Design For Life?
If you’re reading this from a feed you’ll likely not know what this blog looks like?
Or care.
It doesn’t matter, most ‘information’ sites/blogs look and behave in the same way. They all have a sort of template, one that’s built on functionality and enables ease of access. Neither of which actually need much polished (graphic) design. Slick ‘over design’ can act as a barrier; you could argue that online there’s a perception that the less designed the delivery of the information, the more real and trust worthy the material.
Take a look at the top 10 Alexa rated sites on the internet today (in order):
Yahoo, Google, YouTube, Windows Live, MSN, MySpace, Wiki, Facebook, Blogger and Yahoo JP.
You’ll notice a bit of a trend; none of them are beautifully (graphically) designed. Because they don’t need to be. People use these sites because of what they do and how they do it, not because of how they look. And as we progress down the path of a social web, the less relevant how stuff looks will be.
If brands want to be a part of the social internet, which undoubtedly they will, then they are gonna have to start behaving more like the locals. They are going to have to rely less on their traditional values. As more people crate their own internet, production values naturally become less important, because the majority of the new people are not experts and don’t care about traditional crafts.
‘In 1998 Sergey Brin created a computerized version of the Google letters using the free graphics program GIMP after teaching himself how to use it.’ Wikipedia,
It’s already happening. It’s not just graphic design, filmed communication and language are shifting. People are less bothered about the quality of execution and more about the quality of the idea or content.
Cheap DV, mobile phone video, ‘virals’ and UGC have all played their part in eroding the slick finish that had become the film industry standard. Of course, the fall of the record industry has also had a huge effect; the low cost music video has introduced a whole generation to ‘low budget cool’.
How we write is also changing, because less people have, or care about, the ‘traditional craft skills’. Everyone can do it, everyone else can look at it - so the collective median shifts. Like film and language before it, big traditional craft design will become increasingly threatened, and brands will have change if they are to to be accepted and believed.
The mass proliferation of the internet is predicated on enabling the ‘users’ to take control. This inherently leads to an ever-changing landscape with less reliance on single organisation ownership (you need look no further that to what’s happening in social media for the evidence of that), so there’ll logically be less importance placed on expensive high production values.
I am not saying that (graphic) design is dead, nor am I saying that it’s not important. I am merely making the observation that, like most of the stuff in our ever more pixelised world, it’s value is changing.
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2 Responses to “Design For Life?”
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“…here design can act as a barrier, because online the general perception is that the less designed the delivery of the information, the more real and trust worthy the material.”
I don’t belive that for a second. It’s a cop out for one and second it’s falsely attributing perception of worth to a perception of degree of ‘design-ness’. That’s convenient but not correct.
Design isn’t about aesthetics any more than Music is about Rock and Roll… Design takes many forms and to say that something designed can defeat it’s purpose is to miss the point. Great design can be subtle. It can fool you into thinking it’s not there at all.
agree.
I am talking about rich slick traditional design, i guess that wasn’t clear. have amended thank you.