Keeping up on the latest in Calgary website design can be difficult. Everyone wants a great looking site, but there’s a lot more to good design than appearances.
Understanding which choices are the right choices for you and your business can get complicated. One current trend is flat design. What is it? Why has it become so popular? Is it right for you?
Understanding Flat Design
To make sense of flat design it helps to know what it’s not. For years designers have looked to influential companies to set trends. When Apple introduced the iPhone in 2007, it used a form of design that was a blend of realism and skeuomorphism (borrowing design cues from items that were necessary in the original even when they’re no longer needed) to ease users into the transition to their unfamiliar touch interface of their new product. The calendar had the appearance of a binding, and the calculator had plastic-looking buttons just like their real-life counterparts. Until last year, each update to the operating system perpetuated this style.
When Microsoft introduced its Metro look a few years ago, it took a different approach. Users were familiar with touch interfaces by then and didn’t need as many visual cues.
While it might seem new and modern, flat design has its roots in artistic and architectural Minimalism and the Swiss design and typography of the 1940s, 50s, and 60s. Flat design leaves behind gradients, drop shadows, and textures in favour of a more clean approach. Amber Leigh Turner, writing for The Next Web characterizes it this way: “‘flat design’ is mainly the term given to the style of design in which elements lose any type of stylistic characters that make them appear as though they lift off the page.”
Why Choose Flat?
Because of its lack of ornamentation, flat design gives the impression of being easy to use. Its modern appearance is perceived as more honest. Consider the progression of devices we’ve used to access the Internet. Prior to smartphones, a computer was the only way to get on the web. Today’s tablets and phones feature high-definition screens capable of displaying text and imagery crisply and cleanly, making visual cues for buttons less necessary. As the devices we use have grown more powerful and less complicated, shouldn’t your Calgary website design also be heading in that direction?
Flat design also means more efficient web design. With fewer elements, it loads faster and is also easier to make more responsive. The realistic/skeumorphic look of recent years often meant designers had to create different-sized versions for all the different screen sizes and browsers, and sometimes those elements just didn’t translate well after they had been shrunk down to fit on a phone’s screen. As well, formatting each image becomes just a pain.
Is Flat Design Right For You?
Flat design doesn’t just make your Calgary business’s website design seem more modern, it puts the focus on your content — where it should be. At Emphasize Design, we know the key to a successful marketing campaign is being able to show who you are while pulling in your audience with the information they want. We offer content development services to create professionally written content for your blog and website so you know your message will get across effectively.
Nothing says “keep moving” like a site with out-of-date content and an old-fashioned look. Done right, your website can generate an enormous amount of traffic that helps turn visitors into your most loyal customers.
Steve Jobs once said, “Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” Let the professionals at Emphasize Design create a great Calgary website design that works for you. We offer a full range of services from for businesses of all sizes, and with a complete online marketing package, we’ll even design your site for free!
