"Neumorphism" came and went because it was a clumsily unnecessary neologism tacked onto a loosely-defined trend.<p>Adding more shading and depth cues to user interfaces is a broader trend that has continued since the popular repudiation of those tools in the early-mid 2010s, but the attempt to package this up and shoehorn it into a neat label alongside "skeuomorphic" and "flat design" was never a particularly useful exercise. I wrote back in 2013 about how these prescriptive labels obscure the tools they represent: <a href="https://interuserface.net/2013/05/flat-is-not-the-opposite-of-skeuomorphic/" rel="nofollow">https://interuserface.net/2013/05/flat-is-not-the-opposite-o...</a>
It never rose. It was just silly design concepts on Dribbble, no real/popular apps actually adopted it.<p>It's a terrible design system, it looks like you took a perfectly good interface, draped a table cloth over it, and pushed it upwards so you have this weird silhouette feature going on.
Enjoyed reading the history. I would say that it wasn’t really a trend to begin with. A few designers made some popular conceptual pieces that led to more conceptual pieces. Apple didn’t meaningfully adopt it when they made a few sliders less flat, like in the new control center on macOS.<p>Personally, I found the designs repulsive. That sounds like a hot take, but I actually found myself averting from the unnatural shadow diffusions and artificial heights in neumorphic concepts, the way some are repulsed by depictions of holes in solid surfaces or slightly distorted faces. I wouldn’t want to have had to interact with many of those elements daily.
I'm anxious to see flat go. It made everything look the same: cheap and without individuality. The opposite of diversity of ideas and the true spirit of creativity.<p>And funny to see Neumorphism trend fading. Wonder if that actually will happen as I'm perfectly accepting of it.<p>Neumorphism feels like the low-calories version of Skeuomorphism (which I feel is a big win over flat).
A web design opinion that has increasingly solidified in my thinking is that box-shadow should never be relied on to distinguish an edge.<p>Not only is it (obviously) less distinct than a border or an edge where color changes, it breaks outside the visual box model of the page due to spreading outside the element's grid placement, which makes everything look less distinctly part of a grid. box-shadow, when relied on to distinguish edges, is anathema to the human visual system in an unconsciously subtle way. It's fit for light touches that add onto an already clear and accessible design but never for relying on to achieve clarity or accessibility.<p>We realized this during the flat design era but then proceeded to overshoot things pretty far until exterminating shadows became a hot trend. Now there's a backlash, of which 'neumorphism' is the apex, which swings things too far back in the other direction. Just keep shadows light and use them sparingly, it's not too hard.
"The days of having entire websites rendered in neumorphism are behind us, but it will undoubtedly continue to have an influence. "<p>Too bad. I personally think it's a huge improvement over flat design.
Neumorphism really helped sharpen my thinking on a dynamic color theming system heading into Material You.<p>Neumorphism had no grounding besides "what would trend on Dribbl that finally feels like a movement after years of iOS 7 aesthetic leading the way?"<p>That isn't a design problem.<p>"pure white background with overly dark blue", and neuomorphism was doubling on a very-not-skeuomorphic approach and attaching large shadows to it, simply because it created something "new" that felt "more realistic". No benefit to the user. No grounding in design principles.<p>With Material You, sure, it's flat, but it's skeuomorphic in that _it works how color works in the real world_. (cf. Round Rects are Everywhere <a href="https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Round_Rects_Are_Everywhere.txt" rel="nofollow">https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Round_Rects_Are_...</a>, and replace with "Pure White and Black are Nowhere)<p>Source: I wrote this, and also this post is my opinion, I do not speak for Google or its design: <a href="https://material.io/blog/science-of-color-design" rel="nofollow">https://material.io/blog/science-of-color-design</a>
Did I miss something or was Neumorphism just that designers rediscovered inset shadows?
We're just putting new names on a design cycle that's been going on for decades, maybe centuries. Things get more ornate until it's so over the top we wipe it all clean and start over.
I feel like this article gets a few things dead wrong - mostly that this trend originated in 2020. Maybe the term came around then but this is what dribbble design has looked like since probably 2010 or 2011 (which is also around the same time the flat aesthetic came around, a decade after this article claimed).