What is Material You and how is it different from Material Design?

Android 12 came from the hand of Material You, a bit more radical change from what we are used to in android design line and nominations. like when he came Thematization of materials in 2018, Google stunned us a bit with BOMs. Is Material You the same as Material Design?

We’re going to get to the bottom of this by going through the history of Material Design and all of its major updates leading up to the latest, Material You. We also tell you what material do you and what are its differences from previous versions.

Brief History of Material Design

In the early days of Android, the application interface was a bit like the Wild West, with a design strongly attached to escheumorphism, until it came Holo design philosophyreleased on Android Honeycomb, back in 2011. Honeycomb, the tablet-optimized version of Android, didn’t go far, but the Holo interface was here to stay…at least a few releases.

The Holo interface gained strength with the release of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, although in mobile technology nothing is forever. Holo has been retained on ICS, Jelly Bean, and KitKat, but in 2014, with the launch of Lolipop, Holo was already beginning to feel closed. It was time for something new, it was time for Material Design.

Material Design arrived in 2014 hand in hand with Lollipop as a new design regulation that expanded the concept of Google Now cards. The keys to Material Design were the use of designs based on grids, animations and transitions, more air between elements and depth effects, lights and shadows according to the hierarchy of elements. In practice, it was the definitive farewell to escheumorphism, with minimalist interfaces with flat colors where the stars were the cards, the floating buttons and the hamburger menus ☰.

Starting with Android Lollipop, Material Design quickly gained popularity as it was gradually implemented in Google apps and Android itself. App developers took longer to adapt Material Design, but the redesign ended up spreading to almost every app for one simple reason: Material Design was the future of Androidand much cruder earlier designs seemed Pleistocene in comparison.

Material Design has never stopped evolving since its launch – for example, in 2016 it added the bottom bar component – but four years later and when almost every major application had already made the change, from small adjustments were not enough: it took a quantum leap to give it a touch of fresh air and make it less “checkered”.

This change came in 2018 with Thematization Material, the first major evolution of Material Design. Material Theming puts a spin on Material Design, giving it more expressiveness through the use of “themes” (hence the Thematization of the name), composed of colors, fonts and above all shapes, something that had not been exploited too much in the original Material Design.

Material theming gives developers a much more comprehensive toolbox to create a theme to apply consistently to the entire design of the application, being able to adopt greater expressiveness than with the original version. For example, an application may choose to use shapes with slanted edges, and they will be applied to all shapes in the various components almost automatically.

The Google theme opted for curved shapes, the new Google Sans typography, bright colors and silhouette icons which, under the name of Google Material Theme. It’s just one of several possible combinations, but when Google applied it to its apps, it ended up kind of becoming the new norm.

We’ve reached 2021 and while Material Theming can’t be considered outdated – many apps haven’t yet adopted it or taken advantage of all of its features – Google has failed. born like this Material Youfrom the hand of Android 12, a new evolution of Material Design more personal than ever: the design varies according to user preferences and also shows more “emotion” through animations and the dynamic use of shapes.

What material do you

Material You is the latest iteration of Material Design, which tries to meet increasingly complex needs, with applications that need to be adapted from the small screens of a smartwatch to cellphones, tablets, foldables, televisions and cars. Somehow you are material try adding a soul to Material Designwhich until now was essentially functional.

This “soul” comes from the hand of new options to add expressiveness to applications, such as the use of animations and transitions, with new shapes to give Android a less checkered (or rounded) look. In a way, the Android interface comes to life to convey something more than “here are the buttons, press them if you want”.

In the customization part, the most important part of Material You is the dynamic, wallpaper-based colors. With Material You, the system can extract a color palette from the wallpaper and apply it to the system and apps that take advantage of the system. Google has put its engineers to work to ensure that these generated palettes are high contrast and accessible.

In this way, an application does not have a fixed design, but its colors may vary from mobile to mobile. In a way, the final design of an application is halfway between the idea of ​​its creators and the preference of the user.

Material Introduces you important changes in the use of color of the applications and also in the forms. For example, certain items such as crisps or floating buttons are now square with rounded edges and fewer shadows and elevations are used, preferring the use of different shades of color.

Virtually every component in Material Design has undergone changes and adjustments, which are documented here. Normal buttons used to be square and now they are roundwhile the floats were round and are now square, and more.

And, of course, we can’t forget widgetswhich had a second renaissance with Material You and Android 12. Widgets with Material You are more personal and useful than ever thanks to the use of dynamic colors, rounded edges, a responsive design that adapts to different sizes and greater interactivity with the use of checkboxes, radio buttons and switches.

¿Es Material You Design Material?

So how is Material You different from Material Design? The answer is simple, nothing. google has some tendency to get stunned with names that change later, and this is one of those cases. Just like in 2018, Google used the name Material Theming instead of Material Design 2, now it uses Material You instead of Material Design 3.

And even Material Design 3 is Material Youand Material You is Material Design 3. In the official Material Design documentation, it is clearly stated that Material You is Material Design 3 and the previous version, which was known as Material Theming when it was released, is still available and is called Yeah, Material Design 2. It’s been a bit of a tongue twister, so here’s the recap:

• Material designreleased in 2014.

• Material Design 2released in 2018 and also known as Material Theming.

• Material Design 3released in 2021 and also known as Material You.