Category: Material Design

Over the course of the past few months, Google has been rolling out a new bright & white look to many of their apps and services.  Gmail and Google Drive are two such examples and it all seems to be tied to the Mountain View company’s efforts to refresh everything and bring more Material Design into their sites and apps.  The latest site to get this new bright & white update is the Google Support site.

Ditching its compact now seemingly dated look, the Google Support site reflects the change in site layout and philosophy from Google.  With a bright white background, the new site has large icons for you to select to get to support information for various Google apps and services.  These naturally look more touch friendly for touchscreen devices like the Google Pixelbook.

Last month, Google announced that a new, Material Design laden sign in screen was coming to everyone.  The original plan was that it would roll out June 14th but due to “unforeseen delays”, it is now rolling out over a month later.

Functionally, you aren’t going to find anything different in this new sign in screen other than the brighter, more contemporary Material Design look to it.  It does exactly what you would expect it to do which is to allow you to sign into your Google account.  But the update brings the site in line with many other Google apps and services as the Mountain View company has been working diligently on updating their wares to Material Design.

After slow rolling out to a few accounts over the past week, the Material Design makeover of Google Maps is now broadly rolling out.  The updated look and feel of the app brings a fresh new look to one of the most widely used apps from Google and also brings it in line with the Material Design makeovers the company has been doing on their apps in general.

The update is a combination of an app update and a cloud side update.  First, make sure you have the latest Google Maps version on your phone.  That is version 9.80.2 and it was released a few days ago.  Chances are you likely have it but double-check.  Assuming you have that version, then it is just a matter of when Google does the cloud-side push to your account to enable the new look.

Google has announced that the Google Sign-in screen that you use to sign into your account will be changing on June 14th.  The updated screen will be more in line with Material Design principles with an updated Google logo, outline of text boxes and everything being centered in the sign-in screen itself.

The Mountain View company has indicated that this change will be available for everyone across all G Suite domains and consumer accounts.

After months of testing by Google Top Contributors and Googlers, the new Material Design look of Google Calendar has gone live.  All accounts should be seeing the option to go to the new calendar look over the course of the next 48 hours.

The update brings a much needed refresh of the Google Calendar interface which, let’s be honest, was a bit “engineering looking” for the longest time.  The new look fits well into the overall Material Design look and feel that Google is after in their own apps for Android and other web-based apps.

The Android team has issued an update to the Material Design guidelines for developers.  The update is primarily aimed at the new features that have come to the platform in Android Oreo.  The guide adds a new Offline States section which covers how to customize apps to work for users when they do not have an Internet connection.  This is a big emphasis for Google, particularly in developing markets.

For those who don’t know, the Material Design guidelines is aimed at developers to assure that their app has the look and feel of what Google expects in Android.  Even if you are not a developer, the guide is great insight into the functions and looks of apps.