Flat Design

No depth. All signal.

What This Is

Flat design is a rejection of ornament. It strips away every visual trick — shadows, gradients, textures, bevels — and leaves only color, typography, and layout. If an element exists, it earns its space through content, not decoration. The interface is a poster, not a diorama.

The confidence required is enormous. Without depth cues or material metaphors, hierarchy must come from size, weight, and color alone. There is nowhere to hide a weak layout. Flat design trusts the grid, trusts the type, and trusts the user to read the page without being spoonfed affordances.

Characteristics

Zero Shadows

No box-shadow, no text-shadow, no drop-shadow anywhere. Depth is not simulated — the design lives entirely on one plane.

Solid Color Fills

Backgrounds are single solid colors, never gradients. Buttons, cards, and sections use flat fills from a bold, saturated palette.

Minimal Border-Radius

border-radius never exceeds 4px. Corners are sharp or barely softened. No pills, no circles for containers.

Bold Sans-Serif Type

Font-family is a geometric sans-serif like Inter or Roboto. Font-weight 700 for headings, 400 for body. No serifs, no scripts.

Color-Only Hover States

Buttons and links change background-color or opacity on hover. No transform, no shadow, no scale. The interaction is a color shift.

Geometric Simplicity

Shapes are rectangles and circles. Layouts are grid-based. No organic curves, no skewed elements, no decorative illustrations.

Style Reference

PROMPT

No box-shadows, no gradients, no text-shadows. Solid background colors
from a bright palette — blue #3498db, green #2ecc71, orange #e67e22,
red #e74c3c, purple #9b59b6 — on white #ffffff. Sans-serif type (Inter
or Roboto) at weight 400 for body and 700 for headings. Border-radius
no greater than 4px. Buttons are solid color rectangles with white text
and color-only hover states. Everything is intentionally 2D, geometric,
and surface-level.

When to Use

Good for

Mobile apps and responsive interfaces
Admin panels and internal tools
Operating system and platform UI
Content-heavy sites that need fast scanning
Design systems and component libraries

Not for

Luxury or premium branding — too utilitarian
Sites that need strong visual affordances for accessibility
Immersive or storytelling experiences
Audiences unfamiliar with digital interfaces

History

Flat design emerged as a direct counter to skeuomorphism, the dominant UI paradigm of the 2000s. Microsoft fired the first shot with Metro (later Modern UI) in Windows Phone 7 in 2010, replacing glossy icons and faux-leather textures with solid color tiles and clean typography. The design language prioritized content over chrome.

Apple followed in 2013 when Jony Ive redesigned iOS 7, stripping away every texture, gradient, and shadow in one of the most dramatic visual overhauls in tech history. Overnight, the entire mobile industry went flat. Google joined with Material Design in 2014, though it cheated slightly by reintroducing elevation and shadow — a concession that pure flat design sometimes made interfaces harder to parse.

The backlash was real. Users struggled with clickability. Flat buttons looked like labels. Important controls disappeared into the layout. These problems led to "flat 2.0" — a pragmatic middle ground with subtle shadows and clearer affordances — but the original flat ethos remains the bedrock of modern interface design.