Flat Design is a great discipline which has history in older, more popular disciplines. I believe it's fair to say "flat" has much growing to do, but it comes close to breaking with the traditional metaphor of print design. Obviously newspapers and magazines do not have leatherwork or fabric textures either: This is what makes flat design its own, it is a break from the metaphors of Print, not just skeumorphism. Skeumorphism is just one technique like the brush stroke.
That said, no one is really talking meaningfully about what makes flat its own discipline. You keep talking about all the points where flat intersects with one albeit ubiquitous technique. Talk about ANIMATION. Why does animation seem like a structural component of layout in flat design? Layering, microcosm, harmony, semantic colors, "pageless".
You guys just keep talking about one technique which is getting boring because it devalues these incredible designs which need true analysis.
You also have to discuss the technological backdrops behind each discipline. Think of how different it is today from the original creation of movable type.
Flat design is coming out of a new era in DIGITAL typography. We are limited by bits, not by physical objects like with print. Many techniques of these disciplines are outcomes of our solving conceptual, logistical and even physical problems with the discipline. Talk about this, not just: "don't these two look cool, and they look different from that." Muddied, unclear thinking...
I almost want you folks to stop trying to grope and race for the "first" on this. You're irresponsible coming up with titles just to claim the philosopher's hat when you're not doing the historian work necessary to start talking about first principles. Who are you? What authority do you have to declare first?
Seeing correlation isn't enough to declare first principles. We need an Einstein of Flat Design.
That said, no one is really talking meaningfully about what makes flat its own discipline. You keep talking about all the points where flat intersects with one albeit ubiquitous technique. Talk about ANIMATION. Why does animation seem like a structural component of layout in flat design? Layering, microcosm, harmony, semantic colors, "pageless".
You guys just keep talking about one technique which is getting boring because it devalues these incredible designs which need true analysis.