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Attached you see my current design of a 3 column dashboard.
How can I improve this design in a more "flatter" way? Be warned that I am no designer, so if you have links to tutorials that would also be great. I am eager to learn this :)
Thanks.
One of the aspects of 'flat' design are flat areas of colour, without an outline. Your current design is teeming with outlines—try and remove those and give the areas they outline contrasting colours.
The 'flat' design aesthetic that's very trendy at the moment also eschews rounded corners for regular, 90° corners, you might want to use those as well.
Try to ditch the border and especially the border-radius on your elements. Get rid of the padding from each of the three containers, so the list elements touch each other. Divide them just with a low contrast 1px solid line. More padding on the list-items would also look good. Try styling the headlines a little bit more subtle.
Finally - I personal - would change the colors of the list items. You can find nice matching colors here: http://colourco.de/ or http://color.adobe.com
