What caused the shift in design?

I remember back in the day, sites would try to be flashy and designed rather intricately. What caused the design trends to shift towards simplicity and minimalism? Like flat design philosophy, or transitioning through the Android versions, or even Apple's iOS redesign. I'm curious. Even though the designing portion of things may be a lot more simple, I won't complain.

Even with me i do website design / graphic design even my clients want this. Now i recommend things like this. People want simple, clean and professional flat & simple is like the new phase the new trend everyone is into.

I'm pretty sure it was something to do with sites being easier to navigate.
No distractions and unnecessary things work well for business models too.

01-06-2016, 09:10 PM

Faded Wrote: I'm pretty sure it was something to do with sites being easier to navigate.
No distractions and unnecessary things work well for business models too.

Perfectly understandable, but I remember that things like CSS spritemapping using one sheet for a whole design was a thing. Things like that remind me of how creatively limited old versions of HTML and CSS were, though, compared to now :rly:

01-06-2016, 09:45 PM

fdigl Wrote:

01-06-2016, 09:10 PM

Faded Wrote: I'm pretty sure it was something to do with sites being easier to navigate.
No distractions and unnecessary things work well for business models too.

Perfectly understandable, but I remember that things like CSS spritemapping using one sheet for a whole design was a thing. Things like that remind me of how creatively limited old versions of HTML and CSS were, though, compared to now :rly:

I'm pretty sure a lot of designers still do sprite mapping.

01-06-2016, 09:51 PM

Faded Wrote:

01-06-2016, 09:45 PM

fdigl Wrote:

01-06-2016, 09:10 PM

Faded Wrote: I'm pretty sure it was something to do with sites being easier to navigate.
No distractions and unnecessary things work well for business models too.

Perfectly understandable, but I remember that things like CSS spritemapping using one sheet for a whole design was a thing. Things like that remind me of how creatively limited old versions of HTML and CSS were, though, compared to now :rly:

I'm pretty sure a lot of designers still do sprite mapping.

Well, yeah, that's for sure. Myself included. But there used to be 13 different sprites for one footer, and that was like a default theme for a CMS or something that I saw a lot of back then. Of course, there are the creative sites that use endless CSS sprites, and that's a much better way to approach the situation without giving yourself a migraine.