Does Design Matter Anymore?
January 26, 2009 | 1:12 pm
This is the blog post I wrote to coincide with my presentation at Podcamp Halifax yesterday.
My design career was launched in 1989 when I spent a summer as an office help rat at a small graphic design firm. I fetched coffee, smokes and delivered packages for the staff of Design Strategies. I also got to mess around on their Mac SE/30s and brand new colour Mac IIci. I was hooked. Watching these designers craft logos, brochures, ads and exhibit backdrops, wow. I felt like I was seeing the future. Mine.
Still, even though the shop I worked at that summer was pretty advanced, the designers there were worried. Why? Well, what had previously been the domain of professional typesetters and craftsmen was now reasonably accessible for anyone with the cash to lay down for a Mac. With a copy of Aldus Pagemaker (OK, I’m seriously dating myself now), the home desktop publisher (DTP) became the arch-enemy of ‘serious’ graphic designers everywhere. Books were written to support this burgeoning industry, mostly made up of self-taught artsy and computer types who wanted to be able to work from home. Many ‘professional’ designers at the time railed against the poor quality of work some of the home DTP users were creating. However, there’s no question that you could create an acceptable level of quality for business communications without springing for a very expensive custom design and implementation.
Now, nearly 20 years later we’re seeing a slightly different kind of shift in the landscape: design for the web. For most of the ‘web years’, if someone other than a designer/developer wanted to put a site together, they had to do so with FrontPage, Dreamweaver or other tools. But because HTML is different than print, it’s even harder for someone who doesn’t know the ins and outs of the profession to achieve good results. It was often the case that you could see the difference between ‘pro’ websites and personal sites or those built in the basement by somebody’s nephew.
It’s easy to have a web presence now, and darn near free. If I wanted to, I could set up a professional domain name via Wordpress.com for $10-15/year, find a free template or theme and begin publishing right away. Even if I’d never done it before, it would take less than half an hour get up and running.
Many of the themes that are available look pretty good. They are reasonably easy to navigate, have lots of content block options from posts to pages to blogrolls and widgets for your Flickr photos, Twitter status updates and Youtube videos among others. You can plug in ads, affiliate programs and just about anything else you can think of. To top it all off, if your content is any good, many of your hardcore readers will rarely – if ever – see the content in your layout, what with RSS, email subscriptions, feed readers and aggregated content. All they’ll see is the content: the text, images, video and other stuff you create. In a world where content is king, what’s the point of having a really beautiful website?
Let’s think of some of the more prominent people in the new media/marketing industry and have a look at their sites. I’m using these as examples as many of us will be familiar with them and they are leaders in this field, so I think it applies to what we’re discussing. Also, none of these people are actually designers, but they all have a solid grasp of marketing, image and promotion.
- Seth Godin (no design to speak of—his message is in his content, doesn’t really do much to promote him)
- Gary Vaynerchuk (simple design, but it fits his personality)
- Chris Brogan (Premium Wordpress theme – Thesis – modified to suit his needs. Clean, unobtrusive and it works. It’s still a bit generic, but better than some others)
- Mitch Joel (incredibly text heavy, but it fits with the layout of his company, Twist Image. So dense, I don’t really want to go much further though)
- Robert Scoble, one of the early advocates of blogging. Site feels like a typical blog, nothing special. Given his rockstar status in the new media realm, I would expect something a bit cleaner, more interesting, more easy to get around. I’m not talking about the bad old days of the web here and Flash everything. I like where content on the web is going, I’m just not sure if we’re doing our users a disservice by not creating better, more beautiful experiences for them.
- Dave Winer. He’s a programmer who was one of the very first bloggers in the world. Form after function, I get it. This is so sparse though, it’s almost as if he would rather you read it in the far more attractively laid-out Google Reader.
Design, for me, is about context. If it’s pragmatic, appropriate, then the look or form should follow. So, do these sites work on that level? Some do, but many don’t. When I first arrive at these sites, my impression is that someone didn’t care enough to create or pay to create something that explains who they are. Design is about more than just making something pretty. I hated it when my boss at the IT firm I used to work at would introduce us to clients as the ‘guys who make their software look pretty’. Prettification is pointless. Like lipstick on a pig, to borrow a phrase from a certain political figure whose name I can’t recall. All the pretty icons, beveled edges, flash animations and drop shadows in the world aren’t going to make an app work well. It will give the illusion of design, at least until you go to use it.
So, let’s talk about premium templates. I mentioned Chris Brogan’s use of the nicely-made Thesis theme for Wordpress earlier, but what if you’re not a blogger? What if you need a more traditional website? Well, there’s dozens of places you can buy those too. Sites like Template Monster make it easy to purchase attractive website templates. They range in price from less than $100 all the way up to several thousand dollars, especially if you want to buy it out, at which point they erase it from their database (I suppose this doesn’t mean that people who’ve already purchased the template have to give it back though—meaning it’s not necessarily unique. These templates were designed (by designers) to work as generic layouts that fit a particular type of client such as a realtor.
Many people just want what looks trendy, and lots of these templates are happy to oblige:
- Web 2.0 style layouts
- Gradients
- Shiny table graphics
- Rounded Corners
- 3D bubble graphics with drop shadows
These templates generally look more professional than most of the free blog themes that are available, and with good reason. However, there are compromises that need to be made. Every company/organization is different; each has a unique personality, a special style, a selling proposition that makes them special. How is a designer who has never met you going to know what that unique touch is? How will they communicate your goals and express your best assets? Sure, the template may get it 90% correct, but that last 10% is what sets many organizations apart, and it takes a close and intimate designer/client relationship to bring that out. The onscreen layout is only part of what a designer does. The research, wireframes, visitor personas and information architecture play a critical role in how a site is used and how a user sees and understands you.
So, does design matter anymore? I posit that it matters even more now than ever before. Why? With so many people trying to save money using bottled themes that other organizations are also using, doesn’t it make sense to stand out? To rise above the noise? Yes, your passion may well come through in your content, photos and video, but if no one can find it or if the overall impact isn’t what they were expecting, it doesn’t matter how great of a writer or speaker you are.
I agree. People think they
I agree. People think they can look professional using a theme, but even implementing it properly takes a trained, experienced designer. Themes look like themes, custom designs look like custom designs.
In my opinion, any business who can afford to hire professional will do so. There's no comparison. But then again, I'm biased.
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Good article. I agree, in this world where we are exposed to media almost every waking hour good design is the key to breaking through.
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