Making Material You

Making Material You logo animated in various styles

A short film series exploring how Google is imagining an adaptive, personal, and expressive future for design

Why design as if everyone experiences color the same way?

Personal

How can we make personal devices feel personal without shipping a designer with each phone? What does it really mean to create beautiful, usable design for all?

Creating a Material You, a design language that adapts to its users, meant confronting long held beliefs about the role of designers to deliver a single vision for every user.

When the team started adding up questions around color, perception, and preference–it became clear that the design decisions that work well for some users, may not fit another group. That’s where it all started.

What material is Material?

Spirited

How can the technology we live with feel more comfortable, or more like the myriad textures of daily life? How can designed experiences allow more room for feeling–expression, play, spirit–in personal devices and the technologies we surround ourselves with?

How can design anticipate change, rather than resist it?

Unexpected

What does it take to evolve a design system beyond the traditional rulebook? How do you make a system that creates space for interpretation and expression–space for coherence but not chaos? Can a system flex and bend without sacrificing values like consistency and accessibility? What if consistency didn’t have to mean uniformity–what if we can create a beat to build new rhythms on for the future?

Get to know Material You