Arguably, there's no better example of efficient web design than the Google homepage. Every little design tweak goes through rigorous A/B testing, and yet the homepage does not look fundamentally different than it did 10 years ago. In fact, it's so simple and iconic that, back in May, lead Google homepage designer Jon Wiley told us that he wasn't sure if the design would ever fundamentally change.
But what if it did? On Dribbble, designer Aurélien Salomon imagined what Google search would look like if it were redesigned using Google's own Material Design language. Gone is Google search's iconic sparseness, and in its place is the colorful, beautifully animated UX of Android L, Android Wear, and other Google products.
I like it. At first blush, Salomon's redesign seems less space efficient than Google's existing design, but it's an optical illusion: there are still just as many links and search results on each page, but Salomon's Material Design approach has a much richer, modern, and more visually appealing layout.
Google created Material Design for use across all of its products, but there's still something that feels alien about seeing it on the Google homepage. It just doesn't feel like Google any more. Perhaps that's why Wiley seemed so unsure as to when, or even if, we'd ever see Material Design come to Google.com.
See Salomon's complete Google.com overhaul here.