Is web design a dying art? (Part 2)
Is web design a dying art? (Part 2)
As blogging leads the charge for rapid and universal online design, we ask the industry whether the trade is in jeopardy
(This continues and concludes a previous post)
Anthony Deeming
Design and development director, Green Jersey Web Design
www.greenjersey.com
“Offering feature-rich tools and widgets, using standard template designs that help to rapidly deploy sites is certainly not the end of web design. This is an inevitable and welcome evolution in the development of the web that will create opportunities for designers in many ways. Packaged services act as a catalyst to designers to drive up standards and identify new ways to benefit from the very thing that is challenging them.
“There are also many opportunities to redesign the templates that have been used with open source tools such as WordPress or Joomla!. This often requires creative skills to re-design existing graphics in a template or the use of new skills to redesign and integrate a bespoke template. But businesses should remember that website projects are not just about the creative design side of site development. There are many other issues to balance and consider, including the site structure, information architecture, imagery, content and functionality, and hosting environment. These are equally as important as the design and often require the expertise of an agency to assist in understanding these factors and presenting them in a professional manner.
“The fact that well designed sites can now be quickly built from packaged solutions at very low cost is great news. It means there’s now no reason why any business should have a poor website and the days of scrolling text, crude animated GIFs, hundreds of fonts and other web design clichés should soon be over. But it also means that web designers should focus on helping clients differentiate themselves from competitors through creating unique designs and developing custom functionality – the current crop of template-driven, packaged systems are very impressive, but they obviously have to cater for everyone by offering a one size fits all solution. So the opportunity for web designers is to use their ingenuity to meet the specific needs of individual businesses.”
Glyn Moody
Author of Rebel Code
(Glyn Moody has been writing about free software since 1995)
http://opendotdotdot.blogspot.com/
“Good web design is like art: it will always thrive because there is a deep human urge to create. Openness makes that even easier. Poets, artists and musicians learn by studying the work of their predecessors. It’s the same for web design. But that on its own is not enough: you need to be able to see how the designer achieved his or her effects, which requires access to the underlying HTML code. Fortunately, when Tim Berners-Lee created the web, he consciously made it open, with the code readily viewable.
“You also need tools that let you express yourself fully and once again openness comes to the rescue. The rise of free open source packages for all aspects of web hosting and design means that anyone can experiment, without needing to invest in expensive tools first. All you need is passion and creativity – something pre-packaged solutions can never offer.”
Lee Debnam
Strategy director, Punkyduck Ltd
www.punkyduck.com
“The proliferation of cheap, off-the-shelf products has led to the internet being flooded with badly designed websites. A good content management system, eCommerce product or portal framework should be able to adjust to fit any creative vision that a designer comes up with and rather than put constraints around it, should help to preserve the experience throughout the site. Designers should be concentrating on creating engaging and usable sites that stand out from the crowd without having to worry about implementation. Using packages such as Sitecore CMS, rather than solutions that force specific structures in both design and build, allows sites to be accessible, usable and easy to manage without compromising the original design.
The question clients need to ask themselves is whether saving money buying a cheap solution will end up costing them more in the long run.”
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This is something that i was thinking about because technology changes at a rapid rate, and we web designers/developers are part of one of the fastest and unpredictable technologies on the planet!
Software companies well make their software easier to use as they evolve and people (those who are not in the industry)will just become more smarter and try their hand at designing sites. I am sure of this because even my bleeding dad has had a go and he is over sixty!!!!!
But there is a lot to this industry than designing websites and as a creative i think it’s time to start adding to my skill set with illustrations, graphic designs, game design and 3D. Website design is dying but DESIGN isn’t and never will!!!
I don’t believe website design is dying. There will always be people who want something different from what a one-size-fits-all solution, and even today still plenty of people young and old with zero interest in doing this kind of thing themselves (too hard or too geeky). But what will happen is competition will become more and more fierce as the number of people able to do website design grows, thanks to a tech savvy generation and increasingly easy to use tools.
I agree with the art of design may be dead. What I am trying to do and if you can help please contact. I see internet usage as a one piece interface, as in I want to monitor my tweets talk on FB and book a hotel and see where I want to go next, all at the same time. We are coming into an age where the computer is not part of our lives it is our life and how we connect with the world. Youth may hold the keys but it will be the mind of the experienced to see the door.
Great article! As a designer myself I do not foresee the art of web-design dying in the future. Lets face the facts… Some people are just not made to be artist. Art is a talent and skill one must master, the same as music. Many are born with a talent to draw, design and organizational skills (excellent skills for someone in the web-design field), and others simply are not. That is not to say they cannot build their own sites, but rather they will be dependent on designers/developers for professional look.
The use of CMS tools such as Wordpress will only better the field of design. Certainly a person can choose from their host’s “web package” and setup a simple blog, but like many of those interviewed in this article stated…”if they want to be unique they will have to rely on designers/developers to get their brand/identity out there.” Face it, the truth is people don’t trust sites that look amateurish. The more professional a sites usability and looks; the more trust it gives its users.
Fear not friends, we are not a dying breed! It can only get better for us!
i think that there will always be future for good design and the majority of ordinary people do not know how to set a hosting account or indeed what wordpress is
Blogging is not wiping out web design. But it is wiping out the small business market for web design companies.
Companies have to balance cost and quality with everything, and web design is no different.
With Wordpress a Deli owner, event planner, or an accountant can have a website that looks decent and they can manage. For next to nothing.
That said larger companies are always going to have a need for a branded and professional look.
Long term we should look at the web for what it is, information sharing. Where is information sharing going long term?
What's your opinion?