Hot take: I think CSS art with too many shadows looks worse than flat designs

I've been doing CSS art for about 2 years now, and I keep seeing these pieces with like 15 box-shadows layered on top of each other trying to make things look 3D. I get it, it's impressive technically. But last month at the CSS Art Club meetup in Austin, somebody showed a really complex landscape with mountains and a lake, and I swear there were so many shadows I couldn't even tell what I was looking at for the first 10 seconds. My own piece from last week was just flat shapes and gradients, and people said it was "too simple." But I think sometimes we get caught up in proving what CSS can do instead of making something that actually looks good. Am I the only one who prefers cleaner, flatter CSS art?

2 comments

2 Comments

amy_reed791d ago

Yeah that "too simple" thing is frustrating. I've had people ask why I didn't "add more depth" to my pieces when the whole point was keeping it clean. Flat designs age way better than shadow-heavy stuff that looks dated in six months.

noraj791d ago

Amy, how do you handle the critics who just won't let the "too simple" thing go?