If you are someone involved with designs, paper, colors and everything like that, then surely the new design language of Google is just out for you. Yes! the folks of Google have done it once again, and, this time, interface is their brand. This new visual design language has been humbly acknowledged by global designers and developers who are all set to deliver material experiences to millions of users.
Google came up with this newly found perspective of human and device interaction in 2014. Soon, the specifications of material design were published to proffer a series of guidelines to help the worldwide community of designers and developers to create designs with fascinating UI on all devices.
Fundamentals Of Material Design
Considering cues from basic paper and ink form, the material design is conceptualized by using shadows and edges to create scalable UI across all major devices and platforms.
Defining Material Design
Material design is a concept patented by Google™s designer desk that helps designers to create applications and websites that are high on UI, accessibility, and usability quotient. This new design system is supposedly designed to address recurring issues faced by designers on regular terms. It includes a tray of colors, typography, font, iconography and an interface subjected as a brand. Google defines this interface as “unifying theory of a rationalized space and a system of motion.” in one of its live broadcasts.
Material design Aims To
√ Build a visual language comprehending the standards of good design, principles of innovation, and abilities of technology.
√ Create a unified system that provides reliable and uniform UI across all devices and platforms.
Principle’s Of Material Design
1. Material is the Metaphor: Inspired by the concepts of ink and paper, material design is all about the surface and edges that provide cues to make it a reality. Paper is referred as material here, and material is the metaphor.
2. Bold, graphic, intentional: Grids, space, scale, typography, color, and imageries are the building elements of all print-based designs. The effective use of typography, colors, imagery and white spaces is done to create an astounding user-experience.
3. Motion provides meaning: Motion is meaningful and complimenting. With motion, objects are displayed to the users without compromising on the continuity of user experience being provided.
There are set of “rules” detailed by Google, on how to create animation, style, layouts, components, patterns and usability. All of these guidelines have been beautifully detailed in the documentation provided by the proprietor.
Attributes Of Material Design In Detail
Style
An iota color concept of this design system is being taken from the flat design theory. The color tray contains both bold and bright colors. While the typography follows the flat theme along with sans serifs. Basic color concepts have been added and so does the typography. Roboto- is the default font used for all android applications.
Layout
Print design concepts have been used to formulate the basic layout of the material design. All the designers have been hence motivated to use primary mathematical and grid structure for placing the elements.
Components
All 19 components of material design have been beautifully mentioned. Each and every element is crucial in its own usage and function. Here they are:
Bottom sheets
Buttons
Cards
Chips
Dialogs
Dividers
Grids
Lists
List controls
Menus
Pickers
Progress and activity
Sliders
Snackbars and toasts
Subheaders
Switches
Tabs
Text fields
Tooltips
Usability
In this section, designers would get to know the concepts of accessibility and bidirectionality.
Accessibility should be integrated into the applications such that they can be viewed, navigated and used uniformly by all across different devices. The applications should thus become so capable that they can reach a wider audience.
Material design supports bidirectionality, which means that the text/scripts can either be written or read from left-to-right (LTR) or from right-to-left(RTL). For example, for English the language scripts would be LTR while in the case of some regional language like Arabic, Persian would be seen in (RTL). Such bidirectionality of font enhances the look and feel of the text and its screen.
Resources Of Material Design
Material Design has become the hot topic today. Most of us go for direct downloading while other find ways to use it in a different manner. Here is a list of resources that would help you explore concepts of material design thoroughly.
√ Color Palettes
√ Device Metrics
√ Layout templates for mobile, tablet, desktop, and Whiteframes
√ Roboto & Noto fonts
√ Sticker sheets & icons for components, system icons, product icons, & icon library
Still need more reasons to convince yourself of the impeccable features of this design language. Here you go:
Flexible
Google™s design system provides extensive flexibility to designers and webmasters to serve on multiple screens and devices. The guidelines have been provided on how to uniformly serve a small and large screen Android display. This is in no doubt beneficial for designers as it simplifies their work and helps in conforming to the changing display and devices.
Google Is The New Designer In Town
Google shares no history in publicizing its design prospects. Though it started using a simpler and cleaner design forum for past few years but that too was not so evident. It is quite enthralling to see that Google itself jumped into the pool of designing with its very own patented design language. In no doubt, it has gained a remarkable popularity for the same, which is worthy in every sense.
Latest Hardware Approach
Just imagine the interfaces of computers which were introduced back in 80™s and 90™s, and the first iPhone/ smartphone. Now compare it with the present GUI™s, I will be surprised if you find no remarkable difference, because the web industry has leaped to a great extent since that period in terms of visibility, performance, usability, accessibility and much more.
In other words, material design can be stated as a futuristic prospect of present technology. It is different from other designs in a way that the latter ones were specifically developed to work with the older technology.
Futuristic
Motion and animation are two major key factors of material design. All credits to physics that materializes the thought of motion in high quality on different hardware and software devices. These fundamental features of material designing provide the extended version of the interface that comprehends a structure which is more than just flat.
Such a technology is highly accessible, usable and accepted by a large number of population across the globe. This increased the usage results in the growing charisma of web designing and development industry.
The only thing that makes this incredible designing language different from others is that no other design language gives such a considerable attention on the motion. This pretty new idea is just the beginning of something big that is going to happen in the coming future, making the life of web users and webmasters innovative and easy.
One For All
Material design is an ultimate solution to unify the experiences delivered on different devices and screens. This metaled take by Google would help users view and experience Google with same perspective on different screens. With time, the technology is changing, new and advanced devices are being added and are about to be added, each having different screen size. This real-time design system would help designers provide unified UI on all screens/devices. There is no doubt on the success of this amazing designing technology.
Designing approaches like this are all set to erase the thin line between the real and the digital world.
Conclusion
Material Design is much more than just an idea. It is a concept introduced with an ambition of proffering a lively example of a new prospect of a device and human relationship complimenting each other. This is truly a different approach for all developers and designers to explore the previously existing standards of web design and development.
I will not rate the success of this relegation, as exclusive inventions like this need some time to flourish their niche amongst the crowd. But I am sure of its oddity and uniqueness which are surely going to leverage the ideals of designing industry.
