4 ms·

> IMHO, the cause is a combination of commercialism and of visual designers being inculcated with inappropriate values and training from traditional print desig

by ashark 9y ago

> IMHO, the cause is a combination of commercialism and of visual designers being inculcated with inappropriate values and training from traditional print design. I judge that it got a lot worse around the time the print-trained designers started to be pushed out of decision-making positions by the digital-trained ones.

WalterSear 9y ago
I'm not sure I follow. Web design hasn't gone downhill over time - it's definitely improving, simply because the tools have allowed it do so. Perhaps you could provide some examples from the era of print designers and the era after them? What I have observed has been that, while technology has allowed screens to become a more expressive design medium, visual designers tend to be content to cargo-cult techniques from the static, vastly simpler, and more expansive medium of print, and it shows.
- ashark 9y ago
  I think we probably disagree about what good design is. I think that precisely > static, vastly simpler is the right way to go. This is mere consistency on my part. I hated (most) Flash sites back in the day, and wasteful giant images, et c. I hate (most) JS/CSS cycle-burner sites and giant wasteful images today. Consistency is good. Shit not moving around on my screen is good. Controls working the usual way is good. Consistency, predictability, and clarity are good UX. The basic 2-or-3-column layout with a thin header was fine, with maybe some tweaks for smaller screens these days. Early-period web's allergy to non-content large media files was good. Design mostly gets in the way, while making everything more expensive. I think its function was described perfectly by someone the last time we had a design thread: it's peacock feathers. Keeping up with design trends is harmful to function, but signals wealth (=stability, reliability, social proof of value) precisely because it's so costly and pointless. This doesn't mean it improves my experience on the Web.
  - WalterSear 9y ago
    >> static, vastly simpler >is the right way to go. Right, and this is the problem. Digital information is frequently neither. Denying this and shoehorning it into techniques that work for simpler, more static information is hiding the message for the medium. It's bad design. >The basic 2-or-3-column layout with a thin header was fine, with maybe some tweaks for smaller screens these days. Early-period web's allergy to non-content large media files was good. Design mostly gets in the way, while making everything more expensive. This wasn't because print designers were in charge. It's because the design industry, for the most part, is allergic to innovation and was ignoring the web. The web designers weren't designers - they very junior developers with none of the pretensions or preconceptions that come with formal training as well as all the problems that come with that, and a really primitive medium. It's rather telling that returning to those pre-css days would improve things, is it not?
- Waterluvian 9y ago
  To each their own opinion, of course. But I think web design has significantly gone down hill. And I'm not even old enough to truly remember pre JS/CSS web. Webpages these days are designed like casinos. I want specific content but they're keen on bombarding me with all the stuff they want me to want.
  - WalterSear 9y ago
    That's not a design problem though: that's a you're-not-really-the-customer-problem. It is, however, exacerbated by designers who think they are creating fashion magazines. In addition to being co-opted by bad marketing, usability and function has, ironically, also been subordinated to immediate visual appeal. However, you can't deny that we've some way since AOL, mirabilis and geocities.

by ashark 9y ago

WalterSear 9y ago

I'm not sure I follow. Web design hasn't gone downhill over time - it's definitely improving, simply because the tools have allowed it do so. Perhaps you could provide some examples from the era of print designers and the era after them? What I have observed has been that, while technology has allowed screens to become a more expressive design medium, visual designers tend to be content to cargo-cult techniques from the static, vastly simpler, and more expansive medium of print, and it shows.

ashark 9y ago
I think we probably disagree about what good design is. I think that precisely > static, vastly simpler is the right way to go. This is mere consistency on my part. I hated (most) Flash sites back in the day, and wasteful giant images, et c. I hate (most) JS/CSS cycle-burner sites and giant wasteful images today. Consistency is good. Shit not moving around on my screen is good. Controls working the usual way is good. Consistency, predictability, and clarity are good UX. The basic 2-or-3-column layout with a thin header was fine, with maybe some tweaks for smaller screens these days. Early-period web's allergy to non-content large media files was good. Design mostly gets in the way, while making everything more expensive. I think its function was described perfectly by someone the last time we had a design thread: it's peacock feathers. Keeping up with design trends is harmful to function, but signals wealth (=stability, reliability, social proof of value) precisely because it's so costly and pointless. This doesn't mean it improves my experience on the Web.
- WalterSear 9y ago
  >> static, vastly simpler >is the right way to go. Right, and this is the problem. Digital information is frequently neither. Denying this and shoehorning it into techniques that work for simpler, more static information is hiding the message for the medium. It's bad design. >The basic 2-or-3-column layout with a thin header was fine, with maybe some tweaks for smaller screens these days. Early-period web's allergy to non-content large media files was good. Design mostly gets in the way, while making everything more expensive. This wasn't because print designers were in charge. It's because the design industry, for the most part, is allergic to innovation and was ignoring the web. The web designers weren't designers - they very junior developers with none of the pretensions or preconceptions that come with formal training as well as all the problems that come with that, and a really primitive medium. It's rather telling that returning to those pre-css days would improve things, is it not?
Waterluvian 9y ago
To each their own opinion, of course. But I think web design has significantly gone down hill. And I'm not even old enough to truly remember pre JS/CSS web. Webpages these days are designed like casinos. I want specific content but they're keen on bombarding me with all the stuff they want me to want.
- WalterSear 9y ago
  That's not a design problem though: that's a you're-not-really-the-customer-problem. It is, however, exacerbated by designers who think they are creating fashion magazines. In addition to being co-opted by bad marketing, usability and function has, ironically, also been subordinated to immediate visual appeal. However, you can't deny that we've some way since AOL, mirabilis and geocities.