After nine influential years leading design teams at Microsoft, Nando Costa moved his talents to Google in March 2022 as director of design outreach and the effects can be seen here, in his collaboration with German studio Someform.

Nando Costa: “As I joined the Google Design team, I was impressed by the volume of interesting explorations that they had gone through in recent years, but it was clear to me there was still plenty of room to explore other ways of visualizing Material You, the latest iteration of Material Design, the company’s design system.

“As a process, it felt natural for me to reach out to several external artists for their own interpretation of Material in a series of collaborations. The first of such was with the incredible group of talented designers and animators at the design studio Someform.
 

“While most ideas that would come out of such an exercise don’t go beyond science fiction, I like to think that this added layer of detail can give designers more clarity and conviction in their concepts.”

 
“One of the first steps in our work with Someform was to dream up an atomic unit which would hypothetically make up every component across Material.

“In other words, we asked ourselves: what if we could momentarily work with a design system as if it were made of real atoms? Could we then expand our design work to define the physical properties and behaviors of these materials?

“While most ideas that would come out of such an exercise don’t go beyond science fiction, I like to think that this added layer of detail can give designers more clarity and conviction in their concepts.

“In turn, micro-interactions, sound and haptic design, as well as details put into motion design and every other aspect of a design language have a higher chance of culminating in a resoundingly more coherent vision.”
 

 
Client: Google
Director of Design Outreach: Nando Costa

Production: Someform