The design trend has great significance in evolving and revitalizing digital experiences. It reshaped the way we interact with digital products. One such trend is Neumorphism. Neumorphism was coined by Jason Kelley on Michal Malewicz’s medium article “What’s the next UI design trend?”. Soon this created the buzz in the design community and designers started drooling over it.
Here is my comprehension of why Neumorphism is so fascinating, different and very new from the other design trends.
Best of Flat Design and Skeuomorphism
Neumorphism originated by combining the old classic skeuomorphism (Interface objects that mimic their real-world counterparts in appearance e.g. recycle bin icon used for discarding files) with the flat design. Skeuomorphism laid the foundation of interface design and flat design emphasizing minimalism. It combines two revolutionary trends which makes it refreshing and an avant-garde design trend.
Adding Affordance to Material Design
Affordances are an object’s properties suggesting how a user may interact with digital products. Thus interface affordance depends on appearance of the object and its similarity to the real-world.
Neumorphism is a clean and minimalist design style that introduces a new concept of lightening up the exposed surface. Though material design establishes elevation of the card and its falling shadow, Neumorphism gets closer to the real world by highlighting the surface exposed to light. Hence paramount the perceived affordance.
Giving new physicality to the Material
Neumorphism is establishing new physicality in the UI trend and moving one step closer to realism. Neumorph material has properties like elasticity, which can be extruded, beveled or pressed. Therefore, it provides designers to explore and experiment with the new user interface materials.
Increasing the level of Usability
Neumorphism is derived from the successful use of the practical application of the user’s physical capabilities and past experiences. This makes it so familiar to use with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction. This ease of access in Neumorphism increases the usability of the design.
Neumophism is different from other design trends because it adds a whole new functionality to the UI patterns with a lot of new potentials to innovate. In my opinion, Neumorphism is not a regular trend that would fade away with time but will be a revolutionary design pattern that will redefine the future of product designing.
