Flat Design/Interface (Research)

Something that one of my friends during her presentation in our class discussed was flat interface and this being very common and growing as a new style within different platforms like mobile devices and tablets, and come to think of it so has design in some respect. I've come to notice that over time companies occasionally use flat user interface within their digital products, and this is common in company logos, diagrams, interface elements etc. and seems to be more of a common in order to simplify the design and make it effective but not too detailed or over the top.

Fig 1 and Fig 2: logo comparisons - 1

With these two examples above from the skype icon (logo) the one is the old version and the new one is the new skype logo design. As you can see not much has changed but the logo has been changed to a flat design. In many ways it helps to make it look better by simplifying it in design and it makes it more minimilstic and it works really well. It seems more companies are trying to simplify there logo or companies to designs to me it more memorable and easy to comprehend.

Fig 3 and Fig 4: logo comparisons - 2

Here is another logo which I'm pretty sure everyone recognises which is both the old and new design of windows logo icon. It seems over time people have realised that simpler the better which in most cases is the truth as people are able to recognise logos and icons if they are simple and not over complicated, and with the right use of colour schemes these flat designs can work really well on design and on interface or mobiles/tablets etc. The windows icon and its interface is becoming more and more simplistic through the use of flat UI design, and this has been based on Windows 8 and the influence of the upgrade, with flat user interface.

Fig 5: Screenshot of Windows 8 layout

Above in this screenshot is an example of UI design from Windows 8 and this uses a lot of flat colours as well as flat imagery and flat interface. The style and design of it all is very simplistic but looks visually pleasing and inspiring and something like this would help to give me ideas on interface for my iBook and potentially adding flat user interface within the navigation between chapters or using flat imagery interface as an icon or something, where people could click on and it could present or gather information about something, relating to my topic.

Fig 6/7/8: Flat User interface examples

Above are more examples of user flat interface design and uses a lot of solid colours and graphics which makes the style look very simple but effective. I like how they use a kind of light grey where they display bright coloured interface to make it stand out from the background. All of these are very inspiring and gives me a few ideas.

Despite these amazing styles what i want to do with my idea is focus more on implementing solid, flat imagery and a visual style to my iBook and with the content of interactivity most of it will probably not all me flat when it comes to appearance but i feel like combing flat with non flat aspects could make the non flat content stand out.

The idea is that my style and boxes for the content will be flat imagery with flat colours but the a lot of the content won't be, as i'll be showing off videos, diagrams and other interactivity, so they'll be a mixture of both within the content but i feel like the content will stand out against the flat design of the background and my overall visual style of my iBook