By Design
I really love the design process. Web design particularly appeals to me because I’m such a visually-oriented person, but ask me to design anything–instructional materials, psychology experiments, knitted items, etc.–and I’ll be sufficiently absorbed for hours, days, weeks.
I love the challenge of it; the more restrictions you give me, the more I enjoy the process. It’s like a brain teaser, or a dare.
I love watching shows like Project Runway that actually highlight what goes into a design, as well as the “make it work”, creative problem-solving aspect of designing.
Design is, in some ways, the midway point between engineering and fine art. In order to get something that is both functional and beautiful, you must design. I feel most content when I’m working at this intersection between the left and right brains.
Web design, in particular, resides perfectly at this intersection. On the one side, you have graphics. On the other side, you have code and text. The trick is to create a successful marriage between the two.
In this, I think it’s always better to err on the side of text. The web is not TV, nor is it print media. The web was originally a text-only, information-rich environment, and it’s pretty hard to go wrong by sticking to those principles on the web. Unless you have an art site, people aren’t coming to you for aesthetic pleasure.
Web designers who wax poetic about creating “rich, lush environments” like “walking into a lavish boudoir” completely miss the point of the web and design. Lavish boudoirs exist to create extended multi-sensational experiences. Try to do that on a web site, and you’ll find that visitors walk out after 8 seconds of “Loading…”
This is the paradox of design: good design should essentially disappear from the end user’s point of view. It should support and enhance the value and function of your content. It should not distract from or block access to said function and content. If more designers paid heed to this basic design principle, we’d finally be able to wrest the internet from the clutches of splash pages, Flashturbation, Mystery Meat navigation, 500K graphics, and other crimes against humanity.
Of course, it’s easy to criticize bad design and not so easy to produce good design. Getting a thorough understanding of good design principles requires a lot of time and study. Heck, people spend years in design school for that purpose. I’ve wanted to spend years in design school for that purpose.
And even then sometimes you still need to throw out everything you ever learned about design once you get a real assignment, a real client, or a real end user in front of your product.
Chipanglish
CogKnition
Gustatory Circuit