What is Material Design?

If you are an app developer I am sure you have heard of material design. Do you wish to know what material design is? Material Design is set of rules, guidelines, components and best practices for creating websites and apps.  

 

Google developed Material Design to create a consistent visual language for all their products. Seems sensible — they didn’t want to do the same bit of design work twice for two different products — and besides, it creates a consistent Google Look that their users can become accustomed to while navigating between Google products. 

With Material Design, you are really standing on the shoulders of design giants. Google has developed Material Design as the culmination of their experience and knowledge in digital experience design — They have made the mistakes so you don’t have to. 

This means you can save a lot of time because you don’t need to develop your own visual language and you can sidestep common design pitfalls. 

By using Material Design, you are tapping into a very famous visual language. This means that your users subconsciously attribute a level of trust and security to your app beyond its station because they will associate your app with Google. 

This can be a rewarding strategy for fledgling startups and growth-stage businesses. 

 

Reasons why not everyone is using material design: 

• You might not want to look like a Google app. Material Design makes your app look all Google-y. Is that what you really want? 
• If you like to design components right down to the nitty-gritty, rather than just integrating them together, you have had your wings clipped really… Google have done all the fun work. (I like to re-invent the wheel sometimes too!) 
• Some apps just don’t fit with the Material Design language. Material Design works well for apps that use standard components — buttons, menus, icons, drawers, modals etc. — but if you are developing a game or some other custom digital experience, it is not really the right tool for the job. 
• There are other great Visual Systems that do a similar job, Material Design is not the only one. 

 

If you would like to know more about material design refer to this article. 

At Emqube we focus on building high quality hybrid mobile apps. Contact us if you would like us to build an app for you.