News and Announcements

Material Launches Dark Theme Guidelines

Dark theme is here. Discover best practices for contrast ratios, legibility, and color usage when designing and building low-luminance UIs with the new Material Design dark theme guidance. To learn more about creating your own dark theme, tune in to the “How to Design a Dark Theme Using Material” session.

New Sound Design Standards from Material Design

Sound is integral to a product’s user experience. Learn why with Google’s first-ever public guidelines for designing product sounds. The standards cover everything from sound theory, to tactical advice you can implement in your product right away. Find out more by jumping in to the Material Sound guidelines, or watching the “Sound Design and Sonic Brand” talk. You’ll learn what distinguishes a “hero sound” from a “brand sound,” get a lesson on timbre and melodic motif, and leave with the tools to design a harmonious sound palette.

Designing Human-Centered AI Products

Announcing new tools for designers working with AI: Material Design launches patterns and principles for building apps with the ML Kit API, and PAIR announces their People + AI Guidebook. Over 100 Googlers collaborated on the #pairguidebook, which starts with advice on when to use AI (and when to skip it), advises on data collection and feedback mechanisms, and ends with an indispensable glossary of terms.



👋 to 59 New Emoji

Mechanical arms, swimming trunks, hearing aids, otters, and waffles: Android Q comes with 59 new emoji, making our emoji palette more expressive and representative than ever before. Plus: Pixel phones will be the first to support gender-neutral icons of people.