Adwaita vs Flat Design / Vector Minimalism
アドワイタ / フラットデザイン / ベクターミニマリズム
Adwaita comes from Platform Screen Languages and Flat Design / Vector Minimalism from UI Expression. Both are read here as style. They are reached for with some of the same intent, which is where they get confused.
Adwaita
Adwaita is the name GNOME gives its default visual style, defined in the project's Human Interface Guidelines. One set of components has to carry a light style, a dark style and a high contrast style, so colour arrives as named variables that switch rather than as fixed values. A header bar crosses the top of every window holding buttons drawn with no background and no border, and interface icons are monochrome symbolics built on a 16 by 16 pixel grid.
Flat Design / Vector Minimalism
Reduces information to plain planes and color, portable across screens and media.
| Adwaita | Flat Design / Vector Minimalism | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 2011– | 2010s– |
| Family | Platform Screen Languages | UI Expression |
| Kind | Style | Style |
| Cues | A single header bar across the top of the window, laid out on three alignment points with the window heading in the centre / Header bar buttons carry no background and no border, leaving only the symbol and the label on the surface / Monochrome symbolic icons drawn at 16 by 16 pixels with 2 pixel strokes and no perspective / A published palette of five steps per hue, including Blue 3 at #3584e4 | Uniform planes / Simple shapes / Few shadows / Clear color |
| Best used for | Building a Linux desktop app that has to hold the same structure in both the light and the dark setting · Adding a custom widget by riding on the existing style classes and colour variables instead of hard coding values | Light, understandable explanation · Large sets of consistent figures |
| Type | Identify a control with either an icon or a label, not both. The exceptions are sidebar rows and view switchers. | A rounded sans-serif |
| Composition | Put a header bar at the top, main actions at the start, the heading in the middle, menus at the end. Always leave blank area so the bar can be dragged. Group buttons with spacing rather than by linking them. | Simple silhouettes and clear hierarchy |
| Material | Take colour from the published palette and hold it as variables that swap for light, dark and high contrast. Draw icons as monochrome SVG and recolour them programmatically. | Three to five colors; shadows only when they mean something |
| Caution | Hard coded colour values only break once someone switches to the dark or high contrast style, which is exactly the state the author never looks at. | Figures easily become generic. Define your own ratios, lines and color rules. |