To be honest, I'm really sick of "flat design." All it seems like is a fad that should (hopefully) boil away soon.
When you make something flat, you make it more aesthetically pleasing, but at the same time, you take away many visual cues that alert the user as to what exactly a specific widget does.
I think the Windows XP interface (Bear with me on this) demonstrates how you can be "matte," so to speak, but still usable. You could tone it down a bit more, but to eliminate gradients completely out of a UI is ugly and a gigantic hit to usability.
I think OS X has a great balance between flat and dynamic. They've toned down the ridiculous levels of gimmicky glossiness, but they've kept in the stuff that is important to the design. For example, the lightening of a shadow behind a window is a visual cue that the window is inactive. The pulsating and glowing water-filled Aqua push-button is an invitation to click on it, while the matte de-focused button is less significant. The Traffic Lights are smaller but the click-point remains the same.
Progress-bars slowly pulsate to indicate activity, and if they've stopped pulsating you know that something is wrong. Borders are clearly defined through shadows and solid lines.
Overall, it's a great UI. Ditto for iOS. Android also puts the flat design to use properly.
Can't say the same about Windows 8, and I also can't say the same about designmodo's flat toolkit either.
When you make something flat, you make it more aesthetically pleasing, but at the same time, you take away many visual cues that alert the user as to what exactly a specific widget does.
I think the Windows XP interface (Bear with me on this) demonstrates how you can be "matte," so to speak, but still usable. You could tone it down a bit more, but to eliminate gradients completely out of a UI is ugly and a gigantic hit to usability.
I think OS X has a great balance between flat and dynamic. They've toned down the ridiculous levels of gimmicky glossiness, but they've kept in the stuff that is important to the design. For example, the lightening of a shadow behind a window is a visual cue that the window is inactive. The pulsating and glowing water-filled Aqua push-button is an invitation to click on it, while the matte de-focused button is less significant. The Traffic Lights are smaller but the click-point remains the same.
Progress-bars slowly pulsate to indicate activity, and if they've stopped pulsating you know that something is wrong. Borders are clearly defined through shadows and solid lines.
Overall, it's a great UI. Ditto for iOS. Android also puts the flat design to use properly.
Can't say the same about Windows 8, and I also can't say the same about designmodo's flat toolkit either.