Graphic designers are ruining the web

[blogmatix]

Been saying this for years, but of course, lots of people think I am just old-fashioned... :-)

Graphic designers are ruining the web

http://mg.co.za/article/2012-02-19-g...uining-the-web

[Demo]

Yes graphic designers are ruining the web, the arrogant teenagers, trolls, furries, and the jersey shore demographic are really whats bringing up the zeitgeist.

After reading blah blah more complexity leads to more time to fetch "who ha" that's a shocker.

Anyone else think the term "Graphic Designers" was used a bit negative here, unintentionally?

[vineris]

Let's think back to Geocities and have a moment of sanity. Sure it SEEMS like the nostalgia bus is going to take you back to Norman Rockwell-land, but there's orange plaid bell bottoms and jello salads with mayonnaise and canned peas back there too.

Do we really need to go back to these? DO WE?

[s.ketch]

Ads are ruining the internet more. Better yet, designer advertisements.

[blogmatix]

Do we really need to go back to these? DO WE?

Many of them suffer from precisely the same thing so many modern websites suffer from: too much clutter, so that it is extremely difficult to find the information you need. Some of them I actually like precisely because they are simple and straightforward.

A prime example: denley.com. Never mind now that I have no idea who he is and have no interest in him or his activities. Suppose I did have. I find his site through a search engine. On his home page, six simple links, no clutter, no flashing bits and pieces all over the place that distract me. That is how I like my websites.

Here's an example of an existing site that had already been up in those old days and sensibly decided not to change its format:

http://www.talkorigins.org/

Simple, no clutter, easy to read, and contains tons and tons of information.

Compare it with, for example, the ARC's site, which is now so full of clutter and flashy bits and pieces that I seldom go there anymore, despite the fact that on the whole I like their art and their philosophy. It has just become all but impossible to navigate.

Here's one with a similar collection of art that is vastly easier to navigate (although it does have aspects I don't like all that much):

http://www.wga.hu/index1.html

It's not that the modern web is all bad and everything from the "good old days" were better. There is plenty of pretty cool stuff on the web now that we did not have back then - Wikipedia is one example (and its site, incidentally, is also very simple in design and layout). Also, thank you Jesus, most modern sites are blessedly free of frames.

But boy, when you have a cap on your data like I do, and despite a fast connection find that a site takes five minutes to load, and then crashes because you first have to go download a gigabyte of plugins before a pointless 50 Mb flash presentation will load that you have to sit through before you can get to the information you want, which then turns out to be hidden somewhere among a thousand blinking lights, then I long for the days of Geocities...

[Jussslic]

Do we really need to go back to these? DO WE?

OMG those are so bad.

Honestly, I love modern web design and respect the hell out of web designers. Given 100% creative freedom most designers will choose minimalism... it's the clients you have to wrestle with.

[Trixtar]

Graphic designers may be ruining the net because they aren't webdesigners?
-But they get hired for a web-job?

But maybe it will be easier now if people slowly switch from Flash to HTML5/Canvas. -It has a Z-axis too

[Kuroyue]

I, for one, welcome our new graphic designer overlords.


(For the reasons mentioned above.) (And likely below.)

[BlightedArt]

*shrug* I think the internet looks a lot better now. Deal with it.

[Conniekat8]

If internet was text only, I wouldn't be using it much. I love the visual aspect of it.

What many sites suffer from is the lack of a good design.

Don't most browsers still have an option to reject uploading graphics???

[Slothboy3000]

Do we really need to go back to these? DO WE?

[tobbA]

I like pretty things.

[Gorgonzola]

Many of them suffer from precisely the same thing so many modern websites suffer from: too much clutter, so that it is extremely difficult to find the information you need. Some of them I actually like precisely because they are simple and straightforward.

If you want to blame anyone for the clutter on a website, more often than not blame a marketing person. I've seen plenty of marketing people push web designers to keep putting 'stuff' on a page because the notion of negative space or areas to rest the eye is so alien to them they can't comprehend it. "Why do we have that patch of white in the corner? WE NEED COPY THERE!"

We all know how this goes - rarely does one get to actually exercise their common sense with this stuff, instead being at the whim of the client who feels that yes, they DO need Flash and colorful graphics and loud sound effects and everything else in the bag.

[megaten]

If you spend any time in webdesign you'll find these data heavy designs are often because of clients constantly asking for features they don't need.
Seriously they always asks for things before thinking of what they're going to use them for.

[Velocity Kendall]

graphic designers do as their clients tell them otherwise they dont get paid

[kev ferrara]

I think the problem derives from the very nature of the web. In order to produce good content, time must be expended. Since time is money, people who provide content must be able to make money at it or else end up destitute and/or feeling abused by freeloaders.

So content and the monetization of the viewer must coexist.

This marriage of content and monetization is either awkward, where white space (like the air time in between segments of a sitcom) are filled with advertisements which pay for the content. Or the marriage is more like a synthesis and the content itself is a form of selling (infomercials, political discussions, most business websites.)

The awkwardness that comes from a designer irrespectively expressing himself on top of somebody else's content is only one degree worse than the already compromised nature of normal content delivery.

The awkwardness of the default aesthetics of much of the publishing software out there is still another wrench in the works.

And let's not forget how awkward it is to be sitting in a chair for hours staring at glowing box in the first place.

Really, the proper rejoinder to all this is to go do something real with one's time.

[manlybrian]

So long as it loads quickly and navigates easily, I don't care too much.

[Velocity Kendall]

And that doesnt happen by chance, it needs to be designed. graphically.

[Elwell]

The author of that article doesn't seem to know what graphic designers are or what they do. Or a lot about how the web works, for that matter.

[QueenGwenevere]

If you want to blame anyone for the clutter on a website, more often than not blame a marketing person.

Ooooooh yes. This. Very much this. I actually once had a client tell me my designs looked too classy and I should make them tackier, to match their print materials...

Then there's the print people who want to treat the page like a magazine spread, asking for features that don't work with the content at all...

And of course, "hey we saw this cool widget on this other site, we need one of these! Because they have one!"

Still. The web is a lot less fugly and easy-to-use now than in the early 90's. The good old days, sure. The good old days of background patterns on EVERYTHING, cycling rainbow bar separators, animated under construction graphics, gratuitous giant hit counters, and all content in Center tags straight down the middle of the page... yep.

[Gorgonzola]

Hey now, that's how I judged the integrity of a website back then...the more dancing baby gifs it had, then surely the more reputable it was. And damn, if they had a MIDI playing somewhere with the controls hidden away, then I knew they meant business.

[QueenGwenevere]

The hampster dance site was THE site of the nineties.

[LAG]

graphic designers do as their clients tell them otherwise they dont get paid

If I get someone who demands Comic Sans and Microsoft clipart, I pass them off to the just out of college kids charging $15 bucks an hour. As to the initial post, I think that was true when everyone was forcing you to watch flash intro's to their sites during the early days of broadband, but as Velocity said the client is footing the bill and it is rare that they see the light of day when it comes to clean design.

[Velocity Kendall]

The top comment on the article is correct

"InterComm SAfrica 4 days ago
Graphic designers are briefed by clients. Most designers tend towards minimalism in their personal taste. But after wasting several hours explaining about speed, user friendliness and bounce rates, most clients still require high-res photos of their product/factory/MD/community project/golf day.

Every client believes with all his heart, that HIS product is worth waiting 20 minutes to see. As a web developer you can make him angry by pushing, or you can keep the client and do what he wants.

Clients have beliefs about their products and services and struggle to realise that most people reading their website have never heard of their brand or company name. Clients (particularly Marketing Managers who work so hard at branding) assume that the entire market knows and cares about a logo change, a project they did in 1982, who founded the company in the 50's, a hard-won agency agreement or what their BEE certificate looks like.

Fortunately Google Analytics is there to help. After paying to build 50 pages - of which only 6 are actually read - most clients get a far better picture of what readers want. Nothing convinces a client that his site is too slow, faster than a 97% bounce rate! The real value of the web comes from being able to assess performance so immediately and directly."

[Black Spot]

Welcome to OTT website. Please ensure your volume is turned up full and do not skip into - you will regret it even more. Actually this is tame compared to the one I wanted to show, which was totally awesome in a way that you couldn't believe it would ever exist. (knew I should've bookmarked it).

[alesoun]

Ugh! That one made me feel seasick, Blackspot!

[erinc]

Ugh! That one made me feel seasick, Blackspot!

I think I might've had a seizure.

[Elwell]

Welcome to OTT website.

That site makes Baby Jesus cry.

[Raoul Duke]

It's not graphic designers it's marketers. The web has pretty underwhelming graphic design dominating everything. Most graphic designs floating around look like the designer didn't give a shit and just did what they were told.

[QueenGwenevere]

It's not graphic designers it's marketers. The web has pretty underwhelming graphic design dominating everything. Most graphic designs floating around look like the designer didn't give a shit and just did what they were told.

Actually, a whole lot of designs aren't even the product of one designer. Much of the web is design-by-committee.

Designer A builds the first design for a site; a month later designer B is hired to change some stuff; two months later designer C is hired to overhaul some parts and add new parts; three months later somebody's secretary patches on some quick changes; four months later a marketing person shoehorns some new gimmick into it; five months later another designer has to redesign chunks of it to accomodate a whole new CMS; six months later somebody in IT has to screw with it because the previous design changes are now breaking the site... Seven months later somebody else in marketing adds another gadget and breaks it again... Etc and so forth...

Many websites are big hairy Frankenstein monsters, really.

If you're a designer and you have to go monkey with one of these monsters to redesign all or part of them, it's enough to make you tear all your hair out...