The washed out design trend to stay away from

Posted by Jaan on September 26th, 2010 | Add your comment

Much has already been made of Apple’s UI fails with iTunes 10, and I won’t chime in on that particular story. Instead I’d like to mention a related observation I’ve made, one that makes me somewhat concerned.

More and more apps, including iTunes 10, is going down the route of… bland. Not in terms of functionality, but rather the UI. It’s all grey on grey on dirty beige-ish white on washed out blue on blue with a splash of barely visible grey thrown in. Yikes.

It’s not very usable, exciting or engaging. It’s just… a bit dull. I have a hard time believing that monochrome-ish, low contrast and washed out help with user delight as it definitely doesn’t do anything for usability. Accessibility is also a concern; I came across an app the other day where even I with my fairly normal eye sight had a hard time making out anything. It was all, literally, shrouded in fog.

Now, I’ve been guilty of going too subtle on design in project’s too. It’s easy to go to far with the subtleties, but one learns, corrects, and moves on. And on the flip side – there are those who pull off subtle design incredibly well. But this design trend worries me. I’d hate to see the industry go down a path where lots of us suddenly start favoring the soft monochrome grey-ish, beige-ish colour palette. (Or washed out blue on blue, washed out green on green, and so on.) No one wants the beige box computers back, let’s not send sites and apps down that route.

Two great apps that in my humble opinion could benefit from a less restrained colour palette or just more plain old visual contrast: iTunes 10 and Reeder.