Google's Material.io is an awesome design system available for everyone to use. Even though Apple gets a lot of public praise for their sense of design, it's hard to back up that claim when you dig into Material. It's a hyper-streamlined system with literally hundreds of tools to nail down your colors, styles, fonts, images and layouts. Plus, it's all open-source.
So it's really exciting to hear that on top of these amazing resources, Google is launching an update to Material that features more options for personalization. Fittingly, it's called Material YOU.
What's so exciting about it? Well I'm not an app designer OR a web designer, so you might not think this was the thing for me. However, when I was working on PragerU's brand guide in 2018, Material was a huge help. One of the things about designing for social media is that you are basically dealing with all of the same visual constraints as on website designs. So even though you can't control the social media app interface or interactive elements, it's still important to think about Material's usability and style recommendations on any screen environment. Moreover, there are things like designing for email marketing where the tips are directly applicable.
Apparently, the Material YOU update is bringing opportunities to personalize the Android interface (which uses Material) through simple preferences. For example, your entire device interface can be completely restyled to aesthetically compliment a photo that you like. All of that can be done in an instant, without compromising the usability benefits of the Material system. It's dope and inspiring. I have no idea yet how I'll be able to use it in my work but it's got my creative juices churning hardcore!
Click here to learn more about it!