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From design failure to design favourite
From design failure to design favourite
by
Freelancers United
3
min read
Some design choices seem off-limits for years, until they suddenly reappear and work surprisingly well. Before you know it, you see them everywhere. The gradient is a prime example of this.
In the early 2000s, we could not get enough of them. Logos gleamed, buttons gained volume, and backgrounds faded from dark blue to light blue. A gradient made something feel digital, futuristic, and modern, or so we thought. Then flat design arrived, and colour had to be just one thing: flat. The gradient was banished to the same corner as bevels, drop shadows, and other digital flourishes we preferred to forget.
Fast forward to today, and colour is flowing in all directions again. In brand identities, campaigns, websites, motion, and packaging, shades blend together seamlessly once more. Only this time, it feels completely different.
Today's gradient no longer tries to mimic a shiny button. Instead, it creates light, atmosphere, depth, and movement. Colours do not always travel neatly from A to B. They fade, collide, blend, and disappear. With blur, transparency, and grain, a digital colour block feels almost tangible, as if light is shining through it rather than simply having an effect applied to it.
Perhaps that is exactly why gradients feel so right now. The longer you look at them, the more unnatural flat colour actually seems. Outside Photoshop, flat colour barely exists. A blue sky is a different blue above your head than on the horizon. Water constantly catches new shades, skin changes with every light source, and even a white wall shifts from warm to cool, from light to shadow, throughout the day.
The world around us is filled with gradients.
Perhaps that is why they never really went away. We were mainly tired of a certain version of them, of the digital trick, the obvious transition, the gradient that only wanted to show what was technically possible.
Today, it does not have to try so hard. A gradient adds atmosphere, makes an identity softer or more exciting, and brings depth where a flat colour palette can feel empty. The gradient itself has barely changed. The way we look at it, and design with it, has.
So yes, the gradient is back. Fortunately, it is not the same one we saw twenty years ago.
Some design choices seem off-limits for years, until they suddenly reappear and work surprisingly well. Before you know it, you see them everywhere. The gradient is a prime example of this.
In the early 2000s, we could not get enough of them. Logos gleamed, buttons gained volume, and backgrounds faded from dark blue to light blue. A gradient made something feel digital, futuristic, and modern, or so we thought. Then flat design arrived, and colour had to be just one thing: flat. The gradient was banished to the same corner as bevels, drop shadows, and other digital flourishes we preferred to forget.
Fast forward to today, and colour is flowing in all directions again. In brand identities, campaigns, websites, motion, and packaging, shades blend together seamlessly once more. Only this time, it feels completely different.
Today's gradient no longer tries to mimic a shiny button. Instead, it creates light, atmosphere, depth, and movement. Colours do not always travel neatly from A to B. They fade, collide, blend, and disappear. With blur, transparency, and grain, a digital colour block feels almost tangible, as if light is shining through it rather than simply having an effect applied to it.
Perhaps that is exactly why gradients feel so right now. The longer you look at them, the more unnatural flat colour actually seems. Outside Photoshop, flat colour barely exists. A blue sky is a different blue above your head than on the horizon. Water constantly catches new shades, skin changes with every light source, and even a white wall shifts from warm to cool, from light to shadow, throughout the day.
The world around us is filled with gradients.
Perhaps that is why they never really went away. We were mainly tired of a certain version of them, of the digital trick, the obvious transition, the gradient that only wanted to show what was technically possible.
Today, it does not have to try so hard. A gradient adds atmosphere, makes an identity softer or more exciting, and brings depth where a flat colour palette can feel empty. The gradient itself has barely changed. The way we look at it, and design with it, has.
So yes, the gradient is back. Fortunately, it is not the same one we saw twenty years ago.
