Is the art of Web design moving backwards in time?
Sunday January 14, 2007
When I first started as a Web Writer and "answerer of webmaster@netcom.com mail" back in 1995, I saw lots of sites with flashing images, multi-colored horizontal rules, and black backgrounds.
But then graphic designers and visual designers came in from the print world and started making some design decisions that programmers would never have thought of - like David Siegel's now infamous "single pixel gif trick". These allowed us to design pages that looked nice. Then a few years later, CSS started being supported more widely by Web browsers, so we could separate style from content. And designs got even more exiciting.
But it all seems to be going back to 1992-95 with horrendous background images, every graphic on the page moves, and if there's a widget or mouse animator available it's on the page. No, I'm not talking about the Ugliest page competition or the HTML that Word writes. No, now MySpace has taken design back to the 90s level.
Comments
The problem is amateur designers. MySpace is full of non-designers putting together web pages. It’s not quite a fair comparison – kids tossing together a MySpace page aren’t typically being hired to produce a purposeful website.
I agree, and it isn’t just MySpace. The annoying black backgrounds and moving graphics are still showing off ‘I think this is cute’ gimmicks that distract from the page. What next, a return to the uncontrollable background music player?
My MySpace is pretty clean, the one thing that annoys me though is the ammount of errors MySpace has it does not validate, far from it.
It’s just kids and people who’ve never designed a webpage before having fun with widgets. I don’t think it’s even worth writing more than two sentences about.
So called ‘designers’ are just as much to blame for the state of the web as kids and amateurs. A couple of years in design school (and 15 years of web dev) have taught me that if you ask 10 designers what the basics of good design are, you’ll get 12 different opinions all being stated as fact. Most designers don’t learn the tech basics to make their correct decisions on behalf of their clients.
Also, don’t get me started on clients…
Aren’t we forgetting that the internet is about communication and collaboration as much as it is about great design. MySpace is just another forum for that communication. Sure it is not always pretty, but anything that encourages creativity rather than mindless computer games and blind TV watching has got to be good!
myspace.com is a good website but just for fun and it helps kids in creativity, but as professional designers and web developpers, myspace pages are so uncomfortable to the eyes and specially the black backgrounds. Finaly, New web designs are lot more advanced, specially flash and css and not to forget the jsp, asp,…
I can concede and see that sometimes with certain “business type” websites, there should be a certain amount of conservatism. And I also agree that there’s a good deal of amatuer websites & pages on Myspace are oftimes atrocious… but I’ve always thought of webpages as up to the designer.
Like a piece of “art”.
And should be left up to experimentation, and not confined to some sort of “conservative mold” deemed by “experts”.
And like art, beauty IS truly in the eye of the beholder.
Like if people really listened to the “experts”… there’d be no Picassos and Jackson Pollocks.
I find that most of the crap that so-called “expert webdesigners’ preach, is just that… “PURE UNADULTERATED CRAP”
Like telling budding “artists”… “No, a sky CAN’T be green, birds should NEVER fly across it, and the the sun should ALWAYS be on the feft side of your canvas”.
BULL MANURE!
And I also find most times sites compiled by such “HTML & webdesign experts” to be some of the most ugliest horsepucky on the net.
Sure… their sites are pieces of html “clockwork” are probably maybe in terms of programming & coding… but most “experts’ sites are truly the most BORING drivel I’ve seen.
So when I read experts doling out a lengthy discourse on just how a website MUST look, and what it SHOULD and SHOULD”T have… I just laugh, mumble “blow it out yer poopshoot!”… and move on. Cuz ya know wut…?
Websites like “Webpages That Suck” most times…
TRULY SUCK themselves!
Myspace is good for socializing on the internet and hooking up with old friends, but it is a design nightmare. Usability is horrorable but I think the Myspace user community learned through repetition and popularity.
One thing that annoys me the most is the over load of graphics, flash, and themes/skins are not just hard on the eye but on the bandwidth. I have a high speed DSL (6 MBps) and it still take about a full minute to load some peoples Myspace profile. And don’t get me started on the annoying audio player that automatically starts.
Thanks love the article,
Buddy
My Design’s Blog
What is Myspace? It is a median of communication between freinds, family, etc — or in other words “a personal page” (although it can be a good marketing tool if you know what you’re doing). With that said, people are going to “decorate” their life, homes, cars and websites as they see fit with the skillset / tools they know.
Our average Myspace user is not a computer guru, or an expert in graphic design. They’re people with jobs unrelated to the industry who drool at the prospect of these horrendous elements. Most of it isn’t even an issue of whether or not what they did to their page is disgusting; no, it is much more simple than that.
By adding these elements to their personal page and customizing it, they get a feeling of ownership: “Hey look what I just did!”
Basically, if I wanted to get my house on an episode of Cribs, I’m going to pay a really good interior designer a lot of money. If someone wants a website that gets results, they’re going to pay a web designer.
So essentially it is an unfair statement to say that graphic design has taken a leap back to its infant stages; when in fact, the Internet has taken a leap forward with communication and technology giving your average Joe the ability to edit their website!
Average Joe = Professional Graphic Designer?
I think not!
I really appreciate this thread. Although I don’t agree with the comment that site design is up to the designer. That’s just not realistic when the client holds the purse-strings. It’s always a compromise between ’steak’ and ’sizzle’. It’s hard to get small, inexperienced business owners to understand that their site is really not about them personally. A data point of 1 does not a series make.
One of my preferred thoughts came to mind today when a prospective client told me that their grandson is in grade 7 and he’s ‘basically a professional web guy’.
I thought, “My dog can dig holes but that doesn’t make him a landscape architect”.
Websmith: the irony is that a grade 7 kid very well may be making money as a Web developer/designer – which is all it really means (to many people) to be a “professional”.
But I know what you mean.
When I hear comments like that I am often very tempted to ask “then why aren’t you having him come in to work on this?” But my common sense gets the better of me.
I can seriously remember my excitement when I first learned HTML and got marqueeing text to work, and JavaScript and all. I was so happy! People new to web designs are just overexcited about the web design capabilities, and many never expected that they could make glitters, animations, and stuff, like they see on other websites. It’s also due to peer influence.
I’ve been on MySpace for awhile now, and really I think “it’s what it is”. In one sense, if one thinks that MySpace pages should be “great design”, I think the point of MySpace is missed.
.02 cents.