Yesterday, the team behind Material You said that the new design language will be a “multiyear journey that will evolve all of Google’s products and ecosystems.” At the “What’s new in Material Design” session, Google designers provided an in-depth preview of Material You and its guiding principles.
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“Material You” is Google’s “radical new way to think about design.” It’s a hyper-personalized approach to designing custom appearances for apps and other interfaces that adapts to users, starting on Android.
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Ahead of I/O 2021 next week, Google has updated Material Design to expand its “adaptive capabilities to help prepare your apps for all form factors,” namely large screens. Most developers today are focused on phones, but the company is specifically looking at tablets and desktops. This takes the form of new guidance and design documents, as well as updated components.
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Given how “typography and iconography are so strongly related,” Google Fonts is adding Material icons and getting a new logo in the process.
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With the first Android 12 Developer Preview, a massive redesign of the Settings app was discovered, pointing to a revamp of Google’s Material Design. Let’s take an exploratory look at what some of Google’s other Android apps could look like with these next generation Material Design cues.
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Most people primarily experience Material Design in Android apps, while web adoption is mostly limited to Google’s first-party sites. A new Material Design for WordPress plugin, which Google currently calls an experiment, possibly opens up the look to many more pages and blogs.
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Material Gallery is essentially Google Slides for designers wanting to upload mockups and screenshots for collaborative feedback. Google is now moving Material Gallery’s backend to Google Photos early next year.
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Now in its sixth year, the 2020 Material Design Award winners were announced this morning. There are just three categories this year covering the best dark theme, use of motion, and Material Theming.
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Last October, Blogger for Android saw a surprising Material Theme revamp. Google’s writing platform is seeing another quiet update that introduces a modern and responsive design on the web.
Google Authenticator is a very straightforward app that provides 2-step verification codes when signing-in to third-party sites. The Android app saw its last update in 2017, but Google Authenticator 5.10 today introduces a Material Theme redesign and account transfer feature.
Last year, the Play Store underwent a full revamp and later gained a dark mode. The latest tweak to help conform the Android app to Google’s latest look is a Material Theme account switcher.
Google Groups is the company’s email-based forum offering that’s popular for developers and other communities. Dating back to 2001, the company today announced a Material Theme redesign that’s inline with Gmail and other G Suite revamps.
In 2018, Google announced Material Theming with the goal of letting developers better customize Material Design for their applications. One tool released to help designers was the Material Theme Editor, but Google is now shutting it down next month in lieu of upcoming products.
The majority of Google apps today have been revamped with the company’s latest design language. There are some minor exceptions, with recent Google Phone and Messages betas introducing Material Theme icons throughout.
Introduced in March of 2017, Google’s Issue Tracker (known semi-internally as Buganizer) is a tool for reporting bugs in various Google products. This week it received a Material Theme revamp that brings a fresh look to the platform, including the familiar colored plus button and Google Sans font.
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While you might have only encountered Material Design in apps and the web, Google’s open-source design system has one major real-world application. Since last year, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City has been using Material Design icons to help guide visitors.
Following the Play Store and other first-party apps, Google Photos for Android is rolling out a Material Theme account switcher. Unlike those clients, this new UI element neatly incorporates a redesigned backup upload indicator.
Google Play this year rolled out a big Android redesign and corresponding dark theme. In October, we spotted work on a Material Theme account switcher and it’s now beginning to roll out alongside a new splash screen.
Google’s Material Design guidelines are a living document that updates over time. In order to be “more transparent about which components, patterns, and elements are likely to evolve in the near term,” the company’s design team is now applying a “beta” label.
The Material Theme rolled out to Google Search on the web in bits and pieces over the past year. Google.com today is A/B testing a visually notable homepage revamp that also separates and highlights voice search.
One of early Google’s most ambitious projects was to scan the world’s books and make them available online. The project ran into a number of copyright issues, but still exists as Search’s book lookup functionality. Today, the service is getting redesigned with the Google Material Theme.
This year marks the fifth edition of Google Design’s effort to highlight “best-in-class designs from our community.” Announced at SPAN in Brooklyn, the 2019 Material Design Award winners are Ruff, Reflectly, Scripts, and Trip.com.
Earlier this week, Google detailed how Express would soon be replaced by Shopping. This transition is now underway with “Google Express” for Android becoming “Google Shopping” with the latest Play Store update.
