This is what really gets me. I was convinced that Google was moving closer and closer to consistently implementing Material Design across all of its products, but with the Gmail redesign and Google I/O, I now have no idea what direction they want to go in.

Some of the main tenets of MD — shadows and elevation — are used very little in the design, which sorely needs some differentiation between sections and better information hierarchies. Matias Duarte actually said, ‘We looked at going completely flat,’ which astounds me for the company that was evangelising the z-axis for so many years.

I understand the technical constraints that they must have been facing as designers — any redesign of a massive oldish system has its problems — but I agree that they were additive in all the places they should’ve been reductive.

Anyway, thanks for the fantastic article Avi.