1 Before now, before this, earlier, eons ago

“New media design” – When is it going to lose the ‘new’… is there a cut off point where it will become “The media formerly known as New Media Design”?

posted at 03:40 pm on November 20, 2007 by iain urquhart

2 Untitled

I am only new to web design myself, so while I may not have much in the way of experience, I would like to think that I have my priorities right. Web design is not purely about aesthetics.

Like you said Jeff, it’s just like architecture. Just like an architect designs a building to accommodate the people who will use it, the goal with the web is to build a site that functions well for the people who will be using it. Usability is the key, but it seems as though some people mistakenly assume that good aesthetics beget good design.

A good design is one that facilitates the end-user, and makes their experience on the site smooth, simple and enjoyable.

posted at 04:01 pm on November 20, 2007 by Chris Darroch

3 Sublime...

That’s what this article is… sublime. Thanks Jeffery.

posted at 04:42 pm on November 20, 2007 by Caleb Bell

4 Great Article

I completely agree with the architecture metaphor. Its the only way I could explain to my parents what exactly I did for my career.

“Its like architecture. I balance aesthetics and usability to create an experience for someone to interact with.” They still don’t quite get it, but its starting to make sense to them so that’s all that matters.

posted at 05:13 pm on November 20, 2007 by Dennis Eusebio

5 Perfectly Written

This is a print & save article that we will be sharing with all of our clients. I laughed out loud a few times and re-read certain passages out loud because we haved lived through them – like the “Boxy” paragraph.

Thank you!

posted at 05:15 pm on November 20, 2007 by Phillip Palmieri

6 Thanks

Thanks, Jeffrey.

I’ve been a fan of yours since I read DWWS and it changed my life. It came at the right time, inspired me, and exposed me to the web design community that I was looking for.

This piece you’ve written was a joy to read and will undoubtedly help solidify what web design means to me.

Dave

posted at 05:20 pm on November 20, 2007 by dave lane

7 Well Said...

Well said…thanks for your insights.

posted at 05:29 pm on November 20, 2007 by Dan Wilkinson

8 books

I can’t claim to be winning my own personal struggle with creating “digital environments that facilitate and encourage human activity”, but then I often feel that my generally small clients aren’t really at a stage where even they themselves, commissioners of websites, appointers of web designers, are aware that they will have to interact with their own website to change it gracefully over time. Their web tendency is often informed by what they do at trade fairs: invest an ideally small part of one year’s marketing budget to put up a monolith in time for a certain calendar event, perhaps even believing it will be re-used and updated, but they quickly get discouraged at the lack of glamour (or tangible r.o.i.?) that comes with the time-consuming retouching of the paintwork, fixing of the plinths, entering of the data, moderation of the comments, generation of the faqs… so they abandon the old monolith until they get more budget approved to build a newer, blacker, taller, more mysterious monolith a few years down the line, which in turn lets them do the glamourous, enjoyable bit of their job… talking to designers, approving quotes, making presentations to the boss, filling their cv.

I suppose that, as a web designer, I should be convincing them this is folly, but there are only so many times you can send the same email asking for some content for section XYZ of the site, or offering to help with the faq, and occasionally I even agree with them… build it, static even, knock it down when you’re bored of it, build another one… make your day interesting; you, client, like me, only have one life, and why shouldn’t you want it to be filled with glamour and fun?

So I guess that what I mean is that the luckiest web designers among us are like architects, building structures that will be inhabited, extended, lived in, sometimes despised, sometimes loved. But I’d be happy if web design were like book design… no-one judges a book poorly if they only read it once, and no-one really complains at its limitations, or has gripes with the logic of the designer of a novel keeping the left-aligned text away from the page edge, putting the spine at the back, using a 100 year old serif font in black on off-white, putting a table of contents at the beginning and an index at the back. Book design is, for the most part, way beyond the growing pains of web design, and books are judged on the value of their content (like google maps), and on the tiny details that make one more pleasant to read than another… books age gracefully without intervention, and the interaction is limited to absorption of information and a few margin notes… that’s where I think much of web design is headed, and I don’t see it as a bad thing. There will always be pop-up books to amaze children and adults alike, or books for specific targets that need to break the conventions, just don’t mention magazine design… short shelf-life, surface-level information, advertising-driven with a need to shock and sell – all in all quite similar to that of the self-aggrandising award ceremony websites you mention.

posted at 05:40 pm on November 20, 2007 by Thomas Eagle

9 Bravo

It is sometimes difficult to quantify what we do as web professionals. This has done it in an elegant and insightful way that only someone with your level of experience in our industry could do.

You’ll most certainly be quoted in our client materials. Thanks for sharing this with us.

posted at 05:46 pm on November 20, 2007 by Deanna Mitchell

10 The Fountainhead

If anything, this article reminded me of the great Howard Roark who was misunderstood in his time and was laughed at for wanting to design “modern” architecture. So is our situation now in web design. Where there are these set designs that are considered to be beautiful and everything else falls by the way side. But a truly great web designer will stand on his/her own two feet and laugh in the face of adversity.

Thanks for the wonderful article.

posted at 05:48 pm on November 20, 2007 by kyle steed