Material Design (codenamed Quantum Paper)[4] is a design language developed by Google in 2014. Expanding on the "cards" that debuted in Google Now, Material Design uses more grid-based layouts, responsive animations and transitions, padding, and depth effects such as lighting and shadows. Google announced Material Design on June 25, 2014, at the 2014 Google I/O conference.[5]
The main purpose of Material Design is the creation of a new visual language that combines principles of good design with technical and scientific innovation. Designer Matías Duarte explained that, "unlike real paper, our digital material can expand and reform intelligently. Material has physical surfaces and edges. Seams and shadows provide meaning about what you can touch." Google states that their new design language is based on paper and ink but implementation takes place in an advanced manner.[6][7][8]
In 2018, Google detailed a revamp of the language, with a focus on providing more flexibility for designers to create custom "themes" with varying geometry, colors, and typography. In 2021, a further evolution of the design language, titled Material You, was unveiled.[9]
Material Design was to be gradually extended throughout Google's array of web and mobile products, providing a consistent experience across all platforms and applications. Google has also released application programming interfaces (APIs) for third-party developers to incorporate the design language into their applications.[10][11][12]
The canonicalopen source implementation of Material Design for web application user interfaces is called Material Web.[13]
After the 2018 revamp, Google began redesigning most of their apps based on an updated set of principles and guidelines dubbed "Material Design 2",[14] which provided a larger focus on customization of the basic Material Design components to adapt to the branding of the products in which it is being used.[15] The updated guidelines further heavily emphasizes white space, rounded corners, colorful icons, and bottom navigation bars. Google began utilizing a special size-optimized version of their proprietary Product Sans font called Google Sans.[16]
AtGoogle I/O in May 2021, Google announced a new concept on Android 12 known as "Material You" (also known as "Material Design 3"[17]), emphasizing increased animation, larger buttons, and the ability for custom UI themes to be generated from the user's wallpaper.[9] Material You was gradually rolled out to various Google apps on older Android versions in the following months, and acted as a major focus on the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro smartphone series.[18][19][20]
