The flat style has become the complete opposite of skeuomorphism, which was popular before and welcomed the display of elements as they were in reality: with volume, shadow, texture. A user accustomed to the special design of interactive elements does not immediately navigate flat design websites. On the other hand, the flat design style shifts the focus to the page content, preventing the visitor from being distracted by extraneous elements.

The trendsetters for flat design were Apple and Microsoft, which designed the interfaces of their operating systems in a flat style. Today, the flat website style is successfully used by Amazon, YouTube, IBM, and other large corporations.

Advantages of Using Flat Design

  1. Typography comes to the forefront. The user’s attention is focused on the page content.
  2. Minimal use of visual effects, which increases the loading speed of pages in desktop and mobile versions.
  3. Minimalism, lack of distracting elements. Flat design websites have a concise structure.

To help the user navigate, flat websites are implemented based on standard layouts and templates with intuitive navigation. Clickable text and active elements are necessarily highlighted and differ from regular ones.

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Flat Design Websites

Flat style is suitable for any websites – from creative portfolios to landing pages and blogs. A properly implemented flat website style creates intuitive navigation for visitors. Here are some flat design websites:

  • Kentuckyderby (www.kentuckyderby.com/). A website dedicated to horse racing in Louisville (Kentucky): ticket sales, race information, news, themed merchandise store. Functional menu and social media buttons are highlighted with visual effects: the color changes when you hover over them. Links are underlined when the cursor hovers over them. Text and graphic content are beautifully distributed across the page.
  • Teavana (www.teavana.com). An online store for tea and related products. Minimalistic design, black and white color scheme, characteristic of online store navigation. Beautiful typography. Functional buttons change color when the cursor hovers over them.