Flat design, neumorphism and the future
How Apple fell flat and discovered depth again.
It looks like Apple is moving away from flat design in favour of neumorphism.
The release of iOS 7 signalled the beginning of Apple’s era of flat design. As the name suggests, flat design is about removing unnecessary visual frippery; it makes everything look as if it’s laid flat on the same surface. That simplicity can be attractive, but you can simplify things too much and end up with icons and other interface elements where it’s not clear what’s going on. A good example of that is the ‘hamburger’ menu you see on a lot of websites, which is three horizontal lines on top of each other; there’s no obvious visual indication of what that icon does, and we only know what it is because we’ve seen it so many times before.
The other issue with flat design is that it’s not always obvious where you’re supposed to tap or click, especially if – like Apple did in iOS 7 – you deliberately adopt a very minimalist colour palette too. The iOS 7 Control Centre was a good example of that; with a translucent white background and very thin icons and controls in either dark grey or white depending on their status – it was hard to read or to see statuses at a glance. Thankfully Apple fixed that by adding colour in iOS 9 and different shadings in iOS 10.
Grey area
Colour matters. We’ve long understood that menu items shown in a mid-grey colour are not currently available, so when Apple made some icons grey – as it did with the iOS Share Sheet’s copy, slideshow and other icons while keeping app icons in fuller colour – that indicated that those icons weren’t available, when in fact they were. That’s another one that’s since been fixed.
Google took a slightly different approach. Rather than go for flat design, it went for what it calls Material Design; a similarly flat approach, but one that doesn’t rule out shadows, patterns and animations to help with clarity and make the interface feel more responsive. Apple uses gradients where Google prefers solid colours; Apple uses blurring while Google prefers drop shadows.
Microsoft has its taken own approach too. Microsoft Design Language (MDL), as used in Windows Phone and the Xbox 360, has evolved into what Microsoft calls Fluent Design. This is another very flat, very minimalist interface that you can see in Windows 10 and Windows 11, and it has a similar feel to Google’s Material Design.
It looks like Apple is already moving away from flat design in favour of neuomorphism, which is very evident in the difference between the icons in macOS Catalina and the ones in Big Sur or Monterey, and in the Control Centre pop-out from the menu bar. The familiar flat icons now have consistent lighting and shadows to make them look 3D, and they also use a consistent shape; gone are the tilted icons of Catalina for apps such as Preview or Reminders. Meanwhile circles have become ‘squircles’ – that is, squares with rounded edges, just like in the latest iOS, iPadOS and tvOS.