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VIZID
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Posted: Sun May 4th, 2003 08:12 am |
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I'm pretty irritated at how derivative and trite the majority of designs are these days (this isn't directed at anyone on this board - I promise!). It seems when people come up with their interface design they go through the following checklist, choose one, and then build it...
- Techno - 30/45% angles and some 3d amorphous renders in the background.
- Electron - Site that has a photograhic background with line art. Little light swooshes follow the line art around.
- Swooshy - Big round ellipses that are broken or overlapping.
- Flashnooby - How many keyframe tweens can you build?
- Megalopolis - How much text content can you fit onto a page....
- Aqua, Glass, Steel - Pick a material and make it look like someone actually built a machine out of it...
Sure, I'm missing some here, but you see what I'm saying. The majority of sites are looking and feeling the same. Just copy cat stuff really, and only the originators made it look good....So when you're doing your next site, make sure you're doing something unique (unless you're experimenting). The real reason this frustrates me is that there is no excuse for this! When I used to be an architect, designs on paper were always unique. It wasn't until they got built they started looking derivative, and that was because of material costs. There is NO EXCUSE for web developers to have such similar designs. Sure navigational archetypes come into play, and we're limited by bandwidth, but those can be taken into account and a revolutionary design can still be delivered. It just takes the effort, and the refusal to give in....
So here's my challenge. Create something new, worthy, incredible, every time. It's up to all of us to push the bar on every website, and that means rejecting the easy in favor of the hard!
Throw some thoughts at this, I'd very interested in everyone's feelings on this.
Ace
PS. Aycan your format bar is top notch!
Last edited on Sun May 4th, 2003 05:12 pm by VIZID
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transio
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| Joined: | Tue Mar 11th, 2003 |
| Location: | Miami, Florida USA |
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Posted: Mon May 5th, 2003 12:29 am |
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I knew I liked you for a reason. I used to be an architect, too 
You'll like my next post. It's my new homepage... which isn't derivative of anything I've seen yet.
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underline
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| Joined: | Mon May 5th, 2003 |
| Location: | Arad, Romania |
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Posted: Tue May 13th, 2003 10:46 am |
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U are perfctly right whith this post, everywhere u can see allmost the same thing onto the web copy of a copy of a copy of a copy. Yep u are 100% right.
What can be done with this matter? I do not know, maybe strarting to get more creative or leave your imagination to go crazy maybe.
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marcelo
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Posted: Tue May 13th, 2003 05:35 pm |
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Maybe being more creative,... there´s no need to reinvent the wheel.... whee! and what if mixing the elements in the Vizid´s checklist....? A great job could be done... just look around you, your environment, pixelize it, digitalize it, love it, redesign IT. Don´t give up, shake your neurons.
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VIZID
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Posted: Tue May 13th, 2003 06:04 pm |
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Absolutely - reinventing the wheel is foolish. You have to operate in harmony with existing archetypes. However, formulaic executions are ridiculous. This techno-chic thing has to END! Tell me why a techno approach is appropriate for an insurance company? A health club? It isn't.
Therefore, what I suggest is that people find the essence of WHAT the website is about, before they start pulling the old standbys into execution.
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marcelo
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Posted: Tue May 13th, 2003 06:32 pm |
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X-actly. I´m tired of seeing how ANYbody are designing ANYthing without knowing the essence of the product. Just doing it. As said by Nike.
Today, art, design, corporative images are part of a rare acid coctel that i don´t know how bad will be digested by people. Standards cannot avoid that. The point is "to make designers to read more". I know about a lot of designers that even doesn´t know any f***ing thing about HTML (except body + /body  ).
You must be part of the product you are selling/promoting/showing. YOU MUST KNOW WHAT IS IT ABOUT! There´s no rocket science, just common sense. And it´s sad to see it no so spread into humans.
I propose the good designers to label their head with "Brain Inside". Excuse me Intel.
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transio
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Posted: Tue May 13th, 2003 08:48 pm |
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Forget HTML (well, don't FORGET it, but set it aside for the moment)... most designers today haven't even picked up the most basic of books on design !!! I'm talking about simple stuff like how to formulate a concept !!! Many designers today don't even know the meaning of "concept" !!!
I personally read as much marketing and creative literature as I can... just to brush up and push myself.... this month, i'm starting "Triggers" and "The Do-It-Yourself Lobotomy", and flipping through "Ogilvy on Advertising" again (I love that book !!!!).
As for the reiterative nature of web-design, I think we can find that in any realm of design. All design-related fields traverse endless eras of styles, each of which exposes innovators and followers. People invent something, the world grasps it as new, fresh, and exciting, and everyone else wants to use it. As for the current Techno thing, it's simply a "movement". It will end, as all previous movements. Some major "movements" that I can recall (roughly in chronological order) are:
- Framespace - put everything into framesets to make design easier. (they hadn't invented SSI's yet, and SEO was unheard of)
- Animeffects - an unorganized display of how many distracting effects (gifs and js) you could put into one viewable screen, which ultimately led to
- Usability - the "great" Nielsen, who put into words what so many were feeling, led this movement that said, in short, "STOP THE EFFECTS !!!"
- 1 Million Links on the Left - in response to Nielsen's Usability "Bible", many designers felt it necessary to put absolutely EVERY LINK ON THE WEB on their home page.
- 1/2 Million Links on Each Side - those who could divide figured out their pages would be half as long (vertically) this way
- Tabs On Top - popularized by Amazon, and still popular today in many circles.
- Rigid as a Nun - concerned with IE3 / NS4 compatibility and bandwidth issues, many designers simplified their designs to basic rectangular shapes with table-based structures, but then came Flash...
- All Flash All The Time (persists to today) - has many "web designers" asking "what the hell is HTML?"
- Cartoon Illustrations En Masse (prompted by the ease of illustration in flash) - every company on earth seemed to think it was "cool" to have a mascot
- Rollover Navs - why put a million links on the left? We can make the user animate the link coming out of a thousand-level heirarchical navigation script.
- StockPhotos Galore - basically, take beautiful photos that another person composed, place them into a banner or side-bar on your page, add some text, and do nothing else... voila! you've got a "professional" web page!
- Ellipticon - put ellipses wherever you can in the design.. buttons, content areas, etc
- Techno - as Vizid said, angles everywhere with ripped 3D effects.
- Glass / Brushed Aluminum - Apple rip offs
- Space Flash - make your flash interface look something like a computer UI from a cheesy space flic. (Mostly innovated by 2A)
- Frames, Jr. - everyone wants "child frames" (iframes) in their pages for some reason... although they don't really seem to be sure why other than that they're relatively new.
and my absolute favorite, the
- Liberace - put such an immense abundance of visual and aural effects into your site that your visitors feel the urge to throw up from sensory overload.
In truth, none of these are "real" movements. They are simply persistent use of specific visual effects, similar to "Art Deco" (ugh). I use Art Deco (the Architectural movement specifically) as an example, because it's inception (and new resurgence) was not really based in any concept per se. It was a visual style that the innovators found pleasing. Others agreed, and eventually it became very popular, dominating the architecture of many urban areas. It was quickly replaced, though, as will be the "Techno" style of the Internet.
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VIZID
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Posted: Tue May 13th, 2003 08:49 pm |
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| ogilvy's book is one of my all time favorites regarding the industry. I recommend it to everyone that reads this board.
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VIZID
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Posted: Tue May 13th, 2003 08:53 pm |
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I use Art Deco (the Architectural movement specifically) as an example, because it's inception (and new resurgence) was not really based in any concept per se. It was a visual style that the innovators found pleasing. Others agreed, and eventually it became very popular, dominating the architecture of many urban areas. It was quickly replaced, though, as will be the "Techno" style of the Internet.
It was only replaced because individuals such as van der Rohe and Gropius felt the need to innovate in new areas. Remove the ornamentation and concentrate on the beauty of the detail and function. When web developers fall in love with their content, not their effects, the web will reach it's post modern era and become what it needs to be.
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marcelo
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Posted: Wed May 14th, 2003 04:24 pm |
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....and the million cents question would be...
which movement will follow when Techno had faded out?
I think we are witnesses of a rare -and growing- trend to change based on more realistic environments used in backgrounds. The textured background is being switched to a more detailed/photoshopped kind of landscapes that certainly give more impact to that designs that have to many segmented and low size content.
what will follow? (nop.) who will innovate that cool movement? how many designers will not to adhere to it and will want to give it his touch. This is like art. No matter how much you criticize it, always will be a lot of users (and even clients) that will agree with that styles. So, just do the best work you can give; at less, it will be useful as inspiration for others. That´s the problem, there are too many bad designed sites because are "inspired" in other great bad designed sites. Hey, i´m not proposing a world-wide-witch-hunting, just calling to READ MORE and get ORIGINALLY INSPIRED WITHOUT COPYING/PASTING/CUSTOMIZING.
best regards.
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transio
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Posted: Mon Jun 16th, 2003 12:45 am |
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If the "techno" look is the virtual equivalent of "art deco", then would the "nielsen minimalist" style be the equivalent of modernism? Or is it more of a "shaker" equivalent?
Personally, I think that designers should focus more on the architecture, content, placement, fonts, and colors and let the clients decide what "style" they prefer. Perhaps it would be good to suggest what style might complement the business best, but in the end, taste is taste.
One might make the arguement that Neo-Classical office buildings don't make any sense, because they're mimicking elements that were intended for a style specific to Greek and Roman theology / politics. Likewise, one might argue that a high-rise apartment shouldn't carry a "Carribean" theme, because the style is not intended to accomodate high-rises.
Nevertheless, these buildings exist... in fact, these abhorrations of Architecture pollute metropolitan society en masse. "Why?" you might ask. Well, simply because the developers who build them like the particular style and think it will look nice. No one, the developer least of all, would suggest that they are works of art, or that they impact the realm of Architecture in any great way. Nevertheless, they are the bulk of construction today.
Likewise, the web is full of its abhorrations. Not because anyone thinks he's making art. Just because he likes the style and wants to do something with it. We don't have to respect it, but we have to accept that it will always exist and deal with it.
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GGWD
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Posted: Tue Jun 24th, 2003 01:57 am |
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I agree.
There is a flip side, though. Don't come up with something you have not seen (like you've just seen EVERY site on the WWW, please) then claim it was "me and only me" who invented it and act like every time you see it on the entire www that they copied you indirectly. Whatever, remember the saying "there is nothing new under the sun" even online, chance are that you were just the one who decided to promote it enmass.
Other than THAT flaw, I totaly agree!! It's one thing to be creative, it's another to know how to use it! =} Or when to let it go, even.
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