Over the years, the popularity of flat web design has exploded – thanks to large organizations that are bringing changes into their design aesthetics and accepting the flat design.

Flat design is a simple User Interface (UI) design that makes use of straightforward, two-dimensional elements and bright colors. Sometimes, it is contrasted to skeuomorphism style the makes the illusion of 3 dimensions by copying real-life properties.

You might have noticed that the popular operating systems, i.e., Windows, iOs, and Android, have gradually been shifting their design language to more flat.

So, what is a flat design and should you implement it on your website?

History of Flat Design

The term “Flat design” was coined in the year 1950 after the rise of the international Typographic style. However, it entered into the digital world, when Microsoft’s Zune MP3 player featured a minimal flat UI with simple monochromatic colors, flat icons, and typography.

Later on, web designers followed this approach to simplify the presentation of their web pages.

Benefits of Flat Design

From enhancing website loading speed to making it more mobile responsive, flat design helps a website in various ways. Some significant benefits of implementing the flat design include:

Speed

Page loading speed is a crucial aspect for the success of a website. After all, 53% of people abandon a website that takes more than three seconds to load.

Flat design files tend to be compact and take less space than traditional 3D effects, so it brings a positive impact on the loading speed of your site. To boost the speed of your website, you may also invest in a reliable hosting because the performance of your web server can place a huge impact on the speed at which your site loads.

User Experience

As with so much competition in the market, it has become crucial for website owners to do everything possible to win customers satisfaction. One great way to enhance the experience of your users is by using flat design.

It utilizes white space and bold typography to draw the focus of users to your website. With clear and prominent text, flat web design makes Call to Actions more effective.

Mobile Responsiveness

Flat design uses scalable vector graphics that can be easily resized by browser, making your website efficient for mobile devices. Flat design parts are much more easily adaptable to different screen sizes than complicated 3D graphics.

Search Engine Optimization

Factors like fast loading web pages, mobile responsiveness, and user-friendly interface get noticed by search crawlers easily. Search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing give more value to the websites that provide an excellent user experience and that results in higher SEO rankings.

Let’s find out how you can use the flat web design for your site.

Using Flat Web Design for Your Website

Keep It as Simple as Possible

When it comes to flat web design, you should avoid adding any three-dimensional elements to your website as flat design displays objects in a two-dimensional orientation only.

However, if you need to present complex objects, focus on simplifying them as much as possible. One best way to represent a complex object is, display just its silhouette (outline). It will help you make an object more recognizable without digging out into details.

Flat icons are an excellent example of it.

Use Basic Color

One of the most vital features of flat design is the use of colors. Usually, flat websites are designed using primary colors. Saturated and bold colors are the best indicators of flat design. However, the color choice majorly depends on the things you’re going to disclose.

Flat design is not limited to displaying a particular set of colors. These websites can also use several shades of the hues. There are a few online tools like Adobe Color, Canva Color, etc. that help you come with the most optimal color scheme.

When working on a color scheme, keep the following universal principles of flat design in mind:

• Desaturated colors add more aesthetic appeal to a web page.
• Bright hues help to emphasize particular content placed on a subdued background.

Keep the Navigation Simple

Easy to use navigation is another defining factor of flat design. Always place navigational elements on the place where it will look most logical and essential.

If your website has multiple pages, use drop downs and categories to enhance the navigation of your website. It will reveal all the main menus of your site while saving the space.

The main goal is to create a homepage that looks as simple and minimalistic as possible.

Use The Right Typography

Just like working with a website structure and colors, also make sure you use the right typography. Since not all fonts will fit flat design nicely, it is better you give preference to simple and minimalistic fonts.

Fonts from Sans-Serif family are considered more comfortable to read and quicker to load. Helvetica, for example, has been one of the favourites among the graphic designers. Below are some tips for choosing the ideal fonts for a flat-style design.

• Use sans serif fonts with variations and weights to bring a clean and fresh look to your text.
• Don’t use excessively embellished fonts. The tone of fonts should match your website’s overall design scheme.

Add Animation

People will never know what is important on your website unless you show them. To enhance user engagement, you may add elements of animation to enhance the site’s flat design.

A sense of motion in the interface enables users to follow the right direction.

By adding motion to your flat web design, you not just offer visual guides within the interface but also provide visual feedback and validation.

Flat Design is Definitely Worth a Try

Flat design has all the essential elements and attributes that help you make your online project more functional and usable.

By embedding simple fonts, colors, and icons to your website, you can make it more attractive and engaging. So, if you want to design a website that can grab more attention yet look minimalistic – flat design is a good choice.