This is a fantastic premise, and wildly fun to think about, but I think the author fails to prove his case.
Good designers eliminate cruft, and if one is conscious of the design, then it's bad design (although it's possible I'm guilty of applying the "one true Scotsman" fallacy here).
Methods evolve, and truly good design is as much about resource efficiency and user experience as it is interaction dynamics and look and feel.
Today, if our most iconic, beautiful buildings required, like the pyramids, 25,000 laborers hand-stacking mud-brick over a 20-year period, that would be bad design. If our intra-city train systems ran above-ground, powered by steam, that would be bad design.
It's not Graphic Designers who are ruining anything, just as it's not Teachers who are ruining public education. It's bad Designers using inefficient methods.
A good designer knows how to focus on the most important parts of the content, and together with a good frontend developer, can take care of making a web page both beautiful, useful and fast to load cross-browser and device.
Unfortunately many designers tend to be handcuffed by marketeers and CEO's believing in cramming in as much ads, social media sharing buttons and other crap as possible 'above the fold'.
That's not a problem of design, but a problem of vision.
I've worked with so many graphic designers claiming to be web designers who didn't know the first thing about good web design. IMHO, you can't call yourself a web designer unless you write your own CSS, and graphic designers should NEVER have the final say in web design.
5 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 21.8 ms ] threadGood designers eliminate cruft, and if one is conscious of the design, then it's bad design (although it's possible I'm guilty of applying the "one true Scotsman" fallacy here).
Methods evolve, and truly good design is as much about resource efficiency and user experience as it is interaction dynamics and look and feel.
Today, if our most iconic, beautiful buildings required, like the pyramids, 25,000 laborers hand-stacking mud-brick over a 20-year period, that would be bad design. If our intra-city train systems ran above-ground, powered by steam, that would be bad design.
It's not Graphic Designers who are ruining anything, just as it's not Teachers who are ruining public education. It's bad Designers using inefficient methods.
Unfortunately many designers tend to be handcuffed by marketeers and CEO's believing in cramming in as much ads, social media sharing buttons and other crap as possible 'above the fold'.
That's not a problem of design, but a problem of vision.