Graphic design on the internet

Introduction

Definition of a problem

Chapter 1 The need for technology

Chapter 2 The thrown away history of web design

Chapter 3 (lack of) Influences of graphic design on web design

Chapter 4 Template design

Chapter 5 The user as a designer

Chapter 6 The designer on the web

Chapter 7 Back to the basics

Conclusion Sources



I was about 16 years old when I became actively aware of the internet. Before that, the computer was not really something I bothered with. I was a cartoons junkie, why would I spend my time playing horrible floppy disk games when I could be watching television?

A paper for school changed that. A classmate and I had picked the history of Russian Art as the theme of our paper. While we had a bit of information about Russian art during the communistic regime, we had no information about before or after. The books we could find about it were very sparse in their explanations, and more often than not, in complicated English or Russian. So we turned to the internet, which I had no idea about what to expect. From what I had heard, it had to contain all the information of the world, as if the meaning of life itself could be found on the World Wide Web.

Clueless about what to do next after clicking on the internet icon, I took the advice of using a search engine. Type in a word and there you go, hundreds of hits regarding that word, if you’re lucky (or unlucky). The entire concept amazed me, the simplicity of it, type in a word, click or press a button and WHAM! There you have it, everything and all you need to know about that word. And some things you did not want to know, associated with that particular word. But well, nobody is perfect, not even the internet, no matter how hard we pray it were.

There I was, a cartoon junkie with a sudden interest in Japanese cartoons, better known as anime, who had seen a glimpse of the potential of the World Wide Web. Could it be that this was it, it that could fill that empty void residing in me, and fill all the gaps yearning for information and pointless trivia?

Dare I try it?

Obviously I did. And to not completely sound like a social deprived being, but the internet did make me realize that, ‘hey, there are more people like you out there’. I was not the only one who liked certain cartoons, anime, movies or music at that age. I was able to further my interests because of the internet, there was so much information to find about them there. Especially about anime, which was steadily becoming my number one interest due to the additional information and images.

With all the searching on the internet, you come across a number of websites, most of them not made by professionals, but by fans, especially in the categories I was looking for at that age. People who before that, probably never had made an other website, let alone knew what they were doing. And it was noticeable. Combining the brightest colours out of the RGB pallet, fonts like comic sans, puppies, roses and thunderclouds all being placed together on one page. No order, no grid, no colour scheme. It was, different. And something I was able to overlook it at the time, because I wasn’t interested in how the page looked like, but in the information and images displayed on said page. I couldn’t care less about the sideway scrolling or flashing messages or the dozen of kittens staring back at me repeatedly.

But that is almost 6 years ago, and over time, the ‘I couldn’t care less’ turned into an annoyance, quickly followed by a shiver down my spine and a suppressed wince when I came across a site visualised like this. Don’t the creators care about how their website looks like? Don’t they care what the visitors of the site think about it, or how user friendly it is? Don’t they want order and a certain visual appeal on their website? Or is it because they don’t know how to?

At the moment, the internet is bombarded by users who design. They design their profile at forums, they (re)design their blog, or design their own web-site. Everybody is a designer, because they have a computer and know how to use it. So watch out you. With all these self-proclaimed designers around, you would almost think that there is no work for professional designers left. But looking upon that what clutters the internet in the name of design, there seems to be something going on, and not entirely right. With the internet be-coming a continuously growing part of daily life, it also intruded into the work field of graphic designers. As experts of communication, they must know what to do with it. But why is that the public wants to create them so much? Why is it that the public is so interested in the creation of their own website? and

What is the role of graphic designers on the World Wide Web?

I do not want to talk about how the internet should be designed, because that would be a too big a job for me, as it something I would not even know how to do or streamline. I do not know about all the technicalities involved with designing a website, when I barely have enough knowledge of the basics to set one up.

And perhaps my view of the internet is more of that as one of the public and not as that of a designer. My knowledge of the internet is bigger as that of a user. But I am both as a user and as designer interested in how design fits on the internet.

I will look at technology and people’s need for it, the lack of history in regards of web design, the public as designers and designers on the web and the use of basic web design. And try to find answers regarding these questions.

“For the ‘message’ of any medium or technology is the change of scale or pace or pattern that it introduces into human affairs. The railway did not introduce movement or transportation or wheel or road into human society, but it accelerated and enlarged the scale of previous human functions, creating totally new kinds of cities and new kinds of work and leisure. This happened whether the railway functioned in a tropical or a northern environment, and is quite independent of the freight or content of the railway medium.” If you look back at the previous decade, 1990. There were no 5 mobile phones per household, no personal computers. Nobody knew about them or used them and they were able to live happily. During primary school or high school, if I had a flat tire on my bicycle during the ride back home, I would walk back. If I would be late for dinner, because a play date ran late, I would either risk a scolding for getting home late or ask the mother of said play date if I could borrow their house phone.

And what now? Step into a train, bus, or the checkout line. A phone will go off somewhere and the person answering it will reply with ‘I am on my way home now, I will see you soon.’

People literally panic when their mobile phone stops working. I myself have had almost bordering panic attacks because the internet was disconnected or the rooter was broken. I was disconnected from the world, what now? In less then a decade, our everyday life has completely adapted itself around technology. Typing a letter or checking the weather forecast. Work or private life, few can life without it now.

Lev Manovich writes about how people talk about the impact and effects of new technology on cultures, but that they often forget to think about the effects of scaling up already existing and widely used technology.

‘As we can see, for McLuhan, new media technologies accelerate, expand, or scale already existing technologies, which leads to qualitative changes in society and culture.’

Needing technology

Understanding Media Marshall McLuhan text by Lev Manovich Scale Effects

September 2005, iGrid

In short, upgrades and updates for the better. Buy a computer this day and it is aged technology tomorrow. I used to carry ten floppy disks along with me during my communication education, so I would be able to get my report from my laptop on the school computers. That was in 2003. Now, I carry along a sixty gigabytes hard disk which stores almost all my school projects and personal documents. And if in some bizarre situation that amount of memory would not be enough, I can take my 160 gigabyte hard disk along. Still not enough, I will buy a 1 terabyte hard disk. With the society depending on the technology, the development of it evolves continuously, mobile phones, computers or software, newer, better and faster versions are being developed because that is what we need.

So the mass, or public, is basically being conditioned to need technology. Without it, we cannot function properly.

The most noticeable difference between graphic design and web design would be their existence. If taken very literally, graphic design has been around since the cavemen found out that certain rocks, dirt or wood left marks on surfaces when pressed against it, and decided to draw out their hunting’s on cave walls. In a way, they made the very first pictograms. Though the term graphic design was not around at the time, the activity was and has grown into a conscious part of our communication throughout history.

The computer, the internet, web design, all that makes up the digital highway, do not even have a century of history to back them up. It is a product of the nineties, where fast needed to be faster, became faster, and perhaps even went a bit too fast. Resulting in a badly recorded visualisation of the childhood of web design. The fastness of the internet probably had people so excited about all the possibilities of it, they got too caught up by it and let it slip, or deemed it unimportant to note it.

Compared to that, the history of graphic design has been well documented. Not just because it is the visual part of the communication process and the end result is a concrete object, the fact that graphic designers are rather vain plays a major role in it. Some might take offend at such a comment, but I really believe it is true. I notice it with myself, I see it with classmates, with graphic designers out in the field. Graphic designers are vain and a bit arrogant when it comes to their work. They love and take pride in what they make, which is within their right I suppose. They want people to know that this individual or that studio created these books and posters. But creating them in the name of the clients company keeps the designer rather anonymous from the public, and that is something we can not have, can we? So the studio’s and individual designers publish books themselves, in which they show the highlights of their own designs, effectively connecting their name with that design. And it is not only designers who publish their own work, but also designers and publishers who make books about the work of The thrown away history of web design

Pictogram

pictorial sign that depicts a simplified representation of a parti-cular object or activity.

Thames & Hudson Dictionary of graphic design and designers

Graphic design Generic term for the activity of combining typography, illustration, photography and printing for purposes of persuasion, information or instruction. William Addison Dwiggins first used the term ‘graphic designer’ in 1922, although it did not achieve widespread usage until after the Second world war. Thames & Hudson Dictionary of graphic design and designers

other designers, who are no longer alive, or are still very much alive. Printing it all on paper and binding it together in a book secures the survival of an era, saving it for future generations. Newcomers in the graphic design industry can look and learn from these collections, see the development and evolution of design, the do’s and don’ts. They will try to imitate certain styles and not only learn from the mistakes they might make in the process, but they will try to overcome them and further develop a style, coming up with new ways of designing.

One of the biggest disadvantages of web design is the little matter of being digital. Let us compare each website with a book. You buy a book when the subject of it interests you enough to pay the price for it. You read it through at least one time and once you are finished with it, it goes back up the shelve to join the rest of the books, taking up space in your surroundings and be a constant reminder of their existence. It stays there until either you have lost interest in it’s subject, the information is outdated, or because they have outlived their owner. Books are borrowed by other people, or are up for sale as second hand copies. Books have, if lucky, a very long life expectancy. Now if you look at websites in the same way, the picture drawn is not so bright. You will look up a website when you are in need of certain information. You pay a monthly fee to the provider, and for that small fee you have the entire internet at your service. So you go to a search engine, tick in the word or subject of interest and wait for the results. You look at the resulted links, skip the ones just not right enough, click on one where the summary sounds adequate and look through the page, filing the information away in your head, bookmark the page when you feel it is worth another visit, or disregard it altogether and deem it redundant. After a while, you might look at the bookmarked page again, only to discover that the website no longer exists, has been abandoned and/or is outdated and no longer relevant. So you throw out the bookmark and live on. You don’t see it when visiting another page, nor when you shut down the computer. The only access you have to that information is through a tool and a series of acts, while a book is the tool itself.

I still know the first book I read, ‘het grote alfabetboek’ better known to me as ‘doekedakboek’. But I cannot remember the first website I visited and truly read.

Then there is the matter of appearance. A book stays the same in appearance the moment it is printed, unless you hand it to a toddler along with a crayon. Sans that situation, the book will look the same in its entire existence, the cover, the pages, the lay-out, it will not change again. You are lucky if a website will look the same for an extended period. Though company owned websites are

kept in a certain style for a longer period, due to corporate identities and the customers fear of change, user websites can change looks rapidly. One day a website will look bright pink with neon green lettering, the next day a monochrome black. The basics for creating a website are extremely simple, causing the fleeting character of a website. Users want to show their newly achieved abilities in website building to the public or are no longer satisfied with the way their site looks like and create a new website, removing the older one and placing the brand new, better site. Now there is nothing wrong with wanting to improve visuals,

What is wrong though, that the old site is gone. Previous visitors of the site would remember that it looked different before, but if it changes 5 times in the same amount of time in appearance, who could remember how the first website looked like? New visitors also would not know how it looked like before and the only one who has the data of that website is the creator. Who will most likely never look at it again for it is old and ugly, and will most likely end up in the bin, to never be seen again.

You would think when it’s made on a computer, the saving part would be easy. But that is also the biggest danger; because as easy as it is to save it and let I collect dust in a folder, throwing it away in the bin never to be retrieved again is just as easy. As soon as you computer gets too full, irrelevant stuff gets chucked away to clear space for new, more exciting things.

And there is the problem. For those who learn it all from scratch, amateurs, cannot learn from the mistakes others made with this behaviour. They cannot see the development a website went through. There is no before and after picture to look at. This ensures that the same mistakes are kept in rotation, because of the simple fact that computers are so easy to work with. Now that web design is growing into its adolescence and it becomes clear that the internet is here to stay, educations specialised in web design arise. The amount of data collected about web design is steadily growing into a respectable collection, digital and analogue. So perhaps I should not be so critical about the lack of saving web designs. Because how many cavemen consciously saved their designs?

So the history and precious, previous, quality designs to learn from is almost non-existent. The design that exists on it now is for the most part public made. Put together with the knowledge they have gathered from years of reading books, newspapers, advertisements, combined with the knowledge they have of the medium. In some cases the knowledge of other media might be better than the design qualities. And in other cases, the knowledge about how to utilise the computer on how to design is better than their knowledge of what makes other media tick. So it is fun mess.

The visual looks on the internet is in overall loud, colourful and over the top. Some sites are a total bore with a lack of imagination in colour and type, and others are complete nightmares with their overload of images and colours. The logical assumption would be that experts of visual communication are the perfect candidates to sort out said mess. Help along a new media to sort itself out qua design and set some sort of example as to how it should be done. Where is that help? No guides are out there telling the public what and how good design should be. Students of the study need 4 years to even get a grasp of the basics and continue to learn on in the professional business. But the lack of graphic design should not only be to blame on humans. The coding is the hardest bridge to cross. While in traditional design you’re depending on your own strength and imagination to make things work, you have to adapt your design to what the computer allows. There is the size of the screen, the fonts available for use, colour and the inability to just pile everything on each other. While computers and coding are completely logical, the ability to work with it is illogical.

For instance, typography. The act of spacing and lining a text online is barbaric. It does not exist, in the traditional sense. So you cannot change the space between lines unless you use the space bar, or increase the space between letters. What is possible, making the text bold, cursive, and underlined or strike through, and all the colours the RGB system allows.

(lack of) Influences of graphic design on self design

Bold

Cursive

Underline Strike through

the forms of text designing in web design

1

1

Netwerk van Golven leven en handelen in een hybride ruimte Eric Kluitenberg open, nr.11, 2006

Then there is also that the amount of fonts one can choose from when making a website, is quite exclusive. Unless you know how to work with flash, or decide to create text images, you are stuck with a selective group of letters. These default fonts, one slightly better than the other design wise, are picked because they are almost all standard fonts. Every computer in the world has these on them. Ensuring that the viewer of a website is able to see the text and not a bunch of odd symbols.

Before the introduction of the computer, the amount of fonts available was small. Older letters like the Garamond and Universe were sketched and drawn by hand, and if one wanted to use these letters for printing purposes, their leaden forms would be used. Though the job and process of creating these letter families took up a lot of time, the quality is extraordinary. The fact that both letters are still used in everyday design only confirms this. With the arrival of the computer, the birth of the digital font was followed soon after. It would seem that the job of creating a letter became easier due to the computer, therefore more quality letters would come into existence. Both traditional letters as letters influenced by digitalism. With the arrival of the internet later on, the letter design software, like all other software, became ‘freely’ available. The public found it and tried their hand at it. It resulted in flood wave of fonts, some of which were a refreshing change from what was already out there. I do think it inspired designers to become more creative and bolder with their letter design.

The combination of text quality compared to printed paper and different set-tings on each individual computer is what’s makes the choice so small. Society has become increasingly complex. Businesses co-ordinate more resources in more places ‘ just-in-time’. Financiers monitor companies, industries, markets and commodity prices in real time. Researchers and scientists analyse everything from chemical compounds to geological data and the human genome in incre-asingly pressured environments. Governments at the centre of more dynamic populations need to plan everything from housing to transportation, healthcare to employment.

Yet, most of us still try to comprehend this glut of data using representations from the era of print – many based on text rather than image. Not only that, we have been viewing them on monitors that display less information than a letter-size sheet of paper. There is a clear danger of ‘information overload’ or maybe ‘understanding underload’ – a failure to focus, to prioritise, and to apply wisdom to information. Our ability to present information in a useful and intelligent manner is falling behind our ability to create and distribute the raw data.

For the designer, this is the challenge of ‘information visualisation’, the process of revealing useful, easily grasped insights by transforming abstract data into visual and manipulable forms. In other words: making new maps for the new,

Arial

Courier new Georgia

Times new roman Times

Verdana

The default fonts you can use when designing a website. You can use other fonts on you site, but changes are that some of the public cannot see this font.

information-rich universe.

Evolution has left humans with brains that are as much visual as they are analy-tical, able to distinguish and group objects by size, colour, shape and spatial loca-tion. Our brains are adept at identifying patterns. ‘Millions of leaves on thousands of plants – and we can still pick out the ripe bananas.’

Where with the traditional media the graphic designer can be flexible and change the shape of the design to accommodate the information needed to be presented, it is a difficult feat to do when the medium is limited to one shape. While a screen and a book both are flat surfaces, the each show a different way of interaction. But a book can not properly visualise a website. Just like a website cannot properly show a book like it is supposed to be. Printed paper would not do any website justice, and vice versa, because the whole purpose is gone.

So you could say that they are both 2 dimensional. Though this is true for web design, graphic design eludes this dance. While the pages of a book are flat, you can move them. Lift them up and flip them over. You can take the book in your hands and place it somewhere else. You can fold out a flyer and turn it over, or rip it apart. Try the same with a web design and your fingers will meet a slightly warm, flat, plastic surface. You can touch the screen but not the design.

So the lack of graphic design influences here is due to the limitations of the medium itself.

Een ander kritiekpunt van de nieuwe urbane visualiteit is haar inherente beperktheid. Vrijwel elk scherm is rechthoekig, plat, beperkt in haar resolutie (de hoeveelheid beeldpunten die de beeldkwaliteit bepaalt). Mediakunstenaars hebben die beperkingen reeds lang geleden onderkend en hebben een veelheid aan strategieën ontwikkeld, die wisselend succesvol zijn en die de beperkingen van het scherm proberen te overwinnen door bijvoorbeeld de ruimtelijke installatievorm, inter-actieve media waarbij het scherm zelf ook een beweegbaar en manipuleerbaar object wordt, projectie op wanden, doeken, gebogen schermen, niet rechthoekig gevormde schermen,8 gespiegelde projecties, bewegende projecties, projecties op glasmaterialen, enzovoort.

There are artists and designers who try to find a way around this limitation of the media by finding other attributes as screen. For art purposes this is an excellent development and way of expressing. But the fact remains that the general public continues to stare at their own little flat, square object. They cannot fold it, doodle on it, it is an object that stays dormant at a single location.

extra big

big

normal

the sizes in which a user can view his screen

Information visualisation Brad Paley

by Nico Macdonald eye nr.49, autumn 2003

‘The social networking website MySpace.com (‘a place for friends’) is rarely talked about as a design phenomenon; it is hard to imagine many designers feeling the need to create their own MySpace profiles. No self-respecting design expert would feel comfortable resorting to an off-the-peg template, even if this can be customised to suit personal taste. Automating the design process and handing people the chance to make their own visual choices flies in the face of every assumption that graphic designers used to make – and still do make – about the value of professional design.’

One aspect of the internet seems to play upon the users want to self design. Blogs, forums and meeting spaces offer their members their own little space on the internet, in the form of a blog or profile page. A page divided in sections that hold categories such as ‘about’ ‘friends’ and ‘comments’. A template. Each member starts with the exact same page, starting with the identity and visualisation of the website itself. The owner of the page is allowed to do whatever he wants to do within in the limits of the rules and restrictions of the website. The grid is for every user the same when they start. But due to the things they add, the page will change. The page is their face; when other people visit the page, they will reflect it on the person behind it. So it must look good. Presentable. You fill in personal information, such as age, gender and eye colour, hobbies and interests, things you like and do not like. You add some pictures of yourself and of things you like to the page, add the few friends from real life to your friend list. The sections shift, horizontal and vertical, becoming longer and fuller, shifting along the page. The combination of images, pieces of information and comments already changes the identity of the page as a forum website, shifting towards the identity of the owner.

But that is just the first layer of the self design. More often than not these websites let the users have access to the code of their own profile page. It allows them to change something simple as the headers, in size or colour, or the way you align your typed messages. A matter of minutes and it is done. Template design

Digital self-expression Rick Poynor

eye, no.61, autnumn 2006

The mass population, is according to José Ortega y Gasset, a product born from the liberal democracy and the influences of modern technology during the 19th century. The mass is to be treated as a single unit. Every member of society is the same, therefore has the same needs and wants, further downsized and categorized into target groups to specify what those needs and wants are. From there on products and services can be created that cater an entire group, saving costs on creating products customised for every individual. Shoes, clothes, furniture, magazines, newspapers and television programs. Products got a solid format, sticking to that format when they’re a star or cow, but changed to accommodate the needs and wants of the mass when they are in risk of turning a dodo. Mass production has made life all the more easier. But if that counts for the mass or the producers, still has to be seen.

As stated in Max Bruinsma’s ‘the revolt of the mobs’, the mass, here mostly referred to as the mob, is a group representing a difference compared to the general standard, an anomaly. They know how to use modern technology and how to apply these tools into creating a network. They don’t just stand by and remain passive, but they engage themselves with current stories, changing it or adding their own to it. They want to participate.

The internet gives the mass a chance to act as individuals, aiding them to release their own opinions, views and face to the world. This makes it a powerful tool, when handled correctly. For example, Al Qaeda, who uses the internet to release their statements of terror, applies it as a medium. Released to the right sources, the network does its job by bringing it to the front.

The internet, while a medium in the sense of an information network, has grown into a public space. Compared to other media, like newspapers and radio, where hired people decide what is important or not to bring forth to the public, the internet brings forth the news that the public finds important. Or funny. No longer will we be kept in the dark by the media. Mobile phones The user as a designer

Remove a certain piece from the coding, replace it with a different code and you page will already look different from what it was before.

And if you are not sufficiently skilled in altering the coding, do not panic, there is help. There is an entire business of pre-designed templates online. Users of a certain forum who create profile pages customized to your standards. Not for free though, most of the time a small fee is wanted for it, real money or online currency, both is possible.

“The design of the blog really influences how and if people post comments. One big challenge today is that blog tools come with default templates. So we ask ourselves, what template design appeals to the largest number of people? What are they comfortable using?

As a designer of templates, you have to keep in mind that people will see the template over and over again, but need to realize that it’s not same person’s blog. So it’s important to design simple and bare-bones templates.

Blogs need to be accessible-looking. It would be great to offer more decorative templates. But it’s important to present blogs where you can focus on content and context.”

The design of these templates still needs to reflect a person’s goal of the profile. They come to these sites because they want to socialize or spread a certain view or message. But the design of the blog should not come before that goal. Which is why there is a need for good design as a base to work from for the users of the site.

José Ortega y Gasset writer of ‘La rebelión de las masas’

The Future of the Blog Mena Trott

February 24, 2006

This does not mean that it’s a bad thing that non professionals are able to do this. Some people discover they do have that particular talent for it because of this phenomenon, which was undiscovered without it, and can make a profession out of it. And there are some who just take up space on the internet, how big it may be.

In a way, the public is creating a new environment, which was practically untouched by the restrictions design has put on all other media. They are designing their own world, learning it all from scratch.

But is it so bad that non professional designers can design? Should it not be about the feeling and thoughts one put into it? Perhaps designers stick too much to rules and ‘that’s-how-it’s-done’. Rules are needed; every part of society shows that. But sometimes rules need to change, because they get oppressing, refuse to bend along with time. Maybe it is time for a revolution. with camera’s who register certain incidents or legendary moments get

uploaded or send to news stations.

But the public does not need to be nationwide. The public can also be applied on a small group of from a person’s immediate surroundings. Someone keeps a blog of his activities or interests. The people he knows personally are the target group here. So the person designs the site as he sees fit, with or without knowledge in what or which way it would communicate better.

‘No question of ‘good design’ arises here — what counts is the effectiveness and reach of visual statements in participatory and interactive communication networks (...)

Any communication design today is part of a mob, simply because it participates in today’s culture of networked exchanges, if only as rip-off. As such, its effectiveness resides not so much it its authorial qualities as ‘good design’, but in its quotability.’

So good design is not the issue here, it is about the message that needs to get across. So what if the spacing in the text is not correct, or that the title would be better in a bigger size or colour. The importance here lies with the ability of that message to reach others. The communication value lies here with the message wanting to get across, not the size of the Arial. So self design should not be such a big problem for graphic designers. Because is getting the message across not ultimately the entire goal of graphic design? Design software is no longer restricted. When once software like Adobe was limited to only professional businesses, it is now available to practically anyone. First you had the cd burner, making it possible for you to pass along copies of your software to close friends and colleagues. Keeping the amount of shareware relatively small. The internet however made this grow. Immensely. Just one person has to make the software available online and millions of people can enjoy it, just as much as the original buyer. So everybody can now edit a photo, make illustrations or design a book. And take the pleasure in it to show it to everyone. And along the way, they start to call themselves a designer.

But the user as a designer is not exclusive. Every creative job has this issue. You have the user as a journalist, the user as a critique, the user as a photographer, the user as a writer, the user as a moviemaker the user as an entertainer. Funnily enough, nobody calls themselves a garbage collector when they pick up a can from the floor and throw it in the garbage can. Shove a digital camera in someone’s hands, and he will soon call himself a photographer, because he got one positive comment on a photo he made.

The revolt of the mobs Max Bruinsma

www.culturecatalysts.org

Love the Internet Adrian Shaughnessy eye, no.55, spring 2005

With the wide variety of media already within the grasps of graphic designers, you would think they had enough to busy themselves with. Newspapers, magazines, flyers, posters, books, corporate identities, etcetera. But apparently I’m wrong. Graphic designers all over the world have taken web design under their wings of expertise. But why? Are graphic designers secretly yearning for world domination, taking little by little until it is too late for the public to retaliate? Or eternal life, their names and work forever gracing the internet? Or perhaps, maybe, could it be that graphic designers want to apply their expertise in visual communications on a medium just over a decade old and looks like it needs it? Badly?

‘Yet the fact remains that the Internet is the place where graphic design has encountered its greatest challenge since the arrival of computerised design, and that the technical and aesthetic problems associated with Web design are perhaps the most taxing and knotty issues facing the contemporary graphic designer – especially those with metaphorical printer’s ink stains on their fingers’. It is not an easy transition from designing for paper to designing for the screen. Though the younger generation seems to have less difficulty with it than the older ones. For the younger designers the World Wide Web is a place unmarred by all the traditions of graphic design. They grew up knowing about the medium and do not know any better than seeing it as a new method and to use as a tool to bring forth their designs.

But why do graphic designers need to be on the internet?

One reason might be that these days’ companies are almost required to have a website that promotes and informs their business to current and potential customers. This throws the medium of web design into the lap of designers, because they want to create the total package for their clients when they come to them for an corporate identity.

Graphic designers as a business have for that same reason a website, to The designer on the web

Are Designers The Enemy Of Design? Bruce Nussbaum March, 2007

show future clients and fellow designers what they create. It is their portfolio. An easy archive to showcase their work. And a plus of the internet is the immense public within their reach. Which returns us to vanity of designers. They like to show people their designs. While books are the traditional way of bringing it forth, a website not only cost a whole lot less than publishing a book, the reach to new clients is a lot larger.

‘The Internet is a means of making resources accessible to anyone with a computer,(…)Accessibility is therefore the reason for any website to exist, and the argument that accessibility is in some way stifling Web design is based on a misconception of what the Web has become. A misconception common among graphic designers.’

The internet is about accessibility. The gateway to the information highway. And users are impatient when it comes to information gathering. This goes for analogue and digital. They do not want to flip through all these pages looking for the bit of information they are interested in. don’t want to figure it all out. They want to look at the index and find the page they need there. At least that is something graphic designers can do, streamlining the design of a page in such a way that information is easy to find retrieve. But sadly the public will look at you as a know-it-all. The public does not like to be told what to do.

‘In the name of provocation, let me start by saying that DESIGNERS SUCK. I’m sorry. It’s true. DESIGNERS SUCK. There’s a big backlash against design going on today and it’s because designers suck.

So let me tell you why. Designers suck because they are arrogant. The blogs and websites are full of designers shouting how awful it is that now, thanks to Macs, Web 2.0, even YouTube, EVERYONE is a designer. Core 77 recently ran an article on this backlash and so did we on our Innovation & Design site. Designers are saying that Design is everywhere, done by everyone. So Design is debased, eroded, insulted. The subtext, of course, is that Real design can only be done by great star designers.

This is simply not true. Design Democracy is the wave of the future. Exceptional design may only be done by great star designers. But the design of our music experiences, the design of our MySpace pages, the design of our blogs, the design of our clothes, the design of our online community chats, the design of our Class of ’95 brochures, the design of our screens, the design of the designs on our bodies— We are all designing more of our lives. And with more and more tools, we, the masses, want to design anything that touches us on the journey, the big journey through life. People want to participate in the design of their lives. They insist on being part of the conversation about their lives’.

Today’s culture is about being able to express yourself. It is a continuation of the subcultures that started in the previous century. Every aspect of society was governed by the rules of the government or religion.

You should be allowed to dress as you like, listen to the music you like and associate with whomever you like. So they had their own music, their clothing style, their own way of living. Design their own life. But the media was still in society’s hands.

And then the internet came along. A medium still untainted by the general society’s rules and standards and accessible to everyone.

Love the Internet Adrian Shaughnessy eye, no.55, spring 2005

There are those who are not satisfied with the simplicity of HTML coding. They cannot do the things they want to with it, it limits them in their design. Luckily for them, there are other programs, like flash. The name might give a hint of what it can do. Flashy designs. No more limits with fonts, image resolution colours and the ability to create movement. A solution for designers who tired of adapting their design to the medium.

One of the drawbacks of flash is that the viewer needs to download the appropriate players on their computer to be able to view flash based websites. Without it, they cannot see anything made with it.

I often feel when flash is being involved in the design of a website, it becomes over the top. It is like the designers need to prove themselves. They bring in complicated designs, with moving parts, and layer above layer and images hovering around. I find this the least attractive kind of web design.

Maybe, the strength of web design lies with its simplistic nature. There is not much needed to create a certain visual appeal with the limited tools it supplies. And is that not one of the aspects of graphic design? To bring across a message with a simple and understandable design.

For some designers, the answer to the limitations of Web design is to go back to basics. Like the musicians and fans who supported Phil Spector’s ‘back to mono’ campaign of the early 1970s, many designers and users relish the simplicity of pioneering 1990s sites.

When I look at the sites of graphic designers that I have bookmarked, the use of flash is almost nonexistent. Some small additions, barely making their presence as a flash design known. Designers relish in the qualities good ‘old fashioned’ HTML sites bring. They fully utilize the default fonts, the basic grids and lines, accepting the limitations of it and still being able to draw out the ultimate from it.

Back to the basics

Love the Internet Adrian Shaughnessy eye, no.55, spring 2005

For example, the website of KesselsKramer. The first time I visited their site, I believed I had inserted the wrong address. Here I had the website of a bicycle shop in front of me. Checked the website address, wrote it again, hit enter and came face to face with an exotic bird website. And something clicked in me. Could it be that this site is a design site? The bicycle shop from around the corner is in fact a design studio? In its own subtle way, the site is designed. I started noticing certain things that would betray their true intention. The menu bars are there, but are not linked. Certain images are attuned to the website’s quality, while others are actual designs. The only parts that work, as in clickable are the designs or banners on the pages. It is in fact their portfolio. Each design they have made as a studio has an entire webpage built around it. They choose a certain subject or association with their design and created an entire business, hobby, sight-seeing or industry around it. They use the elements of web design, also basic computer design that you would see with public sites, not with a designers. And there is the clue. A designer would not be caught dead to design such a site, so let’s design the sites like that.

With the site of KesselsKramer it dawns that although the sites that are made by the public, with no diplomas in design to back them up, are in fact designs. The website of POWER GRAPHIXX is in slight contradiction with their work. They are based in Japan, a highly technological country. As a studio, they make designs for computer games developers, MTV Japan, and their work shows knowledge in advanced computer graphics. They know their way around a computer. The look of their site of their site though does not show their knowledge and expertise in all flamboyance.

When you arrive at their main page, your first reaction will be white. And simplistic. The typography is delicate, black and spaced widely, the entire menu visible and the sections separated from each other with black lines. Their work is continuously displayed at the middle of the page, the images all in the same size rectangles or squares. Scrolling down will ensure that you will see everything from the category you are currently looking at.

But the simplicity of the site makes the design completes the work. It makes it stand out. While the site itself looks simple in design, it is good design. They have utilised the abilities of basic web design to create a strong, simple and subtle website.

Another example is the website and the work of LUST. The difference with this studio and the two above is the use of technology hiding behind it. The site looks like a basic web design page, with the black background and small, default type. A large image fills the front page, showing the viewer

The first two images are from the website of KesselsKramer

www.kesselskramer.nl

The third is from POWER GRAPHIXX

www.power-graphixx.com

the current desktops of all the designers of LUST, mashed up together. The amazing part about it is that the image changes every ten minutes to show how their desktop looks at that time. I would not know the technicalities behind it to make it work like that, but all their work is in the same way. The looks are that of basic computer graphics, such as pixels, RGB colours and basic geometric forms. Hiding behind these forms are other programs, creating designs that would look so much more complicated if not for the graphics.

You can create your own Mondrian painting for instance. They have made a game of web design.

These sites show that to create an attractive site with graphic value, you do not need to go all out in design. As we often say in class, in jest and in all seriousness. Less is more.

The first image is from POWER GRAPHIXX

www.power-graphixx.com

The second is from LUST

www.lust.nl

Why is it that the public is so interested in the creation of their own website? The public has always applied self design on their life. Invitations to parties or celebrations created in Word. Before the internet this was an activity that was only seen by those people the invention was meant for. A small group, immediate friends and family.

So it is not a new occurrence. The arrival of the internet just magnified this, instead of the fifty people they want to reach, they can now reach a public of a million people or more. It became public knowledge as it were. The public figured out they could do more than just copy and paste invitations, but create blogs with their stories and design it like they want. It is nothing more than a shift of an already existing concept.

What is the role of graphic designers on the World Wide Web?

As a designer, it is almost expected of you to moan and groan about the non existing design that rules the internet. But that is not true. The internet is designed. Though the public is not conscious of what they do when creating it, it is design. And perhaps it is not the most aesthetic design around, it is about the message. And the medium is still young, the public only just recently displaying an interest in it. There is still so much that can change in the public design of the internet.

But you cannot design the entire world, because the public, the mass does not like to be told what to do. The internet will never be owned by graphic designers in the way they own books, corporate identities or posters. It is a public property and the public claimed it fair and square. I do not think it is the job of graphic designers with this particular medium to dictate what is right and wrong. They need to help figure out what is all possible but keep an eye open when new developments arise that can bring a change. They need to keep in mind that they are experts of communications and not world improvers. Because that is what the internet ultimately is growing into; a separate world.

The diaphanous machine Max Bruinsma eye, no.26, autmn 1997

http://www.maxbruinsma.nl

Love the Internet Adrian Shaughnessy eye, no.55, spring 2005

http://www.eyemagazine.com/feature.php?id=117&fid=521

Digital self-expression Rick Poynor eye, no.61, autnumn 2006

http://www.eyemagazine.com/opinion.php?id=140&oid=353

Information visualisation Nico Macdonald eye nr.49, autumn 2003

http://www.eyemagazine.com/feature.php?id=71&fid=470

The revolt of the mobs Max Bruinsma

http://www.culturecatalysts.org/site/?q=node/288

Scale Effects Lev Manovich iGrid, September 2005

http://www.manovich.net/

Are Designers The Enemy Of Design? Bruce Nussbaum March, 2007

http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/NussbaumOnDesign/archives/2007/03/are_designers_ t.html?campaign_id=rss_blog_nussbaumondesign

Netwerk van Golven leven en handelen in een hybride ruimte Eric Kluitenberg open, nr.11, 2006

Geheugenverlies Peter Kentie Morf nummer 1 december 2004

Monografieën over vormgeving: web ontwerp [Z]OO productise, eindhoven, 2004

Essentials of marketing Jim Blythe, Pearson education limited, 2001

The Thames & Hudson Dictionary of Graphic Design and Designers Thames & Hudson Ltd, London, 2003