I Disagree with a lot of these tips... anyone else?
DesignCourse
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Flat Design vs Modern Design Trends for UI
https://bit.ly/4945zow 👈 Design & code like me. Use "UI2024" for 25% Off!
-- Today, we're taking a quick look at some modern UI design treatments we can place on UI elements. We're going to take a quick layout I designed in the 'flat design' aesthetic, and modernize it. We'll also compare and contrast Flat Design with web 2.0 as well.
Let's get...
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I don't want to dogpile on Gary, and I haven't watched this video, but I'm not sure he's all that great of a designer tbh
I bought one of his courses and it did help me out a lot tbf to him though. But from what I recall the stuff he actually makes in videos aren't fantastic but could just be because he's doing stuff quick
I mostly had issues with the contrast and accessibility
Personal preferences tbh. But I'm also not a fan of his stuff.
I agree that it's personal preference, but on the other hand, teachers have a responsibility to promote accessible design, and foregoing that responsibility just because a design "looks cool" is unfair to sighted users. Even a note like "check your users and perform accessibility and user testing" doesn't help to outline the importance. Rather than describe a process like this, do it and show people. Chrome has WCAG built into the colour picker, and figma has a plugin. Kevin does a great job of showing accessibility compliance steps in his videos, and we need more Youtubers like him
... in my opinion
I honestly disagree that accessibility is personal preference. We have a responsibility to make our sites usable by as many people as possible. There's a lot of users who use assistive tech, or need prefers-reduced-motion enforced or needs decent contrast, a font that can resize, or a dozen other little accommodations for them to use your site comfortably. If you ignore all accessibility because you can't be bothered, you're telling 5% of your potential customers to just fuck off, which just doesn't make any fucking sense
I don't really follow Gary much either so can't speak to it much, but I know from what I have seen he is not terrible. Not a teacher for me but I'm also looking for a different style. He very much does cover proper spacings, font pairings, etc, etc. Far as contrast he's normally pretty good. In this video I'd question the text in the orange button but I'd have to inspect it.
Lots of designers have issues with apply proper contrast, how to make things responsive or just practical sometimes. Just like devs, Kevin has older content that is all divs. Don't judge to harshly but also that is why I always say "find a teacher you vibe with" cause we have that option when looking online.
Also Kevin is not a accessibility expert he is a CSS sensei, so while its good he does a bit and more people need to teach a11y as a norm. Its up to you too to find the resources to cover your own limits and gaps. Just like when you learn JS or any other language lots of YT tutorial videos are not going into the debt to cover everything like catching/handling errors 😉
https://annaecook.com/ Is a great designer with focus on teaching other designers about accessibility. You can find others I'm sure that have courses and better focus around your needs.
Anna E. Cook
Anna E. Cook
Senior designer, speaker, and writer dedicated to building inclusive and accessible digital products.
I mean gary likes to explore designs that are out there
he does cover accessibility and the basics of proper design
but him being more experienced is going to push him to try more "experimental" ways of designing stuff
I think this is a pretty bad misrepresentation. Gary is an accomplished designer in his own right, although his material is definitely aimed at the absolute beginner in web design. He was one of the first to really make modern ui/ux rules available to everyone, rather than paywalling it behind expensive courses or platforms
Just remember, it's a lot easier in the last year or so, since you began to design at all, to get the basic information he teaches. But before that, it was not readily available for developers
and to your original question, I think a lot of designers are really bored with flat designs, and material ui styles. And, people are looking for a bit more creativity in what they produce. This video is a good foray into some of the techniques you could use beyond the basics, to make your page stand out from the vanilla cookie cutter crowd. I frequently incorporate opacity, gradients, and layered effects to create artificial depth, which are the 3 things he seems to be covering in this video
That's fair, I've never really seen any of his professional work so my statement is definitely biased