Character depth should be proportional to the character's importance to the story. Below are some great examples of flat design.- Benny, The LEGO Movie 2: The Second PartĪ flat character is one that has only the bare minimum of characteristics necessary to play their role in the story.īeing flat is not automatically bad. Solid, vivid colours give aspects the emphasis needed to set them apart in place of illustrative detail sans-serif typography provides a clean, crisp supplement to illustrations text is concise and to-the-point UI elements like buttons and links are clear and noticeable.Įverything should be designed with the same goal in mind to create a cohesive visual and functional web design. To design an effective flat site, all design elements must be centred on this idea of simplicity. This raw functionality forces a site's focus to be on user experience, so websites that employ this design style successfully are likely to receive positive feedback as being user-friendly. A website is designed and judged by how well it works, as opposed to what it looks like. What you can learn from flat designįlat design reverts back to the basics of design as a functional tool. This just goes to show that there's a fine line between following trends such as flat design, and standing out from the crowd. The danger here is that because they are all following the flat design trend, and using bright colours to elevate their designs, they are almost becoming too similar (as we explored in this piece). The icons above show just some of the icons in use in 2021, including last year's controversial Google icon rebrand. Notice how bigger, solid colour blocks are more attention-grabbing and the meaning of the icons can quickly be perceived. It's easy to see an immediate difference between a skeuomorphic and a flat design. Images like icons can indicate universal actions or purposes so that everyone can easily understand them.

Simple images convey messages more quickly than detailed illustrations.

Flat design is definitely having a moment – has it gone too far? (Image credit: Tobias van Schneider)

What is the purpose of flat characters