That trick where designers overuse drop shadows on everything is driving me nuts

I was looking at some UI mockups a buddy sent over last week and every single button, card, and even text had a drop shadow on it. Made the whole thing look like a layered cake. In my experience, drop shadows should be a light touch not the main event. I started noticing it more on Dribbble too. Am I the only one getting bothered by this shadow trend?

2 comments

2 Comments

jennifer_fisher7d ago

Not quite right there - a layered cake would actually be way more appealing than a screen full of Drop Shadows... but yeah, the shadow overkill is real and it's making a lot of modern UI look muddy instead of clean.

paigewood7d ago

Shadow heavy designs just look busy and sloppy. A simple flat button with a clean border reads way better than something floating an inch off the screen. If you need that much shadow, the layout probably isn't working right to begin with. Less is more on this one.