I used to think the old 2010s flat design trend was just a boring phase, but seeing a local coffee shop's new menu redesign completely flipped my view.

Their old menu from 2015 was a cluttered mess of gradients and shadows, but the new one they launched last month uses that same flat style with just two colors and a single clean typeface to create something that's way easier to read and actually looks modern now. Has anyone else seen a design trend they hated come back around and work really well?

3 comments

3 Comments

leo6671mo ago

Oh man, this hits home. I used to make fun of those flat icons for looking like toddler shapes. (I may have called them "colorful blobs for babies," which I now deeply regret.) But you're totally right, when it's done with purpose and restraint, it just works. It cuts through all the visual noise. My own old website was a textbook example of that bad 2010s clutter, so I guess the joke was on me the whole time.

gray5571mo ago

Right there with you. My old blog had those shiny 3D buttons with drop shadows everywhere (so much bevel). Looking back, it was like visual shouting. The shift to simpler stuff felt weird at first, but now I get it. It's like giving your eyes a place to rest.

noah_barnes19d ago

That "visual shouting" line is perfect. A friend of mine, a total design holdout, finally redid his site last year. He spent weeks trying to make a "classy" 3D logo, and it just looked like a bad video game from 2005. He showed it to me and @leo667 over coffee, and Leo just quietly pulled up a flat, simple version on his phone. The relief in the room was real. My friend finally saw it wasn't about things looking boring, it was about stopping the yelling. He said it felt like turning off a TV that was stuck on a loud commercial.