I enjoyed Dave Shea’s comments at 24 ways. These were some problems I was working through on my site last week. I originally had a light tan as a border, The darker color seems to both frame and focus the content much better (is that what framing does?)
This week I find Luke Wroblewski’s opening paragraph extremely thought provoking. He writes:
The World Wide Web is awash with sterile design solutions. Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Dell, Microsoft, and countless others are virtually indistinguishable from each other (similar layout, similar color scheme). Though one might say that this uniformity makes web browsing easier by virtue of a standardized interface, the reality is such sites create mundane experiences for their users and fail to make a positive connection with their audience.
I have been thinking quite a bit about the similarity that is often found on websites. Sometimes, it seems like there is a bit of groupthink going on, and I think that might be part of the story. There becomes an understanding of how people tend to use the internet, some articles and maybe books are written, and it becomes a de facto standard on the web. This can obviously be useful at times, e.g. comprehending that screens are much more difficult to read from than paper, and so interesting textual colors might make for a tedious and/or painful user experience.
But I imagine there is more. We talk a good deal about the collaborative nature of the web. There seems to be a culture of sharing as well. We peruse the web and everywhere are aspects of design that attract us. Oh, I like that nav bar. And that organizational structure is clarifying. Wow, those colors go together really well! And so on.
This seems at first glance a little antithetical to the creative process, but I think in fact its indicative of something else. While creative acts often are products of individual work, they almost always derive from other works. Often, the best of them borrow less or more aptly hide their sources. But plenty of inspiring creations have been made reusing and refining other material (see Marcel Duchamp for one of my personal favorites). The web has opened up the world of publishing to many not simply by making it possible for people to present material. But the tools and science of the trade are now on full display. With a pages source code always available, it becomes possible to extract and reproduce elements of design, and I think the proliferation of similar design trends evidences this.
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Often it contributes to ease of use and comprehension. But I think as we enter the design world it bears remembering that we should be critical and questioning of what we encounter, and willing to make choices that might buck trends if they seem reasonable to us. For what we see might not always be what we see.
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