PDA

View Full Version : Are you using Google's Material Design standards on any web projects?



Harold Mansfield
07-31-2015, 12:00 PM
This year at Google I/O they heavily promoted their Material Design guidelines and standards. While it is predominantly geared towards app development, it seems their direction is to influence design standards for all of the web in general.


Material design is a comprehensive guide for visual, motion, and interaction design across platforms and devices. Android now includes support for material design apps. To use material design in your Android apps, follow the guidelines defined in the material design specification (http://www.google.com/design/spec) and use the new components and functionality available in Android 5.0 (API level 21) and above.

https://developer.android.com/design/material/index.html

Material design for websites is quickly gaining steam, and Google is making design elements, templates, API's for website design readily available such as with their launch of Material Design Lite.


Material Design Lite lets you add a Material Design (http://google.com/design/spec) look and feel to your websites. It doesn’t rely on any JavaScript frameworks and aims to optimize for cross-device use, gracefully degrade in older browsers, and offer an experience that is immediately accessible. Get started now (http://www.getmdl.io/started/index.html).
Material Design Lite (http://www.getmdl.io/)


Just wondering if anyone has gotten into it, studied any of it or plan on instituting it into any current or future designs.

vangogh
07-31-2015, 01:46 PM
Nope. I've never looked at it or had any interest in it. That said, if you want to develop apps for Android, it's probably a good idea to pay attention and follow Google's standards for many things. I don't think you have to always do exactly what they suggest. In fact I think that would hurt your app because it would be hard to stand out for any competition who also designed their app with the exact same standards. Still I'd say it makes sense to understand material design if you're working on Android and if anything it'll make the design process easier.

Harold Mansfield
07-31-2015, 01:56 PM
Android Studio, the development platform for app creation is totally material design focused. It's completely programmed in.
Still, there is plenty of room to keep the look and feel of your brand. It's mostly about keeping functions familiar across apps so that things like action areas, input, buttons, menus, and so on are consistent.

Personally I've always loved the use of shadows and 3D effects. Maybe too much. Years ago people told me that I shouldn't use it. That shadows on buttons and areas was amateurish. I disagreed, but succumbed to what people wanted which at the time was the "Web 2.0" look which I always hated. Today I just do what I want and things come out much better.

But I'm always cautious and "Web 2.0" is a good example. That big shiny button fad lasted about 6 months.