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You have completed Getting Started With Material Design!
You have completed Getting Started With Material Design!
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Getting to know Material Design starts with understanding the virtual materials, paper, and ink, that inform the appearance and behavior of Google’s design language.
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If you have a smartphone handy,
hold it flat in the palm of your hand.
0:00
Imagine that the apps on your phone
contain layered sheets of paper
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pressed between the device in your palm
and the glass covering the screen.
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Tapping onscreen buttons might
cause these layers to rearrange
0:15
or summon new layers of
paper from offscreen.
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Each layer of paper contains content:
text, images, videos, and more.
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Material Design imagines
this content as virtual ink
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decorating each sheet of virtual paper.
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Keep that visual in mind as
we explore the appearance and
0:38
behavior of Material Design content,
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made of virtual materials inspired
by real-world paper and ink.
0:45
Every layer of content
in a Material Design app
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exists on a sheet of virtual paper.
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Each sheet of paper is exactly one dp
(or "dip") thick.
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Dp is short for
density-independent pixels.
1:03
Some devices have high-resolution screens
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with more pixels per inch
than a low-resolution screen.
1:11
Dps are flexible units that scale to
have uniform dimensions on any screen,
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which allows for consistent designs
across a variety of devices.
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So, for example, a 48 by 48 dp button,
the minimum acceptable size for
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a tappable interface element
according to the Material Design specs,
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would appear to the user to occupy
48 square pixels on the screen,
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no matter how high the resolution.
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Virtual paper can be as small as a button
or grow large enough to fill the screen.
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Paper can split apart into smaller shapes.
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And the smaller shapes can
heal into one large paper.
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Otherwise, virtual paper
behaves a lot like physical paper.
2:02
One sheet can be behind another or
in front of it.
2:07
But two sheets of paper cannot
occupy the same physical space and
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one sheet of paper cannot
pass through another.
2:14
Virtual paper can move forward
towards the user on the z-axis.
2:19
And in fact,
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interactive elements in Material Design
appear to rise to meet the user's finger.
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Or they can recede away from the user.
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But a sheet of paper cannot flip or
fold, as movements are limited
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to the space between the device in
the user's hand and the glass screen.
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Virtual paper casts shadows.
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Shadows suggest depth.
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A sheet of paper closer to the user
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than another on the z-axis
should cast a longer shadow.
2:55
If you were making a paper prototype for
an Android app,
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you could use layers of paper
to explore depth and shadows.
3:04
I've included a link to
a video in the teacher's notes
3:09
that demonstrates this
concept in more detail.
3:12
[SOUND] The content decorating
virtual paper is called ink.
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Ink is the content found in your app.
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In my example of a recipe app for
a cooking magazine,
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this would mean a search interface and
a list of recipes but
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ink can be any combination of text,
image and video content.
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Ink can move independently within a sheet
of paper, forming any shape imaginable.
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Or it can move and scale with the paper.
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But ink cannot leave the paper.
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Ink has no depth and
doesn't impact the shadows cast by paper.
3:55
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