Material Design

“Make beautiful products, faster. Material is a design system – backed by open-source code – that helps teams build digital experiences”

Material.io

Material is a design language created by Google in 2014 for the Android platform. It has unified Android apps under a single design format. This has helped to give the Android platform a unique identity recognizable everywhere, however, material design is starting to be used with other things.

“Material Design is a visual language that synthesizes the classic principles of good design with the innovation of technology and science.” 

 Material.io

Many say that material design is the future, aiming to unify user experience across a host of platforms such as mobile and web.

Material design isn’t just about the way Google and Android do things. It’s changing design philosophy as a whole. One popular feature of material design is the “card” motifs that can store data in a way the user can easily understand. This data can often be manipulated by the user in ways such as swiping to mark the card as done.

Material design uses a number of practices to create a unified experience. It can often be described as minimalistic, using a lot of white space to create a clean user interface. Material design also relies heavily on the grid system, making sure everything is evenly spread out across the page whether it be mobile, tablet, or desktop.

Material design is very specific about the way designers use colours. The design specifies for calmer colours. Often shades of the same colour are used together along with the card system to symbolize depth. The way designers use colours can have a large impact on the identity of a brand, as one colour will be associated with that brand. The Android platform lets designers insert their brand colour into many different places such as Google Chrome’s tabs, app headers, and on the app task view. For example, Facebook uses this on the Android platform to display their signature blue colour everywhere they can. This helps create the brand’s identity, as whenever anyone sees that colour, they will recognize Facebook.