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Google’s 2020 Material Design Awards crown best dark theme, motion, and theming

Now in its sixth year, the 2020 Material Design Award winners were announced this morning. There are just three categories this year covering the best dark theme, use of motion, and Material Theming. 

It’s time once again to celebrate the product teams who used ingenuity and creativity to bring Material to life. The Material Design Award winners serve as great examples of Material Design in action, using the system as a flexible, customizable foundation for beautiful, usable experiences.

Google received hundreds of open nominations since June across the three categories. Following the announcement of the 2020 Material Award winners, Google will be publishing “in-depth content on how each team created their award-winning experiences.” Android, iOS, and web apps updated/launched between September 2019 and October 2020 were eligible.

Material Theming Winner: Moooi.com

In keeping with their namesake, the Dutch word for “beauty,” Moooi focuses on aesthetic fundamentals to create an immersive experience for their digital flagship. As purveyors of design-forward lighting and furnishing, they work with full bleed color, typography, and scale, using a number of reusable components to balance expressiveness and practicality.

Large, graphic headlines and body text set in Sang Bleu are complemented by body text set in Gill Sans. Choosing two large type families gives Moooi’s type system a broad expressive range for conveying product information, site navigation, and editorial headlines across the site.

Material Motion Winner: Epsy

For an app whose aim is to better the lives of those living with epilepsy, Epsy uses motion meaningfully, guiding users through critical tasks to better their quality of life, like logging triggers, taking medication, and building community connection.

Motion serves a clear purpose in Epsy and is crafted with care and restraint; from gentle inter-screen choreography to custom animated progress indicators and icons in the bottom navigation bar.

Dark Theme Winner: Kayak

KAYAK has taken their comprehensive price comparison and travel booking experience to the next level by translating their brand into a dark theme, using subtle but intentional applications of color. Their unique orange brand color is used sparingly to give prominent elements, such as their most important navigation icons, top hierarchy, leaving the majority of space dedicated to dark surfaces. KAYAK’s custom dark background mixes in a hint of blue that works in harmony with secondary blue accents found throughout the app.

All previous winners are listed here:

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Avatar for Abner Li Abner Li

Editor-in-chief. Interested in the minutiae of Google and Alphabet. Tips/talk: abner@9to5g.com