Over the last few months I’ve read at least a couple dozen online articles, threads and discussions about skeuomorphic and flat design. The articles came in three waves. The first wave was about how skeuomorphic is well past its prime time and needs to go away. The second wave was about how flat is the exact opposite of skeuomorphic, and how it is the new direction of visual interface design. And finally, the third wave is about the poor usability of flat design.

Some of this discussion is happening on Twitter. There’s only so much one can say in 140 characters. Even when you break your argument into multiple consecutive tweets, the argument – more often than not – gets a simplified presentation. And sometimes the simplification of presentation leads to cutting logical corners.

Flat is indeed the exact opposite of skeuomorphic, but only if you consider the constraints that the designer employs in choosing his palette. Leaving the restraint part out of this argument leads one to believe that as the opposite of skeuomorphic, flat design is always done well. That, of course, can’t be further from the truth. This omission, by the way, can be deliberate.

If one can simplify the argument to pure one-dimensional comparison, and follow the stripped down logic to the “necessary” conclusion that flat is good – and immediately show bad examples of flat design, then the entire argument falls apart. Now, if you trace the refuted conclusion back to its beginning, the implied coup de grace is that flat is bad.

The opposite of a poorly done skeuomorphic design is not a well done flat design. The logical fallacy here is taking one part of the constraints/restraint spiral and extending the comparison to include the second one. The opposite of a poorly done skeuomorphic design is a well done skeuomorphic design. The opposite of a poorly done flat design is a well done flat design.

The opposite of a poorly done design is a well done design. Well done design that takes a long, deliberate and careful look at the available tools (constraints) and plunges into a long exercise of applying restraint in using a subset of those tools to arrive at the final product.