Design Trend: Soft UI

Magnus Lundström
5 min readSep 27, 2022

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Soft UI dashboard. Source: Creative Tim
Soft UI dashboard. Source: Creative Tim

Design trends are constantly changing, and you need to know which ones to follow and which to ignore. If you don’t remember which tends to stick with and which ones to leave alone, reading this article will help you.

This article will talk about the soft UI design trend. We will tell you what it is, why you might want to use this design trend for your product, and what you should know before deciding.

What Is Soft UI?

Soft UI removes the bolder styles that products have used in their designs and uses a lighter design instead. It can be called metamorphism, and it is muted and has a smoother look. The animations used in this design are slower and smoother; all of this comes together to create a soft user interface with which the user can interact and engage.

Shadows and highlights give the design layers or the perception of layers and depth. This helps specific elements in the design attract the user’s attention and keep them using the product.

To successfully create a soft UI design system for your product, you need to be consistent with the color palette that you have chosen and the shadows and highlights you are using in the design.

Characteristics Of The Soft UI Design Trend

When you want to use the soft UI design trend, there are specific characteristics you need to know about.

● Rounded corners of design elements. The soft UI design trend doesn’t have sharp edges.

Soft UI dashboard. Source: Creative Tim

● Muted color palette. This is consistent in the whole design. Gradients are usually used to create smooth transitions from one element to another.

● Lightweight typography is used to match the rest of the design. Bold fonts are not used as they do not work with this user interface design.

● Icons that complement the color palette and the soft user interface. The icons are not bold or sharp.

● Use shadows and highlights that help separate design elements the user will be interacting with.

● Smooth animations that help transition from one screen to the next.

● Quickly toggling between dark and light mode.

● Unified look that is consistent and ties everything in the design together. All the elements in the design work together to create a smooth UI that is comforting.

● Background blur effects are used to show the connection between the different screens and layers of the design.

How Can You Use The Soft UI Design Trend

Knowing about the characteristics of the Soft UI design trend is not enough; you need to know how to use them in your designs successfully. The minimal design might make you think that it will be easy to create a soft UI design for your product, but that is a trap that many designers have fallen into.

Learn from these mistakes and create the best soft user interface for your product. If you still need more help, you can hire design firms in San Francisco.

Creating Gradients

Gradients are essential in a smooth UI, and they help the shadows and highlights bring the design together by creating smooth transitions. The weak UI design trend has muted colors, and gradients help them blend in with each other; this makes the soft UI known for the minimalistic look. The angles are not dramatic; they are used just enough to show the differences between elements with which the user can interact.

Image by starline on Freepik
Image by starline on Freepik

Finding the right combination of gradients, shadows and highlights aren’t easy, so if you need help, find a UI design agency to support you in creating your designs.

Lightweight Design Components

To successfully create a soft user interface, you must ensure all design elements work together to give the right look. The font you choose needs to be lightweight so it doesn’t take over the design; the icons need to be smooth and not sharp and create the proper visual hierarchy using shadows, highlights, and background blur.

If you don’t have design experience, then this will all sound not very easy. If you need help, you can hire a UI design agency to help you. You should look at other soft user interface designs and learn from them. Look at evil designs to avoid those mistakes and at successful designs to get inspiration.

The Problems With Soft UI

Every design trend has advantages and disadvantages, and you should know them before you decide to use one for your product’s design. Let’s look at the disadvantages that you need to know about.

Reduces Accessibility

While the design looks great, the accessibility will be reduced as some visually impaired users might not see all of the elements in the design. This can make it hard to interact with them and use everything the product offers. You should work with design firms to improve the accessibility for all users if you choose to use this type of user interface.

Guiding The User’s Attention

The muted color palette can make it challenging to guide the user’s attention to where you want. A soft user interface design will make this challenging if you have a call-to-action button that you want users to see and interact with. If you make it a different color or bolder, it will ruin the product’s design. This is something that you need to think about before choosing this type of design.

Thanks for reading!

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Magnus Lundström
Magnus Lundström

Written by Magnus Lundström

I’m a Swedish UX designer and marketing guy

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