Ɀeus

i wouldn’t even mind the colours if they didn’t tint the background. tinting solely the main text colour and the main buttons might look quite nice. to be honest though, i just loathe pastel colours in general, so it’s possible that’s influencing my opinion

personal opinion, i think padding is worse for delineating objects than a bit of colour; or just, like, a line. look at this example - there are four distinct segments on the left, whereas on the right they all merge into one and a half

padding is really useful, yes, but if you put padding on everything then what’s there to be separated?

yeah, i hated material ew as soon as it was announced. so much padding everywhere, and so little contrast - to paraphrase the incredibles: if everything’s orange^[1], nothing is. your eyes will adjust to it. i want actionable items to stand out, not be a slightly lighter shade of the same colour. it also looks rather like a fischer-price my first phone interface

i must say, if an app (for example, jerboa) uses material 3, i usually try to look for an alternative

[1] other colours are available, i just like orange

edit: some examples:

with material design, it’s clear what’s a header, what’s a footer,^[2] and what each button’s state is.

with all the padding, there’s also less space; leading to less functionality

with material ew, it’s much harder to tell at a glance what each app is, one has to scrutinise the icon rather than just tell at a glance by colour

i also really dislike monet; the way it pulls this horrible washed out sickly pastel colour from a wallpaper and washes it over the entire app. if i just pulled one accent colour, and applied that to, say, the header and main action button, i’d like it a lot more

[2] look at the lack of contrast on that “new post” button

i like it. i’m glad to see a bit of depth and personality coming back into the design à la mode