UI design is changing. New trends emerge.

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UI design is changing. New trends emerge.

Malewicz 04.06.2026 4 253 просмотров 210 лайков

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There’s metal-morphism, disco-morphism, Squircle-morphism, light-morphism and many, many others. But they're all really a subset of Skeumorphism. What are the directions UI design CAN take right now and where I think it will be the most exciting to follow. I created the term Neumorphism and Glassmorphism, and this is my breakdown of 2026 UI design styles and trends. === Boost your website performance with our best AND cheapest testing and analysis tool on the market: https://pageformance.com Or learn from all my methods, documents, templates and guides with an exclusive community and direct access to ask me questions: https://squareblackblueprint.com If you want us to help you with design go to https://squareblack.com === #ui #uidesign #design Play with my bendy button generator here: https://michalmalewicz.com/bendybutton/ 00:00 UI design styles and trends for 2026 00:45 joke trends 01:18 No more morphisms 01:40 Kinds of morphisms 02:03 Skeumorphism again 02:30 Glassmorphism and Neumorphism placement in design 02:44 Glassmorphism is context 03:38 Neumorphism is middle ground 04:03 Neumorphism and accessibility 05:05 Discomorphism is not a design style 06:00 Squirclemorphism 07:15 Pageformance 07:37 Figma's joke with ballonmorphism 08:01 Two exciting UI directions 10:07 Human touch, imperfection on purpose 11:29 Designers can experiment easier now 12:30 Huge update

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UI design styles and trends for 2026

What is the future of UI design in the age of slop? There are some exciting things happening in UI. Not everything is blue and purple slop. So, let me tell you about a couple of design trends or design styles, and especially two that will be the most interesting to follow. And I am interested in UI trends because I've been the one that coined the term glassmorphism and co-created neumorphism. I bought the first domain names the dot com domains, and I wrote the first articles that outlined both of these trends that live to this day. And I'm actually working on a neumorphic project, and I will share it with you as soon as I can. But let's get back to the trends of right now.

joke trends

We're going to start with some joke trends like that Spotify thing. But then we're going to go to the actual two that I really think are important. So, Spotify changed their logo into a disco ball-inspired shape, and that was because of the 20th anniversary of the company or something like that. But the design internet lost its mind. People started talking about discomorphism. And yeah. So, now we're at a stage where we call everything a morphism thinking it will maybe stick. We don't really need

No more morphisms

another morphism, especially discomorphism. But one of the trends I'm going to tell you about later in the video is actually something that could potentially have a morphism-like name, but I'm going to let you actually take this one. Unless you won't figure it out, then I'll come back in a few months, and I'll give it a name. So

Kinds of morphisms

there's metalmorphism, squircle morphism, discomorphism, italicmorphism, and a lot of other different morphisms. They are all a subset of skeuomorphism because they are only defined by the material, which is something that's mimicking real world. So, in case of discomorphism, this is just a lot of little mirrors. It's a

Skeumorphism again

completely skeuomorphic paradigm. Same with metal. So, in the era of wooden shelves and stitched leather, which by the way was quite an exciting way and time to do design, unlike now with all the flat design, but anyway, in that era, we had metal buttons already. So, metalmorphism is nothing new. It's just skeuomorphism because it's just a material. But, isn't

Glassmorphism and Neumorphism placement in design

glassmorphism and the neumorphism also a subset of skeuomorphism? Well, in a way, but they both have one more characteristic outside of just the material that they're made of. And also, glassmorphism

Glassmorphism is context

is a pattern that works really well with both flat design and full skeuomorphism. So, in a way, it's agnostic to the level of morphism. Also, whoever tells me how many times I said morphism in that video is going to get a medal, I think. Glass is a material, obviously. But, in a way, this is a little bit more important than material itself, because all of the other materials are non-translucent. And just having that transparency, the way to see through something, allows you to have a different level of depth and context. So, it not only brings the glass material to the table, but at the same time, it gives you context of what's underneath. And none of the other morphisms do that. They're all opaque. Without that context, it would be just another material texture. This time, just looking like glass. And neumorphism

Neumorphism is middle ground

is a pretty weird thing, because it is rather minimalistic, and on purpose, it doesn't have textures and doesn't have many qualities, except of being extruded from the background. So, it's somewhere between minimalism, flat design, and skeuomorphism, which places it as kind of like this odd middle ground. And

Neumorphism and accessibility

contrary to what many people say about the accessibility issues of it, which by the way I covered in 2019 in my first article, the accessibility issues are non-issues if you do the entire rest of the interface right. Because if everything has proper contrast, proper hierarchy, good typography, then just that little border around some things might not be visible to everyone, but they will still get the whole interface structure from everything else. This is just an extra, not a defining thing. And as I mentioned, I am working on a project, a real one, that is a full neumorphic style. And I did a lot of those really cool explorations on paper for it, a lot of very cool animations and transitions, and I can't wait to share the whole case study with you as soon as it's out. But what I can say about neumorphism is that it can look beautiful if done right, and if not overdone. That's kind of like the main thing. So, discmorphism is not a

Discomorphism is not a design style

design style in any way. It's just a mirror-like texture. It could have been a design style if we used the device camera to actually fill those little mirrors with your face when you're looking at it. But this is just static mirror imitation, so imitating material. And also, in case of Spotify, it makes total sense because music, party, disco ball, it just connects in context of the material of the element to what the app is about. And I'm all for experimentation. So, if somebody drops something like this showing different disco-morphic logos. I'm fine with that. Go ahead, play around, have fun. But at the same time, this is not a trend and style that's going to fit anything other than a music app. And a

Squirclemorphism

while ago, we also arrived with the squircle, which is a square circle, which is basically a certain corner radius that is very pleasant to use in digital interfaces. And I can dive into squircles a little bit more in a separate video if you want me to. But the main thing about them is that they have these soft edges that are non-threatening because we have this primal instinct of sharp corners being associated with danger, and it still works that way. So, sharp corners are more alert-prone, and they are more associated with something luxury, professional, not very friendly. But we can go all the way to the friendly circle. But the problem with the circle is that if you put circles one under the other, our eye is going into this weird pattern. And to minimize that, we simply make the circles a little bit more square. And that way, the whole gap between them, that kind of sideways glance, is a little bit minimized, so it helps with the processing. And obviously, the fully sharp corners are processed faster, but yeah, they're not as friendly. So, squircles are basically a middle ground

Pageformance

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Figma's joke with ballonmorphism

And I have to give it to Figma this time. They went all in and talked about balloon morphism, which basically I think looked a little bit AI generated, but it was a good joke, especially since balloons um made with AI can pop. Just like Oh, okay. Let's not talk about the bubble today. Today is UI design day.

Two exciting UI directions

Let's talk about these two design trends or design styles that I think will be interesting. One is augmented reality /natural behavior. And we can split them into two or combine them. What I mean by that is if we can use the camera to cast the lighting and shadows of the real world in a real way onto skeuomorphic elements, that would deserve its own trend. Or if we could use the processing power of our devices and have buttons that react exactly where you push them. I prototyped something like this and you can see it on the screen right now, where if you tap the button on the side, it kind of shifts and bends towards that side, and it has the proper lighting effect, so the other side gets lighter, the little shadow underneath that shifts and changes. And I made this little prototype that allows me to have little sliders to modify all the values. So, if I use AI to generate something like that, I can tweak it manually to have it behave exactly as I want. I'm going to share a link to that little prototype so you can play along yourself in the description of the video. And obviously, I already implemented those buttons, those kind of interactive where you press, there it bends kind of buttons, I call them bendy buttons, into Longevity Deck already. The thing about this trend circle or this trend subset as a whole is that it's using the processing power of those modern devices because they are quite powerful, our phones and our computers, to do something a little bit even more realistic than before. So, natural shadows, natural lighting, maybe even reflecting your face in a metal button. That would be metalmorphism worth exploring. Or the button actually reacting exactly where you push it, kind of like in real life. I don't have a name for this yet, but I'm seeing some examples of that, and this is definitely worth following. And there is also

Human touch, imperfection on purpose

something about handwritten or hand-drawn elements. We're coming back because there is so much AI slop everywhere, we're coming back to a point where we see a button that's just completely hand-drawn with a little bit uneven edge, and the pen was maybe pushed a little bit too hard on one end, so the line is even thicker on some side. Basically, something that looks more human, more faulty even, or flawed in a way, but at the same time more personal, more you. And here is an example of a very nicely done portfolio like that, but there is also a running app that does those little tracks of where you run using that style and a lot more. And I'm also not giving a name to that yet, but I think that with all the AI slop out there, basically just surrounding us from every direction and every website looking exactly the same, people might crave these new interactions or these new handwritten or hand-drawn elements. And by the way, my personal website in 1999 used scanned pencil sketches for both my username and little icons and everything. So, I was actually exploring this trend in the '90s. So, it's kind of cool to see it coming back.

Designers can experiment easier now

And the cool thing is that designers can now use these modern tools to prototype things like that. Figure it out. Not every app or website will need skeuomorphism of any kind. But you can try new things. You can think of something, imagine it, build it, see if it works, and then discard it or use it. And that way the curious people will push design into some interesting new categories. Maybe even a new morphism. And all the generic stuff will stay generic. But as long as we are curious, want to play around with that stuff, as long as we have those bendy buttons and those realistic shadows and lightning effects, then I think we will be fine as an industry because that will make at least some of the products stand out from the swamp and be actually interesting. And I'm waiting for you guys to do amazing things like that. Have a beautiful day. Square Button

Huge update

Blueprint is on another tier. We still have 90-something seats left, and I will be adding both the UI book and the UX book into the blueprint. At the same time, those two books are going to be increasing in price standalone. But if you already had the blueprint or you want to get it, you will just get those books in the same package.

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