What Is Flat Design? Design in 60 Seconds

Final product image — What You'll Be Creating

Welcome to our Design in 60 Seconds series, in which you can learn a new design skill, feature, or technique in just a minute!

Design in 60 Seconds: Flat Design

A huge trend in the design industry today is the use of Flat Design graphics. From infographics to icon packs and UI designs, these graphics showcase a modern simplicity that fits well with both print and online work. Browse the incredible resources of Flat Designs from GraphicRiver for your creative needs.

In this quick video, we'll go over a quick overview of what flat design really is. And check out the awesome graphics featured in the video below:

What You Need to Know About Flat Design

Here are some quick facts to get you started with flat design. Flat design is made up of simple shapes, colors, gradients, shadows, and highlights. They're often used to illustrate objects or ideas in a more modern and simplistic form.

Flat Design Process Steps — From the tutorial: How to Create Flat Weather Icons in Adobe Photoshop by Yulia Sokolova.

Inspired by the popular UI designs of big brands like Microsoft and Apple, flat designs have now become a prominent aesthetic in the design industry.

Iphone Apps Flat Design — Phone stock via Pixabay.

You can create flat designs using a variety of software, from Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator to Affinity Designer. Simply utilize basic Shape Tools in Photoshop like the Ellipse Tool (U) and the Custom Shape Tool (U), for instance, to create a quick bull's eye.

Creating Flat Designs in Adobe Photoshop

And check out the video above to get a quick overview of flat design.

A Bit More Detail

Want to learn more about flat design from our experts? Check out these helpful articles and tutorials below:

60 Seconds?!

This is part of a series of quick video tutorials on Envato Tuts+ in which we introduce a range of subjects, all in 60 seconds—just enough to whet your appetite. Let us know in the comments what you thought of this video and what else you'd like to see explained in 60 seconds!