Flat is coming, and what strikes me is how little I feel about it either way.
You can feel the turn. The gradients are thinning. The bevels are going. Microsoft has gone hard in this direction, and the whole field is watching to see whether it holds.
I have a settled relationship with trends. I notice them, and I'll borrow a piece of one when it genuinely serves the work. But I've tried not to let the fashion of the moment do my thinking for me, and I don't want to start now.
Where I work at the moment, we use a lot of colour. Gradient, wisp, a bit of fun. It isn't a technology startup, and flat design doesn't solve a single problem we actually have. So it doesn't really touch us, and I'm at peace with that.
Still, I'm fascinated to watch the world switch this hard and this fast. Part of me thinks flat is honest, that it strips away the fake leather and the fake paper and finally admits a screen is a screen. Part of me thinks we're about to lose some depth and affordance in the name of looking current, and that people will end up poking at things that no longer look poke-able.
Probably both are true. Most turns in this trade are half progress and half fashion, and the work is to keep the first part and let the second wash past. Ask me in three years which half this one was.