Long Shadow Is The New Flat Design

Even since Apple previewed its iOS7, Flat design has became even more famous in web industry. If you've been keeping yourself cutting edge, you should have heard of Long Shadow Design. Long shadow design evolve The differences between Flat and Long Shadow design? In Long Shadow Design, it's okay to have gradient, texture and even drop shadow.

I first heard about long shadow design from an article written by Jeff Escalante, I guess he must be pretty famous now because I think he is the first person noticed this trend. His article attracted many attentions, especially designers, you can see its effect in dribbble, just search long shadow, you will get heaps of result. Also, there are already a few articles were written specifically about it.

• Flat design casts a long shadow - WebDesignerDepot
• The latest trend in web design - Long Shadow - Entyce Creative
• Long Shadow Design - DesignModo
• Long Shadow Design - HongKiat

However, so far, I haven't seen a project that actually using this design. It's more like "cosmetic treatment" to user interface elements such as icons at the moment. I hardly see it used in elsewhere.

With some basic understanding and basic skill in Photoshop, you can create this effect pretty easily. Just find some flat or glyph icons, and add a long shadow rest at a 45-degree angle (left or right direction). Here is a quick example I made, pretty cool huh? Comparing flat and long shadow design, for some unknown reason, long shadow seems to be more attractive. I have no ideas what sorcery is this.

Here we have a collection of Long Shadow designs from different designers. You can see how they utilise the shadow, its direction, gradient, texture and drop shadow. Some them don't even have its flat look anymore.

 

Long Shadow Icons by Georgi Davitaya

 

Tall Chess Icon by Andy Mangold

 

Minion iOS7

 

HintApp by Mike Beecham

 

Bowiewold by Angel A. Acevedo

 

Long shadow by Agata Kuczminska

 

Icons by Andre Goncalves

 

FaceTime by Jason Li

 

Date App by Al Power

 

Fox Icon by Christoph Gromer

 

Long shadow by Aiden Guinnip

 

Enough by Yigit

 

Long Shadow Experiment by Giuseppe Pessia

 

Electro Logo by Jonathan Hasson

 

Feather By Michael Berger

 

Minimum Icon byy Chris Casey

 

Long Shadow Adobe Icons by Geoffrey Brailsford

 

Apple Long Shadow by Same Berson

 

Flat Long Shadow Device Icons by Daniel Lu

 

Dribbble Icons by Clement

 

Man of Steel Icon by Kreativa Studio

 

Internet Explorer by Tomas Snop

 

Mo Logo by Mogo

 

Safari by Slava Beskrovniy

 

Skype by JustD

 

Twitter Icon by Xalion

Conclusion

I'm not very sure if this a fad or a trend that will last for a while, but I do like how subtle disproportional shadow makes flat icons look attractive. So far, you can see long shadow design impacts user interface elements the strongest. What do you think about long shadow design? 

• TAGS:
• Design
• Dribbble
• Inspiration
• Photoshop
• Trend