Updated Material Design Guidelines and Resources

When we first published the Material Design guidelines back in June, we set out to create a living document that would grow with feedback from the community. In that time, we’ve seen some great work from the community in augmenting the guidelines with things like Sketch templates, icon downloads and screens upon screens of inspiring visual and motion design ideas. We’ve also received a lot of feedback around what resources we can provide to make using Material Design in your projects easier.

So today, in addition to publishing the final Android 5.0 SDK for developers, we’re publishing our first significant update to the Material Design guidelines, with additional resources including:

• Updated sticker sheets in PSD, AI and Sketch formats
• A new icon library ZIP download
• Updated color swatch downloads
• Updated whiteframe downloads, including better baseline grid text alignment and other miscellaneous fixes

The sticker sheets have been updated to reflect the latest refinements to the components and integrated into a single, comprehensive sticker sheet that should be easier to use. An aggregated sticker sheet is also newly available for Adobe Photoshop and Sketch—two hugely popular requests. In the sticker sheet, you can find various elements that make up layouts, including light and dark symbols for the status bar, app bar, bottom toolbar, cards, dropdowns, search fields, dividers, navigation drawers, dialogs, the floating action button, and other components. The sticker sheets now also include explanatory text for elements.

Note that the images in the Components section of the guidelines havent yet been updated (that’s coming soon!), so you can consider the sticker sheets to be the most up-to-date version of the components.

Also, the new system icons sticker sheet contains icons commonly used in Android across different apps, such as icons used for media playback, communication, content editing, connectivity, and so on.

Stay tuned for more enhancements as we incorporate more of your feedback—remember to share your suggestions on Google+! We’re excited to continue evolving this living document with you!

For more on Material Design, check out these videos and the new getting started guide for Android developers.

Posted by Roman Nurik, Design Advocate

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Google Now Website Updated

If you are new to Android 4.0 and beyond then you may not have played with Google Now just yet or guessed what its all about. 

Well Google have finally updated their website to help those that havent quite got a handle on its abilities. 

Take a look over at http://www.google.com/landing/now/#

Both iOS and Android version are explained in detail.

They dont really cover the fact you can get Google Now to read you GMAIL, the benefit here is if you get a flight or booked a movie the confirmations are read by Google Now and you get a timely reminder, plus boarding cards post check in. 

However it does give a great explanation on everything else.

Remember the new version also supports "OK Google" commands, assuming you leave the voice in US English rather than proper good old fashions UK English. 

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