Talk:Material Design

Title capitalization
Should the article be renamed to Material design, as there seems to be no need for capitalizing all words in the title? Please see WP:LOWERCASE for more details. &mdash; Dsimic (talk | contribs) 07:43, 3 August 2014 (UTC)


 * I am in agreement. Also, why is "Material Design" always used in the article text rather than "material design" (or "Material design" at the beginning of a sentence)? As long as no one disagrees, then I will change this.  Feynman1918  Talk  07:58, 4 August 2014 (UTC).


 * Hello there! That should also be corrected, using "material design" in all places –  except when opening a sentence, of course.  I'll go ahead and request the article to be renamed to Material design.  &mdash; Dsimic (talk | contribs) 08:06, 4 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Great! I see that you have also removed capitalization from the Android L article, which is good. I have removed the capitalization from this article, as well from a few other articles that mentioned it.  Feynman1918  Talk  08:14, 4 August 2014 (UTC).


 * Thanks! Got it uncapitalized in the Android template as well, and  for the article to be renamed. &mdash; Dsimic (talk | contribs) 08:32, 4 August 2014 (UTC)


 * In every occurrence of the term in all of the six listed references, the term is capitalized. It is unacceptable that the decision to rename the page has been taken in such a rush. This is not at all uncontroversial. SD0001 (talk) 10:28, 4 August 2014 (UTC)


 * What reason is there for "material design" to be capitalized? The way I see it, there is no reason. While many sources say "Material Design", many also say "material design". For instance, Google (the creator of "material design") uses lowercase all the time: here, here, here, and here. Many other sites also use lowercase as well: here, here, here, here, and here. Some sites even use both capitalized and lowercase interchangeably, like this one: here. It is clear that the sources are not unanimous in their capitalization and the most important source (Google), uses lowercase.
 * In any case, how the sources capitalize the word does not really matter. Wikipedia's relevant policy says to "not capitalize the second or subsequent words in an article title, unless the title is a proper noun." "Material design" is not a proper noun, nor is it a brand name. It is not even a product name. The way I see it, "material design" should not be capitalized. However, I do understand why you think the decision was rushed, so in retrospect maybe we should have waited. Please leave a comment explaining your viewpoint and why "material design" should be capitalized.
 * Thank you,  Feynman1918  Talk  11:08, 4 August 2014 (UTC).


 * Right, maybe the decision to uncapitalize the title was made a bit too quickly, but it was made according to the Wikipedia's rules, which pretty much trump the way "material design" is written in some of the sources. At the same time, if we come to a conclusion that "Material Design" is the way to go, we can always rename the article back, it isn't welded in place. &mdash; Dsimic (talk | contribs) 05:25, 5 August 2014 (UTC)


 * ✅OK - SD0001 (talk) 17:41, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Uhh, obviously material design as used by Google and in this article is a proper noun. We are not talking about descriptive term, but a name. The design is not "material". From the proper noun article:
 * A proper noun is a noun that in its primary application refers to a unique entity
 * "Material Design" in our context refers to a unique entity, namely Google's design language. Any descriptive qualities of the name are incidental; Google could have named it "Bob" instead. If you do an Internet search for articles about "Material Design", you will also see all the professional news editors recognize it as a proper noun, and therefore capitalize it (e.g.:  ). Thue (talk) 19:42, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, but "material design" isn't a noun that uniquely refers to a specific entity – it refers to a rather wide application of a particular design language/style across the line of Google's products. In other words, we can't point a finger onto something and exclusively say "that's the Material Design", as that design language (material design) is applied at many places, touching numerous products. By the way, professional news editors (I don't count "for clicks" web sites into that category) mainly capitalize all words in their section titles, while Wikipedia doesn't do that. Capitalizing everything also bring more "awe" into things, and more awe means... well, in many cases, more clicks. :) &mdash; Dsimic (talk | contribs) 12:58, 13 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Of course there is a specific entity we can point to - the design language defined at . Whether what follows "Material Design" is a but fuzzy around the edges is not critical; no more than e.g. what constitutes "Android" is fuzzy around the edge cases, but "Android" is still a proper noun. Nothing in this world is 100% clear-cut, but that does not mean that proper nouns don't exist.
 * As for capitalizing words in titles, all the sites I linked were capitalizing "Material Design" inside the article, not just in the title.
 * I have asked on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Grammar for people to weight in here. Thue (talk) 14:40, 13 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Also asked at english.stackexchange.com. Thue (talk) 15:05, 13 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Any updates on this? I agree that this is a proper noun. The current title suggests that it is a common noun, but the article doesn't describe a design or style, it describes a design language made by Google. There is no such thing as 'material design', it is made up. Perhaps it may become a design or style at some point, but I don't see any evidence here that it currently is.–Totie (talk) 17:43, 28 June 2015 (UTC)


 * Hello! Speaking for myself, I'd still vote for leaving the article title as-is, because "material design" refers to the application of a specific design language across a wide variety of software products. &mdash; Dsimic (talk &#124; contribs) 17:48, 28 June 2015 (UTC)


 * I don't want to be blunt, but that argument makes no sense to me. The outset still is that 'material design' is meaningless without understanding that it derives from Google's design language, which is more lika a brand. When developers say that they've adopted Material Design, they mean that they follow Google's design language. Material Design is in and of itself not a style that can be defined by others, as you correctly point out. It's definition is set by Google. An analogy: Microsoft's design language is officially called Modern UI. Would you also agree that user interfaces based on this design language are modern UIs? Modern UI is a brand name as much as Material Design is. Other products have not adopted a material design, they have adopted the Material Design.–Totie (talk) 18:08, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

Hm, I'll think more about the whole thing. Speaking of the "Modern UI", interfaces following those guidelines surely can't be called "Modern UIs", as treating something as a proper noun automatically prevents its multiple instances; those would be either "interfaces based on Microsoft's Modern UI guidelines" or "interfaces based on Microsoft's modern UI guidelines". &mdash; Dsimic (talk &#124; contribs) 18:46, 28 June 2015 (UTC)


 * True, and that is my point. You could modify your first example like: "interfaces based on Google's Material Design guidelines". Modern UI and Material Design are both proper nouns, because they refer to brand names of design languages and are not actually material designs or modern UIs.–Totie (talk) 23:14, 28 June 2015 (UTC)


 * To me, "interfaces based on Google's material design guidelines" would make more sense. However, let's hear opinions from more editors, if you agree. &mdash; Dsimic (talk &#124; contribs) 00:56, 29 June 2015 (UTC)


 * This discussion has been going on for a long time now. Nobody at WP:Grammar has taken interest in this and the one respondent at Stackexchange (above) also agrees that this is a proper noun. I think we reach more if we can agree on this ourselves, so I suppose we should follow with arguments. Why do you think that the sentence in lower-case makes more sense to you? Let me put it differently, what exactly is material design? Using lower-case only makes sense if you accept that material design has become something in and of itself, beyond Google's design language. It is not like industrial design or flat design. What is and what isn't Material Design is what Google wants it to be. It's more like Modern UI and Aqua. Consider also human interface guidelines (common) v Apple Human Interface Guidelines (proper). There is no meaning attached to the common noun material design that is connected to Google's Material Design, if there is a meaning to the phrase 'material design' at all.–Totie (talk) 03:17, 29 June 2015 (UTC)


 * I've explained it multiple times, please don't get me wrong but there should be no need for repeating myself once again. We should simply see if more editors are interested in this, but I'm still thinking about it. &mdash; Dsimic (talk &#124; contribs) 05:06, 29 June 2015 (UTC)


 * You might be thinking about it, but to me (and Totie it seems) the issue seems completely clear-cut in favor of Materian Design being a proper noun. I think Totie has explained it well, especially the completely fitting analogy to "Modern UI". As I said previously, the incidental use of the potentially descriptive word "material" inside the proper noun does not make it any less a proper noun; I think you would easily accept it as a proper noun if Google had used a random made-up word instead of "material". Thue (talk) 09:57, 29 June 2015 (UTC)


 * As for getting the opinion of more editors, simply go see whether respected publications such as Wired are capitalizing the term. Those as grammar-checked by highly experienced paid professionals, who have already had to take a stand on this exact question. I already did that above, and all the example I found capitalized it (notably minus Google's own page about Material Design...). Thue (talk) 10:15, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

I'd bet that Google also has well-experienced proofreaders working on the clock. :) &mdash; Dsimic (talk &#124; contribs) 12:27, 29 June 2015 (UTC)


 * That is not really interesting for this discussion though. Google chooses the name and defines the design language; they also have an artistic freedom when it comes to the presentation of their products. Sometimes that choice is taken into consideration, but Wikipedia takes the wider acceptance into account. Reliable sources seem to indicate a different spelling. At best the capitalisation is contested, but in such cases we follow Wikipedia's naming conventions anyway.–Totie (talk) 13:06, 29 June 2015 (UTC)


 * Well, Ok, after some additional thinking I might be Ok with treating material design as a proper name. At least it should be more clear to the readers that way, so it isn't confused with some general "material" type of design. &mdash; Dsimic (talk &#124; contribs) 13:27, 29 June 2015 (UTC)


 * Given your change of opinion as well as the apparent lack of interest by others (I also mentioned this discussion at WT:MOSCAPS a few days ago and it was also mentioned at WP:GRAMMAR), I went along with the move.--Totie (talk) 21:22, 1 July 2015 (UTC)


 * Thanks, that's fine. Moving forward, while going through various articles over time I'll edit links to Material Design so they're also capitalized. &mdash; Dsimic (talk &#124; contribs) 22:46, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

I came here expecting to support downcasing, because this sounded like yet another WP:Specialized-style fallacy, the capitalization of some design methodology or school of thought (things we do not capitalize though some, usually within-that-field, sources do). But this clearly is a programming language, and languages have proper names, even if they are constructed. Upper-casing this is consistent with our treatment of virtually everything listed at List of programming languages; the only exceptions appear to be stylizations that are consistent in reliable sources (e.g. dBase and o:XML), and a few that might also qualify for that or which might themselves be WP:SSF down-casings in the "everything Unix-ish must be lower case, just because" vein. Relying on Google's internal down-casing would be a MOS:TM problem, I think. PS: You can't cite our own total crap article at Proper noun as a reliable source for anything. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  10:50, 7 August 2015 (UTC)


 * I'm glad that you support the already established consensus! &mdash; Dsimic (talk &#124; contribs) 11:04, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

Example image
I've added the only free-licensed image of the design that I could find. It's not ideal, as it doesn't show the most characteristic visual elements (circle button, shadows and animation) and it includes an example that belongs to iOS, but it's better than nothing. If someone knows of a better CC or GFDL-licensed image, replacing the current one would be great. Diego (talk) 10:23, 29 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I'm working on a quick overview of some UI elements. I believe we can put them here under Creative Commons, since it's mostly geometric shapes and text.–Totie (talk) 11:00, 29 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the new image, that's what I was aiming for and couldn't find. Diego (talk) 12:01, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

Non-Google Apps
I am missing statistics etc. on the adoption of Material Design by third-party devs. Zezen (talk) 15:46, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

I agree. There is a large base of frameworks, libraries, etc. taking the "Material Design" guidelines beyond Android into desktop and other clients. The article should be re-orientated since the concept moved beyond Google. See Comparison of Material Design implementations. Guillep2k (talk) 03:04, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

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Material You Redesign section move
Shouldn't the section Material You be on a separate page? It is a drastic overhaul that it doesn't even look close to standard Material Design. It also revamps most UI elements to be colorful, big, and rounded, and doesn't include the "papery" feel and shadows of the old design, too. Any thoughts about this?

--SuperDragonXD (talk) 13:45, 20 September 2021 (UTC)
 * In my opinion, Material You is not notable enough to warrant its own, separate article. After all, it's just another redesign of regular Material Design, and there's not much information specifically about it as of now. So for now, I think anything regarding Material You should just stay in this article. InfiniteNexus (talk) 16:11, 20 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Now that there's more information and the fact that it's so drastic that it doesn't conform to the Material Design principles pre-Material You, I can say that it should be moved. RhebucksIII/SubSpruce (talk) 17:20, 3 March 2024 (UTC)