Ant Design vs Material Design: What are the differences?

Key Differences between Ant Design and Material Design

1. Design Language: Ant Design follows a minimalistic and conservative design language, emphasizing clean and precise lines, with a focus on simplicity and practicality. On the other hand, Material Design employs a more vibrant and playful design language, using bold colors and shadows to create a sense of depth and interaction.

2. Iconography: Ant Design utilizes a set of custom-designed icons that are tailored to their design language. These icons have a more simplistic and angular style, with emphasis on clarity and functionality. In contrast, Material Design has a vast library of icons, known as "Material Icons," which are more detailed, rounded, and visually appealing.

3. Component Styles: Ant Design components have a consistent visual style throughout their library, with a preference for sharp corners and minimalist aesthetics. Material Design components, on the other hand, employ rounded edges and soft shadows to create a more tactile and physical appearance, inspired by real-world materials.

4. Theming and Customization: Ant Design focuses on providing a comprehensive theming system, allowing users to easily customize the look and feel of their applications. It provides various pre-defined themes and a flexible mechanism for creating custom themes. Material Design, on the other hand, offers guidelines and recommendations for theming but doesn't provide an out-of-the-box theming system like Ant Design.

5. Accessibility and Internationalization: Ant Design pays notable attention to accessibility and internationalization in its components, providing built-in support for screen readers, keyboard navigation, and multiple languages. Material Design also emphasizes accessibility, but its focus is more on visual accessibility, ensuring that content is easily understandable and distinguishable by all users.

6. Developer Experience: Ant Design is primarily built for developers who prefer a more structured and programmatic approach to building user interfaces. It provides a rich set of APIs, detailed documentation, and extensive tooling support. Material Design, on the other hand, caters to a broader audience, including designers and non-technical users, by providing comprehensive design guidelines, resources, and design tools.

In Summary, Ant Design and Material Design differ in their design language, iconography, component styles, theming and customization capabilities, accessibility and internationalization focus, as well as the developer experience they offer.