UI Design Styles Explained: Neumorphism, Glassmorphism, Claymorphism and Beyond

Every few years a new visual style sweeps Dribbble, and product teams everywhere ask the same question: should we look like that? Michał Malewicz’s UI Design Styles is a field guide to these trends, and its real value is not the how-tos. It is the reminder that style is a language with grammar, trade-offs, and a shelf life.

What are the major UI design styles?

• Flat and minimal. No shadows, no texture, hierarchy carried by type and space. The safest baseline, and still the industry default for products that need to work.

• Neumorphism (soft UI). Elements appear extruded from the background via paired light and dark shadows. Tactile and calm, but chronically low contrast.

• Glassmorphism. Frosted-glass panels: transparency, background blur, thin light borders. Layered and modern; Apple mainstreamed it in macOS Big Sur.

• Claymorphism. Puffy, rounded, inflated 3D shapes with multiple shadows. Friendly and playful; fits consumer and kids’ products.

• Neubrutalism. Raw borders, hard shadows, clashing colors. Loud on purpose.

What is the catch with every style?

Each one trades usability for character. Soft, low-contrast styles (neumorphism, glass) struggle with accessibility. Heavy styles (clay, brutalism) exhaust users in dense, task-focused products. Malewicz, who coined the term neumorphism, is explicit that styles are choices, not upgrades.

What do designers take away?

Treat style selection like brand strategy: pick the language that fits your product’s personality and audience, commit to it systematically, and then engineer the usability back in with contrast, hierarchy, and affordance fixes. The amateur move is mixing three styles on one screen because each looked good in isolation.

Why does Tremoloo share this book?

Because clients regularly arrive asking for the style they saw on a competitor, and this book gives the conversation structure: styles are vocabularies with costs, not costumes. We use that framing in every visual direction workshop.

Choosing a visual direction for your product? Our product design team can help you pick one that fits and performs.