Topic: Trends
Misinterpreting Minimalism
As of late, I've noticed there are quite a few websites popping up that are designed in a minimalist aesthetic. I believe designing in this style requires more attention to typography and grid systems to be effective. Unfortunately, this is not the case with many examples I've seen. I find there are too many concepts, ideas and products in this world that would benefit from a stronger visual aesthetic. With poorly executed minimalism, designers lose the chance of communicating a visual message. My concern is similar to a post of Owen's a little while back and how some people are overly inspired by visual trends, which leads to the demise of content and creativity.
Is Responsive Design a Good Fit For Mobile?
Since Ethan Marcotte put forward the idea of Responsive Web Design (RWD), it has been touted as a way to use one code base to support browsers of dramatically different resolutions and screen densities. Despite the good reasons to be cautious of this approach, designers and developers have continued to recommend using RWD as a solution for mobile.
Fortunately, the discussion about whether RWD is a good strategy for mobile websites/webapps has been rekindled over the last couple of months, and the consensus appears to be increasingly skeptical. Many critics focus on the idea that responsive designs would hide content on smaller screens that would otherwise be visible on desktop/laptop ("desktop," herein) screens. The problem with this, the critics say, is that this strategy implicitly assumes mobile sites should have less content than their desktop counterparts. At first blush, this assumption has at least some intuitive appeal. In the absence of data about how people expect and want to use a site on a mobile device, assuming that users want quick access to things like directions, contact information, menus, etc., doesn't feel obviously wrong. What does feel obviously wrong is building a site without data on how people expect and want to use it on a mobile device. It took the web community at large at least 10 years of making websites to realize that knowing something concrete about our users is pretty important. Why did we decide that we no longer need to have good data on users now that some browsers fit in our pockets and have touch screens instead of pointer devices?
If the thrust of the criticism is that it's generally wrong to make assumptions about what users want without supporting data, then it's both uncontroversial and laudable. Even so, it's still not the best argument for using caution in applying responsive design to mobile browsers.
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Design Challenge: The .edu Homepage
Viget has been working on some great .edu projects lately, including sites for Duke, Georgetown and Lafayette. Combine that with some exciting new client work and a few recent launches -- including Happy Cog's redesign of Georgetown.edu -- and it's hard for me not to think about this particular design challenge.
A Little Back Story
Before I was lucky enough to land a spot at Viget, I spent five years working with a small but awesome web team at Syracuse University. Part of my job was to act as "webmaster" (ick, I know) for the university homepage, making daily updates and answering the often ridiculous questions that came through the main contact form. When people wanted a link on the homepage, I was the first point of contact. A few years in I gave the design (at that point 7+ years young) a temporary facelift to patch things up until something more comprehensive could be done. Once the redesign ball got rolling I sat on a small committee tasked with choosing a CMS for university-wide adoption and another small committee that worked closely with a large consulting firm to launch a much-needed redesign of syr.edu.
When not working on the homepage, my team was tackling sites for campus clients from every corner of the university. Our projects included large redesigns for schools and colleges, microsites for Homecoming and Reunion, holiday e-cards, promotional sites for Chancellor initiatives ... Sites at every level and for every type of audience.
Over the course of those five years, I came to know and understand the struggles of university websites (and homepages in particular) from many different angles.
It's no secret that university homepages are, as a whole, pretty lousy. But why? And more importantly, how can we help them improve?
Taking Traditional Design Concepts & Print Design Aesthetics to the Web: Advantages & Disadvantages
When I came into web design fresh off the print world, I wanted to make innovative and crazy looking websites that broke a lot of rules to create unique experiences for users. However, I forgot all about the importance of user-friendly navigation, functionality, usability, and practicality. On a daily basis, I am constantly faced with the dilemma of designing for the web and print media. It's an ongoing challenge for a noob like me to bring creative concepts and aesthetics from both worlds together in harmony.
From a transitioning designer's point of view, I've noticed that a lot of web designers are constraining themselves by sticking with the same old and boring web templates that look reminiscent of their competitors. Web designers are starting to lose the traditional aspects and foundational elements of design that makes a design visually engaging. This includes strong hierarchy of information, great typography, a solid grid system, color theory, and captivating artwork.
We need to bring back innovation and pioneer new techniques to break the aesthetic norm in web design while still maintaining user-friendly usability. If you don't want your website to be another can in the assembly line, then perhaps you should look at some print-inspired websites that retain a lot of traditional design for inspiration.
Recapping the W3C’s “HTML5 differences from HTML4” document
Last week, the W3C released an updated version of its HTML5 differences from HTML4 document. This is the second iteration of the text this year and the seventh overall since first being drafted in January, 2008.
The document is a tremendous resource to front-end web developers as it outlines only those items relevant to authors. If you've ever tried to parse a W3C spec (and lived to tell about it), then you know they are geared toward browser makers and not run-of-the-mill web developers (The Rest of Us™).
I just finished reading over the latest version of the "differences" document and thought it'd be helpful to jot down some thoughts on things I hadn't seen before when reading up on HTML5. For brevity's sake, we'll just cover the changes to markup. There's a truckload of new APIs that I'm hoping to cover in the near-ish future.
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The Juices and The Flows Have Been Diminished
Renaissance: A rebirth or revival; an awakening; a fresh take
Woot... JS libraries, font embedding, CSS3, HTML5, and a heck of a lot of cool stuff is on the table. Designers are laying down some amazing designs, and the strongest stuff seems to have to do with better typography, more custom illustration work, super-elegant interactions and transitions, stronger foundations in user experience, and a return to design fundamentals.
It's awesome. There's huge potential. I'm overwhelmed...
Yep, you talk to a group of designers, and chances are good that a number of us feel we aren't exactly "waking up" with the movement. Somewhere along the way we've stagnated. We're checking out the yellow brick road, ready to dash down it, knowing we've got heart and will, but we feel stiff and rusty. What might have happened?
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Advice, Trends, and Resources for People Entering Web Careers in 2009
Many have us have spoken to people who will soon be entering careers in web design related fields this year, and this led us to have discussions with each other about what we thought was important for those people to know. Each of us had different advice to share based on each of our own unique perspectives, so we thought it would be helpful to put it into a blog post. Some of the questions we wanted to respond to were:
- What trends have you noticed in the past year?
- What advice do you have for people entering the field?
- What are some resources to help people get started?
Brian Talbot
Advice: Don’t Grow Up Just Yet
Many of the students I’ve taught and worked with want to hit this field’s ground running, but tend to be confused and overwhelmed by all of the various titles, processes and disciplines involved in working on the web these days. If you’re feeling this way, remember that you don’t have to pick a definitive career path or niche in the web just yet (if ever)! Instead learn about and try all of these disciplines as your work allows. You can always dive deeper into those that really strike a chord. Until then, don’t sweat those fancy terms or titles too much. And here’s a secret, some of the strongest web professionals are “generalists” instead of “specialists” in a particular area.
Advice: Work Smarter
Find ways to automate repetitive tasks for yourself – its usually an enjoyable problem to solve for yourself and will reward you with more efficiency. Finding and tweaking a series of applications and services that help you achieve is crucial. Some of my favorite set-ups include:
- LittleSnapper + Dropbox + A Dedicated Flickr Account = A quick and great way to organize (with tags) design inspiration across multiple computers and to share online.
- TextMate + Some Awesome Bundles + Your own templates + TextMate Projects = The start to a lean and mean front-end development area (for extra points, dive into things like Shell Variables)
- Delicious Subscriptions RSS + Delicious Network RSS + Flickr Design Inspiration Sets and Groups + select blog/site RSS Feeds all in Google Reader or Feedstitch = A good, portable start to having your ear to the ground on what’s happening around you (for extra points, you could add Twitter to this in EventBox.)
Doug Avery
Trend: Tuning Out
I’ve heard more and more designers this year talk about cutting back on blogs, Flickr feeds, and magazine subscriptions, in an attempt to to overcome the noise of “inspiration.” Sometimes, consuming design is a convenient excuse for procrastination, so be careful about how much you’re watching vs. how much you’re doing.
Advice: Try It
You can have a huge stack of Readymades and an RSS reader full of A List Apart articles, but if you’ve never built any of the stuff they’re talking about, you’re missing out. Take some time to play around with new ideas, techniques, or plugins whenever you can. It’s fun, it relieves stress, and you often learn more than you expected to.
Resources: Firebug & Designers Toolbox
For buildout, you should know about Firebug, the smart little tool that makes diagnosing layout woes a snap (and has the muscle to fix much bigger problems down the road). And in general, you should know about Designers Toolbox, a one-stop shop for print sizes, templates, web element PSDs…you name it.
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2011