Getting this award is a prestigious honor, even if a lot of people haven’t heard of it. The iF Award was established back in 1954, and it’s been a sought-after award ever since. Each year, there are thousands of entries, and only a handful of companies are awarded the gold. There were nearly 10,000 entries last year, and some of the winners consist of the top-selling tech brands today. Apple got the gold for its AirPods Max and Samsung won the award for the Galaxy Z Flip 3.
Material You also won the iF Gold Design Award
Back in 1954, as you can imagine, the institution wasn’t giving out many awards for operating system designs; however, it’s a thing now. Google was awarded the iF Gold Design Award for the design it gave Android last year. During Google I/O 2021, Google showed off its new vision for Android. With Android 12, we got the all-new Material You design aesthetic. That was the biggest change in Android’s design since Material Design was introduced with Android 5.0 Lollipop. Android versions 5 (Lollipop) to 11 (Q) had very little chance to the visuals. Instead, Google focused on adding functionality and gestures. While the UI elements were getting a slightly more rounded appearance over the years, nothing really stuck out. However, Google pulled a 180 with Material You. With this software design, Google shaved down all of the UI elements and gave them an extremely rounded appearance. Along with that, everything became just a bit bigger. This goes to show that design doesn’t only revolve around hardware. As important as it is to have the strongest processor or the best build quality, it’s also important to have a great-looking user interface. That’s what you use to interact with your device.
