#8217;s system icons across both iOS and macOS.</p>
<p>I believe Apple took the concept of a &#8216;consistent&#8217; design system across their iconography too literally. All the system icons should compliment one another, but they shouldn&#8217;t lose their own individual look and feel.</p>
<h3 id="lackluster-ui">Lackluster UI</h3>
<p>The once inspiring and hierarchically consistent interface of both iOS and macOS was also quickly swatted away. In it&#8217;s place we as users saw the removal of depth, initial visual cues as to what was interactive and what was static, and sadly even the overall color was muted.</p>
<h3 id="impact-on-the-web">Impact on the web</h3>
<p>This may not have been a bad thing if it was self-contained to Apple itself. The problem is that Apple has such a huge influence on the design industry - although that is starting to diminish, due to disasters like the iPhone X - that everyone starts to mimic and copy their style. This includes designers of sites and progressive web apps.</p>
<p>With the evolution of websites morphing into progressive web apps, designers have felt the need to start implementing this bland style for their design systems.</p>
<p>What we got in return:</p>
<ul>
<li>washed out colors</li>
<li>zero gradients for depth</li>
<li>the removal of all drop shadows (in meaningful ways that is)</li>
<li>the same generic Helvetica-based typefaces</li>
<li>the absence of hover states on interactive elements</li>
<li>a lack of any proper information density</li>
<li>an overkill of whitespace</li>
<li>one dimensional buttons (you know, the thing you want the user to interact with)</li>
<li>a complete disregard for original design not based off every other popular product</li>
</ul>
<h3 id="breaking-free-of-the-modern-era">Breaking free of the &#8216;modern era&#8217;</h3>
<p>Thankfully, there are still a few good designers who continue to create original and inspiring work not based solely on current trends.</p>
<p>Flexibits recently launched a new contact app for macOS called Cardhop. While the UI still shifts a little too far to the &#8216;flat trend&#8217; for my liking, they thankfully hired the very talented David Lanham to design the beautiful application icon.</p>
<p>This is where visual design shines. Icon designs like Cardhop&#8217;s are what allow individual applications to stand out in the dock or mobile home-screen among all the others. So how is that not UX design?</p>
<p>The current trendy thought process from designers that &#8220;visual design doesn&#8217;t involve UX design&#8221; is garbage. Neither are mutually exclusive and I think anyone who believes so is being incredibly short-sighted.</p>
<p>If you&#8217;re a designer, please stop riding trends and make your work visually beautiful. That doesn&#8217;t mean you need to sacrifice usability or function, but just put more love and confidence into your profession. Companies like Apple and Google don&#8217;t control how everyone else&#8217;s apps and sites should look, and based on their current design decisions - they shouldn&#8217;t.</p>
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