Hello! I'm Phil and I'm a Product Manager at Airtable. I'm excited to let you know about some visual design updates we've made across the Airtable product (which some eagle-eyed members of the community may have already noticed!)
We released a number of visual updates in the last day with the goal of making it easier and more intuitive for you to build powerful apps that are not only delightful to use but impactful as well. Most of these changes have rolled out in the last day, and here's a summary of what's changed visually:
Fonts used for headings in Views and Interfaces
Icons
Buttons and form elements
Charts in Interfaces
Comments in Interfaces (coming soon)
Color palette used for Base headers and Single select options
The updates to colors are notable, and I want to highlight why we've made these changes. We adjusted our colors because many of the existing colors are considered "inaccessible" when text is displayed on top of them. This means customers with visual impairments may not be able to read the text. Our updated colors help those customers better use apps built on Airtable, make Airtable a more inclusive product, and position Airtable well to meet important accessibility standards in the future.
We hope these changes improve your overall Airtable experience and make it easier for everyone on your team to use your apps. Thank you for working with us to build better experiences together. If you have any questions or general feedback, let the team and I know here! We're eager to know what you think.
Update (February 23rd) Hi everyone, we’d like to thank you for your thoughtful responses to our visual design updates. Among the feedback, we heard concerns about some of the changes and we’re using your feedback to improve the experience further. We've tested the accessibility of our colors, and will continue to carefully and extensively test colors to strike an optimal balance between contrast and vibrancy. Like you, we care deeply about our product and strive to design a better experience for everyone. We’ll keep you posted on updates and share more information in the coming weeks.
Page 2 / 2
@Hannah_Martin and @J_Jones, thank you for sharing your feedback about the readability of the new colors. We’ll take this into consideration as we update and improve our color swatches.
@Julien_Mottet1 Yes, you’re correct about the current day no longer being highlighted in the date picker. This one slipped through the cracks, but is now fixed.
@Sean_Christense: Thanks for your feedback! We’ll consider this as we refine our new icons to improve contrast while maintaining the greater emphasis on the data in your Bases and Interfaces.
@Ryan_Pearl1, thanks for catching this. We have a fix out on the way.
@Phil_Rose thank for answering to everyone despite our grave feedbacks.
It's hard to face criticism, especially what it's about work you deliver.
It's hard to satisfy at the stakes holders.
We are at the easy place.
@Phil_Rose Seconding the thanks for giving this another look. Much appreciated.
I've got an incredibly minor bug relating to colours that never seemed worth its own thread so I'll drop it here if that's OK.
When adding new colour conditions to a view, the colours are automatically added sequentially except for the third colour from the left on the top row, which is always skipped. Again, totally minor and off-topic but it's always mildly annoyed me.
I have a bit of feedback to share that I haven't seen mentioned.
Overall I think the changes are fine, I'm rather neutral about them. I have always felt boxed in by the color palate, and I'm sure there is a reason you don't allow users full color selection but I don't know what it is.
My real concern with this update is with the header section of interfaces, where fields are now extremely crammed together. There needs to be a lot more space between fields. I have a mix of bolded and unbolded fields, which now looks like this:
Anyway thanks for the continued support and improvement from the team.
I'm afraid I agree with a lot of the previous posters just in terms of the new look and feel: It looks a lot less warm and approachable. Instead I very much get a Microsoft vibe now. And if there's one thing I do NOT want in my software, it's a Microsoft vibe.
Please please put it back to the way it was! This new color scheme is a huge setback.
Hey @threadandmaple,
Just FYI, this discussion is currently going on on this other post. As mentioned on such post, you’ll want to fill out this form or reach out to support@airtable.com to make sure that the Airtable Team gets your feedback!
@krs021, thank you for sharing your feedback about the new colors. We’ll take this into account as we continue to test and refine our swatches. Please let us know about specific color swatches you are having trouble with.
I miss the bright, easy to read table tab colors that matched the icon colors! This is a nightmare on my eyes.
😭😭😭The new look/layout has been a terrible upgrade...When I was on a free account, one of the big motivators was to have a broader spectrum of colors so I didn’t have to use muted, pale, hard to distinguish colors. This update doesn’t feel good on my eyes. I want my bold, bright, high contrast table tabs back!
Also, the addition of “onmi” in the left nav now takes away valuable real estate for a feature I’m not going to use. I do not want AI forced into a database with my sacred data. it feels...intrusive. I will apply AI in my own way, how I see fit. I know it’s a big help for MMR of companies to incorporate AI functions, but I’m not yet comfortable with ai being this close to my data.
Please allow us to turn things like this on or off. I’m already fighting with my 3-foot monitor to see all the details in my base. I can’t lose any more on the left nave to stuff I can’t turn off.
I wish you guys would beta this stuff or give us the opportunity to control what & how we see these new updates. I just want to go back to my easier to read bases.
HI @Jennifer_Ching,
This is an old thread from years ago that Airtable is not monitoring anymore.
Thanks! Just did! It looked ok Monday… today I don't even recognize it.
Totally agree. Just submitted my complaints. Working in Airtable just became lots less fun! The dark mode is totally unusable. Why update a perfect layout without consulting userpanels?
Mostly redundant at this point, but I feel it’s worth adding one more comment about a preference for the old color scheme. This is a big step back. The colors weren’t just fun, they served an obvious purpose: one base could be instantly distinguished from another.
It really feels like the platform has been stripped of its identity. When I’m swamped in browser windows and tabs, it’s much more difficult to find Airtable at a glance.
This comes from a place of love. I want Airtable to be the best it can be, and this visual update just ain’t it.
Totally agree with you! Be sure to submit your complaints, although it likely won’t do any good.
One of my biggest complaints about the new UI is that once you go into a base’s data layer, it is now significantly more difficult for the “views sidebar” (in the left margin) to get out of our way when we don’t want to see it.
We don’t typically want to see the “views sidebar” because it takes up so much screen real estate, but now it takes 3 clicks to get it out of our way.
In the past, it didn’t take any clicks at all to keep the views sidebar out of our way, because it had a “hover” behavior. In the past, we could just hover over the views menu, choose the view that we want, and then the views sidebar would immediately close.
But now, it takes 3 mouse clicks to open the views panel, choose a view, then close the views sidebar.
This is because we are now required to either “open” or “close” the sidebar. The “hover” action has been removed.
I agree with everyone. And I would like to add my penny regarding this inconistency between table color, and base icon totally unusable. suppose you change to organge, but the tables are colored in something different. at least you keep it warmth. Really dissapointing
Totally agree with you! Be sure to submit your complaints, although it likely won’t do any good.
One of my biggest complaints about the new UI is that once you go into a base’s data layer, it is now significantly more difficult for the “views sidebar” (in the left margin) to get out of our way when we don’t want to see it.
We don’t typically want to see the “views sidebar” because it takes up so much screen real estate, but now it takes 3 clicks to get it out of our way.
In the past, it didn’t take any clicks at all to keep the views sidebar out of our way, because it had a “hover” behavior. In the past, we could just hover over the views menu, choose the view that we want, and then the views sidebar would immediately close.
But now, it takes 3 mouse clicks to open the views panel, choose a view, then close the views sidebar.
This is because we are now required to either “open” or “close” the sidebar. The “hover” action has been removed.
The new left-hand sidebar in addition to the “views sidebar” makes this much worse, too. We need to be able to make that minimize to the top bar, which already has a ton of wasted space.
Not everyone is working on two large screens. Airtable needs to be optimized for regular laptop usage too.
