As of late, I've turned my interest to webdesign. I didn't do it manually, it just drifted there, via xhtml, markup and standards. Right now what particularly annoys me is the awe with which aspiring webdesigners tend to perceive their idols.
Those idols being numerous webdesigners who seem to think of themselves as among the elite, yet design webpages as if they were pictures. Where lacking in intuitive (or even comprehensible) interfaces, they're instead rich in aesthetic details, featuring weird 3dStudio imagery and seemingly pointless digits, photoshop-effects and flash-animations. The text is often small, very very small, borderline undecipherable to even those with perfect vision.
I'm not going to point to any examples right now, but I'll thoroughly dissect a few with screenshots in future posts. Mostly, I'll be preaching to the choir, since bloggers more than most web-citizens tend to understand that content is, indeed, king. Well, it's my party.
Comments
I'm changing my ways. Honest. :-)
Comment by Chris at 04:11, 13 Jan, 2003 #
Webdesign? Bah! Give some good old, rotating skulls and I'm happy. =)
Comment by talisyn at 12:05, 13 Jan, 2003 #
What I hate most is the Swedish minimalistic design. Horrorfying small fonts. svd.se, smp.se and expressen.se should know better! It's impossible to read a long article, even if you - like me - have great vision. I have updated the old KISS-method to KISYFI; Keep It Simple You Fucking Idiot.
Function before good looks! Those fucking webdesigners are nothing but cocksmoking media whores that only cares about their repurtation amongs other braindead motherfucking loser designers! Kill 'em all!!!
Wired added a great function for increasing the font sizes.
Comment by Tommy at 12:48, 13 Jan, 2003 #
Don't sugar coat it Tommy, tell us how you really feel. ;-)
Comment by Chris at 14:49, 13 Jan, 2003 #
Webdesign is boring and in 99.99% ugly.
Chris, I don't you're ready for the complete Tommy rant on this subject. You can't handle it.
Comment by Nicklas at 15:34, 13 Jan, 2003 #
99.99% of all websites are boring and ugly? Hmm, ok.
Comment by Tomas at 16:29, 13 Jan, 2003 #
Where are all the blinking "under construction"-signs, rotating skulls (as someone said) and burning torches these days? Bring back the GIFs! The web has degenerated.
Comment by Håkan Waara at 18:14, 13 Jan, 2003 #
...I remember the version of my homepage that consisted of a grayscale image of a frog. Now that's minimalism!
Ooh, TKJ! He's still alive! I used to write for his PC Online back in the days... And in another post here I saw Henrik Torstensson, who I also wrote stuff for. What is this, "chief editor reunion time?"
Comment by Johan at 02:29, 14 Jan, 2003 #
Most interesting. Today I stumbled across two old aquaintances: Henrik Torstensson and Tommy K Johansson, who wrote a comment on
Trackback from metaGarbage at 03:14, 14 Jan, 2003 #
No, not all websites are boring. Webdesign. It is just so overrated. There are some very ugly sites out there that are interesting to read.
Comment by Nicklas at 10:41, 14 Jan, 2003 #
Nicklas: I'd say that webdesign is underrated. To many, "webdesign" is fly colors, cool shapes and other useless crap while worthwhile webdesign which actually matters is something only a subset of webdesigners care about and very, very, few aspiring webdesigners understand.
Comment by Tomas at 11:01, 14 Jan, 2003 #
It's not just web designers -- print designers, too, seem to have lost the idea that design is a commercial art; it's not an end in itself, like fine art is. Design is meant to sell the viewer on a product of some sort, whether it's a movie poster, a book jacket, a logo, a website, et al. What I can't stand is the overwhelming amount of talent out there promoting -- essentially -- nothing. To the brilliant designers who are currently just showing off their mad skillz: go get a client you believe in, besides yourself. And make sure someone hires a proofreader.
Comment by Cheshire at 00:10, 15 Jan, 2003 #
A verbatim quote I found in the guestbook of a friend: "you have NO content its just a fucking TEXT page!!!"
I'm still laughing at that. :-D
Comment by Johan at 01:04, 15 Jan, 2003 #
What I think we must concider is that there are more uses for the web than just presenting information. With the web we have the power to do advertising, entertaing and even art (not to say spell bad :) ).
The problem is that most "I use words as accessibilety and sematic" forget about anyone than just the first one.
To keep it simple. Content is king. But content don't have to be just information
Comment by elvelind at 01:20, 15 Jan, 2003 #
elvelind: Are you saying that crappy interfaces and shitty markup is "content"?
I'm not against art, don't think I am. I just wish that a) "digital artists" (or 3dstudio whores, whatever you want to call them) call themselves artists rather than webdesigners and b) that aspiring webdesigners would marvel at actual webdesign instead of, uh, crappy interfaces..
Comment by Tomas at 01:32, 15 Jan, 2003 #
Tomas: well they do develope design for the web. therefor they are webdesigners. perhaps it's about what you put into that word. I wouldn't call myself a webdesigner if my primary focus was on creating sematic code. that is more webdeveloping rather.
Comment by elvelind at 18:03, 15 Jan, 2003 #
elvelind: Just to make things perfectly clear; nobody, at all, is claiming that semantic markup is a form of webdesign. I call myself plenty of things, among which "webdesigner" is one. What I focus on is the task at hand, while designing that's design.
Creating crappy, unintuitive interfaces is bad webdesign, if webdesign at all. See Cheshire's post above for a hint to what "design" comprises.
The kind of content you are talking about is not inherently bad (taste differs), but it certainly isn't webdesign, either, it's just artistic expression.
Comment by Tomas at 18:26, 15 Jan, 2003 #
Wow, so many posts, so I hope I don't offend anyone by going back a few messages.
"99.99% of sites are ugly."
I agree, because that still leaves tens of thousands of sites to enjoy.
The irony is that many porn sites, you know, sites that couldn't possibly be considered ugly due to the content, are in fact the ugliest you could imagine. Guess it's the content that makes the difference.
Comment by ChrisW at 05:53, 19 Jan, 2003 #
Haha, Johan, yeah I'm still alive and, sometimes, kicking. ;-) I spend my days in the shithole Växjö, screaming obscene words to my co-workers and listening to heavy metal. I also do some coding and occasionally I write lame articles for Allt om PC. Oh yeah, I still practice my professional hobby as a cynical asshole.
I nowadays own pconline.se. I still don't know what to do with it, though. I guess something will come up...
Comment by Tommy at 14:54, 20 Jan, 2003 #
Not only 99% of the websites are ugly, 99% of the used logo's are ugly!
Comment by Logo ontwerp at 08:38, 11 Dec, 2003 #
The discussion has been closed on this entry. Thanks to everybody who participated.