What’s the future for graphic designers in Apple’s flat app world?
With software and UX designers taking responsibility for the look and feel of many brands online, Laura Walkerdine, a senior designer at The if agency, asks what next for the graphic designers?
Flat looks for Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft and Ebay
Designers are expected to stay on top of the trends – trudging through miles and miles of design blogs, keeping our eyes out for lovely ways to merge type and image. With new blogs and ‘inspiration’ sites/magazines/pinterest boards popping up all over our field of work, it can be hard to know where to look.
It becomes even harder when the instigators of new and fresh design trends aren’t necessarily the graphic designers, but software and UX designers.
Take for example the direction of the last six months or so; Apple announced the release of iOS7, and it looked flat, really flat. Like 17th century ‘you’ll fall off the edge of the world’ flat. But ‘flat’ in this instance didn’t mean lacking in substance or pizazz - it was beautiful. It divided opinion and at first people were wary of this flatness, but this wasn’t designed by a traditional graphic designer.
This revolutionary design was the brainchild of Apple demi-god Sir Jony Ive Senior Vice President of Design at Apple Inc.
As a designer, I thought it was great, I was bored of bevels, shied away from the drop shadows and no longer felt a high from the highlights. But like all things Apple, it was divisive.
Despite this polarizing start, company logos started to fall in line, no-one wanted the logo on their app to stand out for being in the old clunky, bloated style.
Take for example the former facebook logo, full of highlights, bevels and lines. Compare it to the new flat sleek design, it’s almost enough to make me want to reopen my account, almost.
It’s the same story for Twitter, Microsoft, Ebay they’re all at it. Going flatter, simpler, more beautiful.
So, where does this leave your humble graphic designer?
We may no longer be the avant garde, the kings and queens of future aesthetics. But it still falls to us to mold these trends, carefully corale and care for these fashions and treat them with kid gloves. We may no longer be at the helm, but we are now the protectors, the ninjas of the new.