I can't help but feel like this is just the next obvious cycle in design fashion and as such it's not something to get so worked up about. "The Honest Design Age" strikes me as an absurdly grandiose term. I like the more prosaic interpretation, which is that certain graphical idioms have become so commonplace that in order to stand out visually, you need to do something different. Fashion.

In a few years, designers will start to get tired of looking at and creating flat designs day in and day out. They'll add little flourishes and write blog posts proclaiming "The Era of Living Design", where designs have all the spark and texture of real living things.

I mean, it's absolutely great that these folks are so excited, so passionate about design. But I don't think it has to be so cosmically meaningful for it to be exciting.

And this is not to say that Layer Vault is poorly designed. It's just that it can be a good design without every non-flat design being bad or dishonest.