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Material Design is a design language that was developed by Google in recent years. Designers and end-back users can replicate Google instructions through material design. In this article, we will examine the material design language of Google together and introduce 20 of its top frameworks.

What is Material Design?

In 2014, Google developed the Material Design language based on the Card-Based design so available in Google Now Smart Assistant. Flat design style was very popular among designers at that time, but Material Design entered the design field with a paper-based design style.

The goal of Material Design, like other design systems, is to bring the same user experience to users on different devices, platforms, and inputs. In fact, just as Apple uses Flat design principles as its standard, Google has also tried to provide users with an integrated and enjoyable user experience, regardless of how users access their products.

Material Design provides the designer with instructions on all categories related to design such as font type (Typography), frame (Grid), space (Space), scale (Scale), color and images. In addition, designers can use this design language to create their purposeful designs in accordance with the hierarchy, meaning and focus on the final result.

The importance of using material design

Material design, like any other design system, has a number of advantages that designers must consider. It is not just a set of design style guidelines, but a comprehensive ecosystem. In fact, anything related to design, material design will provide users with complete rules to handle it. Complex instructions are often overlooked in design languages, so material design is a great option for those considering such a structure.

Google also supports material design and maintains all documentation related to its use and implementation, while most new design languages ​​lack such support. Of course, it still retains its flexibility despite the many documents and too much comprehensiveness. In fact, the details of how to implement the design in Material Design are completely at the discretion of the designer.

Another important feature of material design is the design of Skeuomorphism, which separates this language from the Flat design and provides it to designers intuitively. Another useful feature of Material Design is that user feedback will be in the form of Haptic Feedback technology, short animations and the like. In addition, the physical sense of this design language is so simple that it will be easier for the user to interact with.

Material Design is based on the Mobile-First approach, so its main goal is focused on designing mobile applications. The language also encourages designers to use animations so that they can use short animations to receive user feedback and learn various features of the application.

The ability to use a dark background is also available to designers in this design system. In fact, the original version of the material was designed with a light background, which did not seem suitable for use in some brands, but with the addition of a dark background, this problem was completely eliminated.

Top 20 Material Design Frameworks

1- Materialize framework

The Materialize framework is a state-of-the-art responsive front-end library developed based on the material design language. Materialize is very easy to work with due to the detailed documentation, this framework is also equipped with the SASS version, which allows users to select the desired components.

Materialize software is one of the most popular material design frameworks, which is also a very desirable option for beginners.

• Support: Alvin Wang
• Release Date: 2014
• GitHub popularity: 37,700 stars and 4,900 forks
• License: MIT

2- Muse-UI

The Muse-UI tool is one of the lightest CSS frameworks that follows the material design guidelines. In fact, the size of the compressed CSS and JS files is 12 KB. The tool is based on the Vue 2.0 component-based library and has more than 40 UI components. The software also supports React and customization with the SASS plugin.

• Support: Andres Morey
• Release Date: 2016
• GitHub popularity: 8,100 stars and 911 forks
• License: MIT

3- Material UI framework

The Material UI framework has React components that execute Google Material Design guidelines. If you are using the React framework, so the Material UI tool is the best option for you. The tool also has a light and dark background mode and is currently one of the most popular material design frameworks.

• Support: Material-UI Team
• Release Date: 2014
• GitHub popularity: 58,800 stars and 16,900 forks
• License: MIT

4- Material Design Lite

The Material Design Lite framework has been developed by Google and so it you can add the appearance of Material Design to your website. This tool is not dependent on any of the JavaScript frameworks and is optimized for use on various devices. Material Design Lite framework also supports SASS preprocessor, although this framework is not directly supported by Google, but it has an extensive user forum that you can use if needed.

• Support: Google Team
• Release Date: 2015
• GitHub popularity: 31,600 stars and 5,300 forks
• License: Apache License 2.0

5- Material Components framework for the web

The Material Components for the web framework was designed by Google engineers and is a kind of alternative to material design light. Using this tool, so you can easily integrate material design components with JavaScript frameworks.

• Support: Material Components Team
• Release Date: 2016
• GitHub popularity: 14,600 stars and 1,900 forks
• License: Apache License 2.0

6- Material Design framework for Bootstrap

The Material Design for Bootstrap framework is the best option for Bootstrap users. Due to this tool is based on the Bootstrap framework and you can use it to build components for Bootstrap 3 and Bootstrap 4. This framework also has very good documentation and has a very active user community.

• Support: Federico Zivolo
• Release Date: 2014
• GitHub popularity: 20,200 stars and 3,300 forks
• License: MIT

7- Polymer

Polymer is a library through which you can quickly create all reusable components and then import them into your project. The set of paper-shaped elements of this framework implements Google Material Design guidelines.

In addition, you can access material design layouts using other polymer components. This tool is supported by Google and the user community on GitHub and is used by designers in large companies such as YouTube, Google Earth, Netflix, etc.

• Support: Polymer Team
• Release Date: 2012
• GitHub popularity: 21,400 stars and 2,000 forks

8- Angular Material

The Angular tool is a design material framework developed by the AngularJS team to execute its instructions in AngularJS. Due to this framework has a large set of reusable and tested components, documentation along with code samples and a very active user association. So keep in mind that this library is available to designers in two versions compatible with Angular GS1 and Angular GS2 +.

Details of Angular Material for AngularJS 2+ are as follows:

• Support: Angular Team
• Release Date: 2016
• GitHub popularity: 20,000 stars and 5,400 forks
• License: MIT

9- Vuetify

This tool is a semantic framework for Vue 2 that provides reusable components to application designers. This software has been developed in line with Google Material Design guidelines and has the desired documentation and countless code samples so that you can easily use them in your project.

• Support: js Team
• Release Date: 2016
• GitHub popularity: 26,200 stars and 4,500 forks
• License: MIT

10- JFoenix framework

The JFoenix tool is a library that executes material design instructions using Java components. So the tool also has classic components and you can implement them using JavaFX.

• Support: JFoeniX
• Release Date: 2015
• GitHub popularity: 4,900 stars and 942 forks
• License: Apache License 2.0

11- Propeller

The Propeller tool is a front-end and responsive framework based on the material design standards of Google and Bootstrap. So this framework contains detailed documentation and code samples that you can use in your project.

• Support: Digicorp
• Team Release Date: 2016
• GitHub popularity: 1,100 stars and 157 forks
• License: MIT

12- Framework7

The Framework7 tool is an HTML framework used by designers to develop hybrid Android or iOS applications. Due to Framework 7 allows you to develop web applications with a native look of iOS or Android; In addition, prototyping of applications in this framework is easy.

• Support: Framework7
• Team Release Date: 2014
• GitHub popularity: 15,500 stars and 3,200 forks
• License: MIT

13- Zurb Foundation framework

The Zurb Foundation framework is a very useful tool for developing responsive web applications. The performance of this framework is very good, but it has problems in the face of some components; In addition, the development of this framework has stopped.

• Support: Mikolaj Dobrucki
• Release Date: 2014
• GitHub popularity: 359 stars and 81 forks
• License: MIT

14- Ionic Material

Ionic Material tool is an extension for Ionic hybrid mobile application framework. In fact, by using this framework, you can change their appearance to Google Material Design without the need to change the application, so that in fact, classes, methods and helpers can be changed without any change in behavior or style. So it will add codes to the application.

• Support: Zach Fitzgerald
• Release Date: 2015
• GitHub popularity: 3,000 stars and 966 forks
• License: MIT

15- Materia Theme for Bootstrap

The Bootswatch development team has developed many teams for Bootstrap. One of the themes of this company is called Materia, through which you can also execute its instructions. Although this framework contains some of the classic material components, it is also the best option for working with Bootstrap. In fact, with this tool, you will no longer have to modify the entire project, but will have to replace the Bootstrap CSS files with the theme files.

• Support: Thomas Park
• Release Date: 2012
• GitHub popularity: 12,300 stars and 3,400 forks
• License: MIT

16- Material framework

The Material tool is actually based on the front-end and responsive Bootstrap4 framework. This software implements components in Bootstrap and adds many material design elements such as cards. This framework also has very detailed documentation that will easily guide you through the work.

• Support: Daemon Internet Consultants Team
• Release Date: 2015
• GitHub popularity: 3,100 stars and 744 forks
• License: MIT

17- Surface

The Surface tool is a CSS framework that implements many material design components without any dependencies.  So this framework is actually a compact and compact CSS file (5.7 KB) and does not contain any JavaScript.

• Support: Ben Mildren
• Release Date: 2015
• GitHub popularity: 338 stars and 60 forks
• License: MIT

18- Essence framework

The Essence tool is a CSS framework based on Facebook’s ReactJS library that implements material design instructions. In fact, you can use this tool to develop mobile and web applications very quickly. So, keep in mind that the Essence framework does not have an active user forum.

• Support: Evo Forge Team
• Release Date: 2015
• GitHub popularity: 413 stars and 53 forks
• License: MIT

19- Lumx

You can use this framework to implement its instructions in a pixel-perfect design. Due to this framework is based on AngularJS and uses jQuery and the Sass toolkit for style customization.

The tool also uses the Velocity library to create animations and has very detailed code samples and documentation that you can easily use in your project.

• Support: Lumapps Team
• Release Date: 2014
• GitHub popularity: 2,000 stars and 295 forks
• License: MIT

20- Phonon

The Phonon tool is a framework for developing mobile hybrid applications that also supports the Apache Cordova and PhoneGap platforms. So this framework is also very small and has a volume of about 62 KB.

• Support: Quarkdev Team
• Release Date: 2014
• GitHub popularity: 416 stars and 108 forks
• License: MIT