What is Digg?1 Comments
- pnunn, on 04/29/2008, -0/+0The art question...
I think web design can be art- but too often the only examples are developer's sites and designer's personal galleries. The company I work for is client driven and most clients who we take on are more obsessed with a shopping cart than anything to do with modern style or an innovative design. I think a major drawback is that too many people associate more artistic designs with sacrifices in functionality- and often times, in the hands of lesser experienced designers with no programmers on hand- form does replace function and the site suffers at the hands of the designer's own self-indulgence. So many times have I dealt with clients where I was the designer they dealt with after a series of bad experiences with other designers who can't admit when they are in over their heads so they spout off jargon and attempt to make the client feel stupid rather than accommodating their requests- eventually stifling the client's sense of fun for the project and often weakening any potential for a collaboration that might have produced something beautiful.
Blah blah blah- my point being that- as with any art- the differences between a bad song and a good one or a bad painting and a good one are the quality of the artist's expressiveness and the accessibility to others etc. etc. The only tangible measurements being purely academic and foundation oriented ( and just because it is rested on sound principles or note perfect timing does not make it art or music )- the only real way to measure art- as has long been the case- is to evaluate the effect it has on the audience- intended or otherwise. The sum of the parts make the whole and web design is a field full of hacks. Often times academic programs fail to instill any understanding of the interdisciplinary nature of the field and people in a hurry to raise their income start selling services they barely or don't know how to actually provide. Designers who are in over their heads make sites of compromise- and the compromises aren't artistic- they are functional.
And it seems to me, that with a website being a service the fundamentally seeks to provide function for an end user- or even UI design at the most basic level- that all the cutting edge photoshop and flash elements in the world are no substitute for an eye with vision and the skills to deliver.
All the fresh faced students on digg pretending to have experience and shouting about this or that in all caps and saying clichéd under-considered nonsense about "a REAL designer would" betray their inexperience as they do so. It seems that the age of file sharing has created an idea that seems to be to the effect that a pile of clip art and hacked adobe programs and all the stolen fonts in the world make you a designer. The truth about design on every level is that it is intended to communicate- not decorate. I think that this is fundamental to any questions about whether or not web design is art- a useless site with no one to use it is not art by any means- if anything it is a failure outright on the part of the designer to deliver anything other than bravado, insolence and arrogance.
These questions apply to all mediums which have opened to people that may have never considered design as a career in the age of typesetters and such... Does it communicate anything? If so does it do so clearly? Does it meet the requirements of the medium and does it effectively demonstrate the creator's ability to control the means with which it was made? (Da Da ist ramblings and abstractions aside- these are questions I am specifically directing towards the applied arts.) It may seem like I am drifting here- and I have digressed a lot and I am quite sure the average digg troll checked out by now- but I think that designers who are charging clients owe it to themselves, the client and other designers- to respect clients, respect the message they are being paid to deliver and sacrifice their own agenda when it is inappropriate for the task at hand.
With the web full of more garbage than modern television, philosophies on art and on the credibility of the new mediums are something that will be hotly debated and grossly diluted as more hacks join the party (oh boy ANOTHER design blog! Oh boy ANOTHER fallacy filled Wiki!) - those of us out to rise above it or to defend the credibility of our medium must be able to defend and operate within an ethical code that does not regard the client from an elitist standpoint. We have to leave our ivory towers and leave art school behind- considering WHAT the art is is the only way to pursue optimal results and, in a client based work flow, the answer to that question can change- maybe even challenging us- and answering that challenge and satisfying the client is our art. It IS what we are there to do- if you honestly think you know better than everyone else, well you might be better suited for accounting or something with concrete and absolute answers- so stop wasting your client's money and time and go back to school. An inflexible designer is about as useful as an autistic air traffic controller.
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