This idea is much on my mind lately. I regularly receive something on
the order of 10 or 12 emails each week from budding web designers asking
after resources to help improve their efforts. They’re not asking about
CSS or development resources, but design fundamentals resources. Today
alone, I received 7 such messages, which is a bit exceptional (and probably
why I’m writing this article now).
I don’t have to wonder why this is happening; why web designers are looking
for information on “real” design – there are many. One reason is that
traditional design and web design have long been, and in many ways still
are, antagonistic toward one another. Members of the one are not often
welcome at the other’s party. The traditional design community often looks
at the web with skepticism and contempt. The web design community has
always been happy to keep to itself, with its vast and ever-expanding
resources, and enthusiasm for new and shiny tools and techniques.
Our community provides a virtual banquet of learning opportunities
for Web development, but if you’re looking for actual design information
you’ll need to tighten your belt. The fare is paltry.
Another reason for this disconnect is that Web design has not often been
about design. Instead, the Web community’s fascination with technical
fetish has often contributed most in defining what is supposedly best
on the Web. Of course the fact that any old idiot with a couple hundred
bucks for (or a pirated copy of) Dreamweaver and a few weeks of practice
can call himself a Web designer hasn’t helped.
And, of course, we’re now working to recover from what that has done
to the state of the Web design profession.
Chickens come home to roost
And what of the Web design community? As
I’ve mentioned before, there’s plenty of community and fellowship
among Web designers when the topic is the latest Web application, a cool
new use of CSS, entertaining effects utilizing JavaScript or the DOM.
But where design is concerned, the “Web design” community is conspicuously
less gregarious and certainly less prolific in what it shares amongst
members.
Our community provides a virtual banquet of learning opportunities for
Web development, but if you’re looking for actual design information you’ll
need to tighten your belt. The fare is paltry. Ever wonder why that is?
Don’t wonder, because the answer is rather simple: You can’t buy design
off the shelf from Adobe and you can’t learn it by playing around with
it for a couple of weeks.
It is not a flattering characterization, but it’s damned accurate from
my experience to observe that many Web designers are Web designers
because they don’t enjoy working hard to be able to realize some measure
of success. It does not take a great amount of acumen or effort to learn
to use FrontPage or Dreamweaver or Fireworks or Photoshop with moderate
skill and get paid for it. So armies of Web designers possessed of no
understanding of design at all are born. Additionally, because of the
current blog free-for-all culture, many of us go forth to
badly misdefine design. (I'm sorry, but design has nothing to do with
divs or semantics).
Do you understand the logical conclusion of all this? If not, then here’s
your wakeup call. You’re about to be obsolete; downsized, optioned out.
That’s right, unemployed. Time to polish up your résumé.
It doesn’t help that the Web design community tends to devote lots of
energy toward maintaining distraction and entertainment at the expense
of tending its own garden when it comes to design. For example, there
are scores of online web design galleries, but these neither teach design
nor have or exercise any standard for what constitutes good design. And
if the gallery allows comments from viewers, the commentary invariably
lauds artistry, technique and programming almost exclusively. Design concerns
are seemingly irrelevant to these design venues.
There are a few
individuals who devote
some significant effort toward providing design insights, but they are
the exception. And with the Web design community being largely incestuous,
the lack of fresh information leads to stagnation and thematic repetition
– the internet version of genetic deformity. Shapes and textures are
mistaken for design and their merits sadly debated in worthless discussion
threads.
As a result, Web designers are not often really designers at all and
the Web design community’s chickens have come home to roost with little
to crow about.
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Professional Web designers who don’t understand the fundamentals of design
are frauds. And soon, the people who pay for web design will catch on
to that fact. It’s happening already, as design has begun to garner more
of its fair share of attention in the business world. This will only increase
and the business community’s grasp of design will continue to expand and
become more refined, making room for skilled designers and very little
for the rest.
Do you understand the logical conclusion of all this? If not, then here’s
your wakeup call. You’re about to be obsolete; downsized, optioned out.
That’s right, unemployed. Time to polish up your résumé.
So if you’re a Web designer, maybe it’s time to devote some effort toward
actually learning the fundamentals of design. This is not something you
can do in a weekend and it’s not something you can get from a magazine.
You’ll need to learn this from a reputable institution and you won’t need
your laptop. Pen, pencil, paintbrush, ink, charcoal, paper, canvas, textbooks
– that’s all you’ll need. It’ll take time, so you’d better get cracking.
And while you’re at it, be sure to devote plenty of effort toward understanding
information architecture, human psychology and interface affordance issues,
too. Can’t do much Web designing without understanding those fields.
And if you’re looking for a good book to help with your design study,
forget the Web design books. Forget the whole internet section of the
store. Go and buy a landscape painting book. Go to the art shelves at
your favorite bookstore and look for titles with the words, “landscape”
and “composition” in them. That’s what you need. I’m serious.
* * *
I’ve been critical here, but for good reason. I love design and I really
dig the Web design community. But as a professional I don’t like how so
much idiocy has been allowed to masquerade as professional practice. As
a community, I think we’re somewhat misguided and lack sufficient focus
on what’s relevant to our endeavor. I’d like to see some fundamental changes
in our community and by this essay and others I hope to inspire some sober
thought and action toward that end.
UPDATE: I've already received a couple of notes chiding
me for equating Web design with art, but I'm not doing that at all. It
is a fact that design is based upon the fundamentals of artistry and if
you don't have those fundamentals internalized, you can't be an effective
designer. I've written
about this before and won't expound on that again here. Sadly, this
sort of misunderstanding is indicative of just how much work is left to
do in the "design" community.
