Gallery: The Smart Problem-Solving Behind Android's Awesome New Design Language
Image: Google01Prototypes-Right
The design actually began with physical prototypes, which the designers used to model the shadowing seen in the OS's layers.
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The new grids are airy and clean: There is far more whitespace used, and a new font was designed to be legible across many screen sizes.
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Perhaps the biggest challenge was creating a language that would arch across all devices. The designers did this using a system that tightly dictates how color and motion are used.
Image: Google04google-material-design-color-samples
With the use of color: Note the connection between the search field on the left, and what it looks like upon expansion. The peach highlights are used to draw your eye to the right place amidst the swathe of blue, which denotes a broad area of user interaction.
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Colors are also used to tie the core functions of app with the logo of the app: The two are the same, thus clarifying what colors mean.
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A new geometric grid was created for all the logos.
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That same grid was used to define the new functional icons.
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