state-of-the-art in graphic design
I find it remarkable that after over a decade of website design; hundreds of published books and thousands of websites dedicated to the subject, there are those who are still able to eek out a career or attain status by republishing the basic tenets of graphic design.
I was amazed by this in 1995, when it became an honor for a guy named David Segal to bestow a site with a somewhat arbitrary (he liked it and it adhered to some basic design principles) “High Five” award.
I am not disagreeing with this fellow that the sites he has chosen have merit and are neatly crafted, but I do find that the distinction of “current, state-of -the-art graphic design…” unsettling. “Current web style”? How about: “relatively innocuous design that happens to be displayed online.” Each of the sites he has chosen to represent utilizes conventions in color, layout, typography, and hierarchical structure that are the centuries-old foundation of print design.
For proof, take a spread from any contemporary magazine, and compare it to the screen grabs… I would argue that 9 times out of 10, you will find the printed page to be superior in every respect. What I see here is someone patting his colleagues on the back for nearly attaining the same results as print.
Even the information organization, hierarchy, navigation of these sites is only a short stone’s throw from the structure of a newspaper, or any of the tomes in your local library’s reference section.
There is nothing novel, or even particularly interesting in the graphic design of these sites beyond an emulation of print. They are simply inoffensive. Perhaps that is enough to win praise, or a small GIF to place tactfully on the home page.
I see real innovation on the web derived from interaction that could not occur anywhere else. Experiences which are, of course, made more pleasant by decent graphic design, but not beholden to them. Wellvetted.com and other similar sites do a good job of surfacing this innovation. Sure, there are many wonky flash-based things that will not be suitable for your enterprise-widget solution, but there are many ideas there that can be leveraged to take said system beyond the notion of form filing to a more integrated, logical, and useful system.
anyway, that is just one of the reasons I come to Laszlo everyday.
signed,
-jaded, old, designer, who is usually too busy to find a soapbox.