Sadly, I missed Future Of Web Design this year, but I managed to catch up at least a little on some of what was discussed after the fact. One presentation I particularly enjoyed was Elliot Jay Stocks' piece on destroying the Web 2.0 look. The slides were short and sweet, but it looks like there would have been a great discussion on the topic in person. I found myself instantly nodding my head and even wanting to add a few things to his list of clichés, namely:
• Leaves in logos
• Corner Ribbons
• Cutesy vector ornaments
• Anything I can tell you downloaded from DeviantArt
Now, obviously as Elliot said, these are not things you should never use, you just have to use them correctly, and perhaps not in a way that everyone else already has...
...And this is really what I got to wondering: There's been some interesting talk the past week or two regarding designers, developers, in-betweens, and how they all fit together. Feasibly it's safe to assume that all three of these categories of people do solo work. So what's wrong with a developer cranking out some clichéd, templated crap once in a while, and should we really jump down a designer's throat for putting up some rock band site that's more or less a sliced .psd? The answer I'm hearing most often is yes and no.
Yes, we as a community should make an effort to ensure that on the whole the products that succeed are interoperable, accessible, attractive and forward-thinking, but no, it's not cut and dry. So where do you draw the line?
As a developer, I read A list apart on a regular basis, I keep up with some tech blogs, dev communities and resources that interest me, and I even read Subtraction, Jeff Croft and other designers' feeds who I think really are doing things right. But I haven't seen everything out there, and sometimes I'll wrap up a project that I'm feeling real good about, only to realize that crap, some piece of my aesthetic's been done to death. There are enough people in this business now, that the million monkeys/million typewriters rule has come into play; and two or more people can end up with nearly the exact same thing by completely honest means. I realize that design isn't my strength necessarily, but I have a hard time looking at the project the same way that I did before, and as we slowly start to Web-2.0-aesthetic ourselves out of a profitable future in the industry, It's clear that innovation on all fronts is a must in order to remain relevant. Finding that due diligence point of originality can be tough, so to what ends must we go?
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2 comments:
Dan-
Thanks for the links and thoughts.
Clichés do have their place when they accelerate understanding. But when all websites look alike, there is no emphasis or positioning. Mass boredom. Web 2.0 isn't my thing. I build Fluid Hybrid sites with HTML Frames and embedded Flash and workarounds. Unorthodox cheating.
I read a good comment once while floundering around wondering if I had a "style." --Style is created from self-imposed limitations.-- Reflecting on some of my creative mentors like Frank Lloyd Wright and Piet Mondrian and Hillman Curtis, I realized this was true. I finally felt "okay" about my weird attraction to Frames which is blacklisted by so many designers. (But of course, your blogger page is a HTML Frames page!?)
I'm still an advocate of 35K pages. Practically, unheard of speed fanaticism. The background image on your linked site about "Web 2.0" weighs 113K. That's 3 times bigger than my entire target. Gads!
I'm also big into "themes." To create thematic sites fast, you have to use clichés (colors, symbols, typography, inference) you need instant "mood." The idea is creating a sense of "habitat" for the viewer. Non-generic.
Enough said.
Thanks for the brain tickle.
@cypherblog,
I get about half of what you're saying. For sure, clichés are OK when they provide the best bridge to understanding. But I'd argue that if their use is appropriate, they're not clichés at all. For example, my pet peeve of the decade, extraneous leaves/plants in logos... Not a cliche in the case of refresh-dc or the EPA, because they illustrate the point directly.
As far as what page weight and frames have to do with design cliches, I'm not sure what you mean. Blogger injects an iframe into every page it hosts, which I've hidden because I'd prefer it not be there. As for file size, I'm more of the belief that optimization is more important than overall cost. If my design needs 300k to look its best, and that's as small as I can get it, so be it. I wouldn't include a detailed background image in a mobile version of a site, and I really, honestly don't care about dialup users; I see no point in an internet that consists entirely of pared-down experiences in the name of file size.
I don't know what you mean by 'themes' necessarily, but I'll say I'm not a fan of them in the context of prefab websites/blogs. To me, the design is every bit as important as the content, and a themed blog is only half a website.
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