I'm close to declaring the form of personal web design dead. I can't tell you how thrilled I am when I come across yet another site that has copied the look and feel and code from Antipixel, Simplebits or Kottke. Or the more exotic sites that go so far as to rip off Jason Santa Maria. Now I understand the need and the use of templates with applications such as Blogger, not everyone is an artist and even more blog owners don't care too much what their site looks like as long as it works and people visit and often.
So this entry isn't for the blogsphere in general, it's for those who took the time to "create" their own website but instead borrowed everything except the domain name for their own "work". I'm not talking about design piracy per se — that subject is as old as prostitution and beaten into the ground as much as it can be — no I am referring to the lack of effort on the part of web designers at large in the last few years.
In many ways I feel like designers, myself included, have dropped the proverbial sketch book and traded it in for Microsoft Word and CSS. We have stopped considering the form and function of a website in lieu of focusing solely on content and comments. it used to be that a personal site, or non-commercial, was more free form in expression. Sites such as 0sil8 were more of the norm than a text based personal diary. Expression was conveyed without text, without a comments box. However, when blogs first appeared they were somewhat of an extension of this era in web design but sadly their function and form became more and more the norm. I won't even get into what I think web standards did to design between 2001 and 2003.
Blogs are fantastic and they have helped the web stay interestingly similar, to an extent, in ways that mid-1980's zines provided a layer of non-commercial, non-gloss coated content. What made these underground periodicals hip was not only the independent nature of the content but the design. In a lot of cases each page was (or tried to be) a piece of artwork. This style was successfully adopted and renewed by David Carson in the early 90's through publications like Raygun. Later in the decade Wired magazine picked up on this practice and adopted it with their own flare, especially during the founding years when Jane Metcalf was at that helm — no two pages ever looked alike. The design of the magazine became another layer of visual communication that helped add depth to an other wise potentially boring subject.
But unlike the Kinkos copied zines of old — ah Kinkos, father to thousands of self-publishing ambitions — the cousin to the zine, the blog, has in general has become rather stagnant and complacent in it's form of post and comment, two-column centered with a drop shadow. I don't consider any blog-based site free from this trap, it's easy to fall into and hard to climb out of because doing anything else requires more time and uncertainty on the final product. I think that's why I really admire other type of artisans who craft things by hand and don't have the luxury of hitting Open—Apple—Y.
It's my hope that in 2005 we'll start to see designers, including Greg Storey, move back into more free-form style perhaps bringing with them some of the better parts of blogs, like interaction and mechanisms for archiving. It's time to push away from the weblog and start breaking the current norm.
Good luck.
Join the fray by reading through and commenting at the end.
Good, a call to arms! I hate it when people steal my site (especially when they REALLY take it all), or the people who are a little bit too influenced by site's like Inman's. There is plenty of decent web design happening these days, and most of it is happening far away blogs. Standards, Schmandards. Build a site the way that makes your job of designing and maintaining it the easiest. Think outside the box model.
Fantastic post. I guess that with the blog came the the CMS, and with the CMS comes the templates which makes every page (or every type of page) look the friggin' same.
CSS just added even more conformity as designers battled with floats and browser bugs. It's bad enough creating one layout that works, let alone a new layout for each article or page (Ray Gun style).
Find the balance will be interesting indeed, and I look forward to seeing something fresh, and yes, hopefully creating something fresh as well.
I agree with most of it, but I'm not so sure that standards and the blog format have killed creativity.
Those older sites where a new entry was a labor of love rather than more text placed into a template... those were not blogs. To think that blogs evolved from that format would be alarming, but fortunately it's not true. They are two mediums, parallel, crossing paths now and then, but still very distinct.
It's not that less of these sites are around. I still see them now and then. It's just that, before the blog format, there were thousands of people who did not want to create a work of art so much as they just wanted to have a periodical outlet. These types would have never created a site like those endearing, older formats, because it's not what they wanted out of the web. Such people would probably not have much on the web at all if not for the ease of the blog.
Blogs are just an easy way to deliver units of text with timestamps. That's all that some people need.
But needless to say, I do wish that I saw more of the artistic sites around. But perhaps their scarcity is good, helping the format not to be deluded. Such as the blog format has perhaps become.
Interesting read !
Blogs are talk-of-the-town these days and I completely agree with the stagnation part as well. For designing, I have always felt that many people who keep blogs these days do so for the sake of it, or in other words because it is the in thing.
These poeple, I count myself in these, do not have time or inclenation for learning the nitty-gritties of CSS & XHTML. So the easiest way out is pick them up as is. I know CSS is not that hard, but for many people, still, getting the multi-column layout without tables is hard to understand and when we throw in the hacks for IE, viola !
Unless CSS & XHTML does not gain the popularity & simplicity of stock-HTML, we will always face these issues.
As for "start breaking the current norm" I'll say AMEN !!
Hey, look, you have an "a" favicon, too!
Design blandness doesn't bother me too much. It puts the focus back on content which is really why I'm at a site in the first place. But now when I see a good site design, I take a minute to bask in it.
Man, I wish I were better at it.
You see this kind of piracy everywhere. In the music industry, books, magazines, etcetera. Even cars look a like these days. It's of all times and nothing will stop it. Maybe each 'original' should publish a list of clones he came across..
But... Like you said yourself, Greg, it's so easy to fall into the "two-column centered with a drop shadow" trap (love the term, btw), since it is a design that works -- might not be super original, but it gets the job done. Not everybody has the luxury of being able to spend weeks on a personal site...
Not that I don`t like a fresh design -- I love the Fray for exactly that reason. Good content and good layout really can support each other.
Oh good God, boo freaking hoo. Please, not another rant on "Standards Killed Creativity" or "Weblogs Killed Design" or "[insert whatever topic de jour here] Killed [insert whatever the hell you thought made your job special here]". It's like living in California and bashing LA - it might be fun because everyone does it and all of your friends will nod their heads, but it really doesn't prove anything, make you look smart or rest on anything other than anecdotal tales. Great, now you've got me defending a smog pit.
I think a lot of people forget all the ultra crappy websites from the 90's and just glorify the past. That's why portals like k10k were such huge hits - you needed an all-star cast of Cool Designers to point out gems in the desert and ongoing works by the talented few. Now there's good design all around and you don't have to be working at Fallon making the latest project for Nike Lab to make it. And the notion that you can't make these amazing visual treats when using standards? Man, that's so 1998. Just cruising through the CSS Zen Garden gives me a creativity boost whenever I'm close to running dry.
Sorry dude, you've got design chops and witty writing, but you're way off base on this one.
It has nothing to do with CSS, Standards or any technical stuff.
Blogs are about content - nothing new here.
Take the book - a thing that is made almost perfect during hundreds of years. Size is almost the same, one column of text mostly... It has cover, but we do not see cover when we read book, nor when it stands on the shelf. Is the main purpose of the cover to persuade us to buy the book?
Should design of the blogs be the same - attract but not to get on the way of reading latter?
Design is important, but site has to have extremely good design for you to want you to show to others.
Blogs are not the pictures on the wall - we come not to look at them, but to read them, quote them and link to them - mostly because of the text and in rare cases because of design.
And while good design helps reading we are in trouble when design does not compelement textual content but start to compete with it.
That's the problem I have with Jason's site - design is unique and interesting, but it somehow does not fit, too much distraction - at least for me.
Well, wait until you, and by you I mean you and me both, see what I have in store for us all with my next redesign aimed — quite hopefully — at May 2005.
While I agree to some extent that standards and css have killed design, I'm not sure it's for the same reason. They certainly make it tougher and I guess that leads people to copy others, however standards and css have ushered in a new future for design. While CSS is certainly fairly constraining (especially with browser problems — and by that I mean the fatal flaw exposed in the system i.e. IE) it is no more constrained than table markup, and much easier to manipulate once implemented. There is some beauty just in getting CSS to work as intended in ways that haven't been executed before. Design is not worse, it's just changed.
With the advent of blogging systems, sites have become more cookie cutter, that's for sure. However there is a lot of new and fresh design out there and maybe it's not mostly in the blogging world (I refuse to use the term blogosphere, except to point out that I dislike it) but that makes such cases extra special.
In some ways I wish everyone were a designer so that they could not only have good content but good design, indestinguishable from one another, i.e. a style of their own. However, part of me relishes in this state as when I finally set to work to break my site from the blog mold it will stand out that much farther.
Blogs in general seem pretty bland and boring to me - we need more personal sites like Cockeyed.
Funny, I was just thinking about good design after perusing the nominees for Best Blog Design at the Weblog Awards.
The real winners should be those who have both good design and good content --good design that doesn't overpower your content but adds to it.
You can use the blog templates provided by various CMS apps as a starting point for injecting your own look and feel. Using them doesn't limit you.
First off, in response to Al Abut - I don't think Fallon did the Nikelab site. First off they're an advertising agency, not an interactive agency and secondly I don't even think they have the Nike account, Wieden + Kennedy does. I'm pretty sure R/GA did the Nikelab site. However, I suppose this is rather off topic so...
I don't think blogs or CMS or CSS necessarily killed off design, I think it might have been a combination of all of them. First off you have this new medium that everyone wants to try and since most (all?) of the blogging software use css for layout (which a lot of people still don't know how to use) you get a lot of people using templates or sticking to the "stock" layout and just changing a color here or there. Those people who do want to do something different turn to the web to find out how, but when they search for help designing websites with css I'd bet they don't get much about design.
Look how many people are blogging about standards compliant coding. Now tell me how many people are blogging about design. Not many. There have been more people in the last month or so who have turned more to design topics, which is good, but as a whole, people in this community seem to blog more about how to do this or that in css than how to concept and design a site.
Recently, in the sites I read, I've seen this changing. I think now that blogging is becoming old news we'll start to see more design. Blogging is no longer a novelty and now that its around to stay I feel like the creativity will catch up with it. I'm guessing (hoping) that 2005 will be a year filled with more interesting, good, and yes even horrible designs.
In the end we are seeing the same demographic coming out online that exists in the real world. That is, there are more analytical people then creative people.
There are all kinds of socio-biological reasons I could go into regarding this but I'm going to attempt to stay focused for a change.
It boils down to the fact that your average person can appreciate a work of art but cannot create it. They would recreate it if they could. With this new fangled Internet Thing they can.
It's also a comfort thing, the "two-column centered with a drop shadow" design is familiar and easy to navigate. Whenever I'm designing a new site I find that I easily begin thinking "how will this fit into two columns" instead of "what layout will get the point of this site across".
Creativity is hard.
Nothing kills good design or originality except laziness and lack of talent. Unfortunately, there seems to be an abundance of both on the web.
It's good to see people arguing here in the comments. This is a controversial post that I too have mixed reactions to, but I think JSM hit the proverbial nail on the head with the first line of the first comment. It's a call to arms!
Regardless of what you think about standards and the blogosphere (I hate that word.), you have to admit that things are much more cookie-cutter than they were before the word blog was defined by dictionary.com. I was trying to do something unique with my own design, but it too falls into the same trap...but who says we can't have our blogs and our creative projects too? I'm all up for redefining personal webdesign for 05. Those of us who do this professionally have to do corporate sites all day long. So, let's create some new Eye Candy from the Underground this year.
I think this rant was necessary and really slammed me hard personally as I have seen my own design switch to a more css, cms focus...
BUT
Does anyone find it odd that this point is being made on a site that is build in a very templated, very over-used format, in a blog style that even has comments?
kind of contradicting, no?
Malan D
http://www.malandarras.com
I think that we have to try and remember what the first days of table-based design looked like. Because I remember seeing a lot of what we are talking about here in this discussion, repetitive layouts, lack of creativity, yada yada. So I believe that there will always be a certain amount of these characteristics at the outset of any paradigm shift.
It seems that everyone agrees that blogs have contributed somewhat to this trend, but I don't think that they are fully to blame. Heck, I remember being one of the first people to sign-up for Blogger and if i also remember this correctly, the original templates were not standards compliant CSS based code. You still had to make your own template back then in order to do anything different. But I digress...
I have to agree with Rimantas above, blogs are about content. No let's refocus and start looking to achieve a balance between form AND function, content AND presentation. There is no function without form, and vice versa. And so it should be with content and presentation.
The underground sites are awesome and I personally don't want to see them go away. They keep the web interesting. But do a "View Source" and you will still find tables. Superfamous, Supershapes, Threeoh, Surfstation, K10K ... just some of the sites that I still surf and all are still table based. Those are the same guys who pushed the envelope way back, which gives me great reason to believe that a new crop of designers will arise who do the same to standards based sites.
I'm not a designer. I'm a coder. I look at XHTML and CSS as code. I compose my pages/templates in a text editor. And yet I have an eye for good design. I typically try to make my sites look good. I gain inspiration from other sites that look good. But I would never steal someone's design. I would rather have my site look a bit worse than steal another's work.
Oh, by the way, I must mention that I really like the columnar layout of this site. And with this blog entry, I just might be inspired for an early 2005 redesign.
Expression via graphics instead of text/comments, which you seem to be arguing for here, is useful only to the extent to which an idea is communicated effectively.
So, what is it that you want to express that can be better expressed with graphics than with text or a comments box?
Instead of designers forgetting form and function. as you say, perhaps we've optimized our message for the medium. It's likely that some media are better for some types of expressions than for others.
I don't see this as a rant, more of a reminder that, yes, some of us could do more on the design end, especially when it comes to blogs. I'm currently at work on the 2005 refresh of my own blog and I'm trying my damdest to break out of the generic format as much as possible.
I disagree with you, Greg. Standards have not killed design. I will point, as others have, to the CSS Zen Garden. I'm actually confused by the standards backlash I've been seeing in the past few months from a few different designers because I don't see how everyone speaking the same language has made it such that you feel you cannot be creative?
Also, I think you bounced around from topic to topic in this entry, a few of which I don't think are related (I don't think piracy of people like Jason Santa Maria means personal web design is dead). I also don't agree that blogs in general are stagnant. In fact, I think the opposite is the case--there are more and more interesting sites to read every day.
I don't think you should be proclaiming personal webdesign to be dead. I think if you feel you're not doing enough creatively, you should do more. Even if the world were to decide in unison tomorrow that Weblogs Suck! or Personal Design Must be Reborn! or Standards Can Go to Hell!, it won't really matter. Do what you have to do.
I think we should proclaim following the pack to be dead.
I have to admit, I’m getting a little sick of the discussion. How many people are going to rehash the same argument (and include themselves as a guilty party) without DOING something about it? You don’t like the way people are formatting their weblogs? Them DO something different!
I also don’t really get calling people out for focusing a weblog on the written content… as, clearly, that’s precisely the point of having a weblog.
MY problem is that in reading blogs on a daily basis, design blogs seem to mimic each others copy, more so than their visual design. How many times do I have to read a designer who states that the visual presentation of blogs in general is crappy and stale? Why can’t someone put their skillz where their mouth is, produce a radical redesign, and say THIS is whatt i’m saying, beeyatches! THIS is the way it should be done. Then, people can either go, he’s right.. that DOES look kick ass and innovative, OR, they can go, see… there’s a reason why we develop our blogs in a certain way, and this bloated over-produced excuse for design is a great example of why nothing else works.
There are also other ways of presenting material. I’ve seen very little experimentation in respect to creating a graphic blog. I’m thinking someone communicating their ideas THROUGH visual design, or through comics, or through illustration, as opposed to a design weblog that focuses on written content. Neil Gaiman writes a great blog, but.. he’s a writer. Perhaps if people are so worried about design blogs, they should design their content, as well.
There's design and there's content. It seems that the general, best solution for the two going well together has been established.
no, it doesn't have to have a drop shadow, etc, etc, but a single or double column layout is efficient, can be designed nicely and beautifully for those who have the talent and put in the effort and is easy to read.
There's probably a lot of creative designs and ways to do websites that haven't been dreamt up yet - great! let's do it. but for those who want to read their favorite bloggers in the browser, and not an RSS reader, we've got the all-around recipe.
The designers will continue to design, evolve, innovate, yada yada yada. I've been doodling for months as i try to come up with something unique and new. who knows what'll happen. if there's weren't people out there trying to innovate, we'd still be on frames and tables.
I think that there's an internal struggle between the artist and the coder. Everyone expects you to have the common elements of a blog: content, photos, about, comments. In design school, you're not taught the complete technical terms of HTML or even CSS. Two years ago, I was still taught to use tables, and if you wanted to get artsy with it, use Flash or Director. Since I'm too poor to afford that, and many people click out of Flash, I don't bother to use it anymore.
Sometimes, it's just easy to do the status quo. If I have vacation days to devote to experiments, I'd come up with more than just what I have.
I still use mostly tables to design my site. I am not ashamed. I can read so many books to make my eyes bleed for help, and I don't like the aspect of CSS becoming the new standard for design. I would rather improve on what I know.
However, stealing is wrong and lazy. Some us take weeks just to get the font right.
Ok...your girlfriend's birthday is approaching.
you would like to wish her with a birthday card. you go to a Hallmark shop and try to find a card. you may not always find a card that exactly depicts you. you find one that is closer to what you have in mind, in terms of the content / look. you write on your own, on that card to make it the way you wanted to see.
How many times you think you have actually designed and printed out your own greeting card ? How many people you think will really attempt to do that ?
And be seeing you write "Open-Apple" as the key combination (something I still say and write to this day) it exposes that you've been an Apple aficionado for a really long time. Back in the Apple IIe days, there were two Apple keys: Open-Apple, and a Closed-Apple. God damn Greg, it's so good to see a fellow Open-Appler ;)
Malan said: "Does anyone find it odd that this point is being made on a site that is build in a very templated, very over-used format, in a blog style that even has comments?"
No, it's not odd at all. Whether the components of these blog templates is "the best" use of information architecture, it's become a de facto way of organizing material. And when you follow conventions like this, it makes it easier for users to interact with your site. "Creating" a brand new methodology can actually work against you.
While there may be better ways of conveying this information, some of these components (like comments) are inherent to what blogs are about (interaction, cross-linking, etc.). It's not necessary to throw the baby out with the bath water just to be creative. As a Web designer, I can't forget form AND function go together.
Seems to me that a large part of the issue here is the content itself. Most people consider a blog to be a diary, focusing on the written word. There have been very few experiments that have a focus on content other than the written word; and those that do tend to be designed differently (thinking about a few photoblogs I've run across here).
There can be a lot of argument back and forth about form vs. function, but it seems to me that a lot of the designer sites we are lamenting had a completely different purpose; and it seems like that purpose was most definitely not a running daily commentary. Two column layouts notwithstanding.
So while I agree wholehearted with the sentiment expressed in the entry, I would argue that most of the innovative stuff we all seem to miss probably shouldn't be blog-based; and if they are, then we need to redefine what a blog actually is, and what purpose it serves.
Zara: thanks for cleaning that analogy up, but you're right and wrong. Right, Fallon doesn't have the Nike account. Wrong that they're not interactive. Remember BMW Films? I was just picking on the first big name agency and the largest interactive client that came to mind while making a point of where the "cool" web designers used to be.
Jason Beaird - "you have to admit that things are much more cookie-cutter than they were before the word blog was defined by dictionary.com" - no, that's not true and it helped clarify my thinking about where blogs fit into all of this. Blogs are just the better, cooler and actually-adopted-by-web-designers version of geocities. Remember how cookie cutter that was? And it had a lot of the same aims: make it for the masses rather than professionals, give them templates so they don't have to learn how to code, let them build their stuff through the browser so they don't have to download or learn how to use any software, etc. If I was a web archeologist, I'd say the missing link between chimps, er, geocities and blogs would be livejournal, which falls somewhere in between and something a lot of people still use. It wasn't until both Blogger and RSS came along that the thing really exploded, was used in ways never intended, finally adopted by web designers as well as housewives, etc.
Greg, I'm going to be presumptuous and say what I think really underlies this rant. The amount of timesuck created by maintaining a so-called personal weblog and the effort it takes to make sure its timely, relevant and (heaven forbid) standards-compliant robs web designers of the time and energy needed to maintain purely experimental personal laboratories of design. I say so-called because we need some more honesty about why some of the A-listers are even bothering with this medium - good ol' professional development and old skool networking by a new name. Don't tell me it's just because you love writing so much - it's the audience and the interconnectivity with the like-minded that's addictive, not the tool, at least for most. There's a reason why the relatively new web designers on the scene like StopDesign, SimpleBits and MezzoBlue have sites with both weblogs and portfolios integrated within them. Hell, even Todd Dominey is getting rid of his all-Flash portfolio piece and maybe even his weblog, merging them together.
Jason asks again, "but who says we can't have our blogs and our creative projects too?" and I say: time says we can't. That's two additional types of websites that we'd have to maintain to keep two different types of creative juices flowing. I'd love to see more of that happen and I have to admit to being guilty of maintaining my blog more than my experiments this year as well.
Does anyone find it odd that this point is being made on a site that is build in a very templated, very over-used format, in a blog style that even has comments?
It is odd and a good point. Malan gets a gold star.
I also don't agree that blogs in general are stagnant. In fact, I think the opposite is the case--there are more and more interesting sites to read every day.
I never said blog content was stagnant. There are a ton of good sites to read.
How many times do I have to read a designer who states that the visual presentation of blogs in general is crappy and stale?
I don't know, how many times? I must not be in the same circles because I haven't seen much discussion on this topic at all — keeping in mind I'm referring to blogs, not web standards.
It seems that everyone agrees that blogs have contributed somewhat to this trend, but I don't think that they are fully to blame.
You're right, people are to blame. Personaly, I blame Castro.
...design blogs seem to mimic each others copy, more so than their visual design.
Really? I'd like to see some specific references.
Back in the Apple IIe days, there were two Apple keys: Open-Apple, and a Closed-Apple.
Wow I never noticed they had dropped that scheme until now. Lame.
Don't tell me it's just because you love writing so much - it's the audience and the interconnectivity with the like-minded that's addictive, not the tool, at least for most.
Actually I started this site in effort to practice and hopefully improve my writing ability. I'm not so sure if I've succeeded with that goal but I continue to push on. And I don't relish the "interconnectivity with the like-minded" that you speak of — It's like my college mentor used to say, if two people think alike, one of them is redundant.
There's a reason why the relatively new web designers on the scene like StopDesign, SimpleBits and MezzoBlue have sites with both weblogs and portfolios integrated within them.
I don't consider a portfolio to be anywhere near what I wrote about. A portfolio is a tool for doing business.
*looks at Greg's three-column layout*
*looks at my thee-column layout*
*blinks*
Greg, I'll be honest, I hear what you are saying. But maybe the design is not the point? Their is a term for a product that has reached a "comfortable level" and which can't REALLY be enhanced any further - a blocked product. Think of the tea bag. Pyramid shapes, circular, doesn't really make a difference, it's the tea inside that makes the difference.
Maybe blogs are at that point? 1, 2, 3 or even 4 columns - maybe people are beginning to worry/consider the content more than the design.
Hell look at my site (on second thoughs, please don't). It's hardly a designers paradise, but then it serves the functions I wanted for my blog. Maybe it's a mindset thing.
Not saying it's right, but then you can't say it's wrong either - I think.
Maybe bloggers have finally realised that it's the CONTENT that matters. So... er... I think I might be agreeing with you. Personal web design might very well be dead.
*heads off to work some more on his re-design*
DOH!
ripping off others is bad, it's for people without any creativity and imagination. ripping off others with out crediting them is even worse, it's for total assholes. so of course it would be nice if everyone was a great designer and made awe-inspiring layouts. but there are other issues that are so much more urgent and important: sites with invalid and/or browser-specific markup, sites that only work if you "come over here and look at my monitor", sites that totally break on alternative user agents.
of course, a graphic designer's portfolio doesn't have to work with a screenreader. but when i read a blog, i want valid (X)HTML that looks good at any screen size, on my palmtop, on my phone, and in lynx. (i.e. i want semantic markup and absence of bullshit like frames, pop-ups, JavaScript that's necessary for vital functions liek navigations, etc.) i want RSS feeds in two or three popular formats. (standards are good, and there are so many to choose from! *sigh*) i want a prominent 'about' (or similar) link that easily lets me find out who wrote that. i want full text search.
all these features are nice to have, and with the tools we have nowadays, they are trivially easy to implement, so there's NO reason not to have them. and a nice blgger template does pretty much all of that. so i couldn't care less if someone copies the look of kottke.org, as long as at least he/she also copies the functionality.
but yeah, as soon as the day comes when most people get those basic things right, i'll start complaining about those ugly wallpapers that everone's putting up as abackground images now, and those silly drop shadows.
Okay, I'll bite:
This topic (whether you realize it or not) has been touched upon by jeffcroft.com and molly.com to name two. I'm sure if I looked, I could come up with others. In fact, the link from jeffcroft.com to this article has the typebyte "...yes that topic again" (He does, however, feel you've put it better than anyone up to this point.)
And, arguing this point sidesteps the bigger point: If people don't like it, why aren't those people doing something different?
Also, there aren't any real "distinct" voices in the blogging world. Nobody has content that is radically different from the content of anyone else. Part of this, I'm sure, is because everyone is reading everyone else, and... there's a sense of community. This is going to inevitably lead to a melting pot of ideas. I used to read a lot of different blogs, but I find that I get pretty much the same experience by narrowing what I read down to 2 or 3 that I really like.
All I'm saying is that if written content forces a 2 or 3 column layout, and you don't like it... abandon written content and move to some other visual communication.
I use WordPress and a standard template designed by Neal Turner. It looks ok to me, though it is certainly derivative. I don't care. Minutes spent on the design of my website are minutes taken away from writing. The point of a weblog is the information contained therein, not on the pretty wrapping.
I'd like to agree. But in the end, Content is what's king. It doesn't matter how it's formed just what it's about.
I think the snag here has to do with convention. Unlike print, these sites are interactive (albeit light interaction). So, it serves users well to see some common conventions fall into place. There's no learning curve.
I think its about balance - function and form.
One thing that has not been mentioned in this discussion is usability and convenience. People are used to certain ways of presenting information, of which the x column layout is probably the most used. When you enter a site and see a small sidebar with links and a bigger main area with larger chunks of text you know what is what.
I cannot say I'm sorry of getting rid of the old 90's design that so many people had. I rather read entries in a standard blogger template that i have seen a thousand times than black tiled backgrounds with yellow centered text. Which is - unfortunately- how lots of people design their homepages. (Does anybody still use that word anyway?) I back off if I encounter sites like that, and it really distracts, so the author might have something good to say, but I won't read it.
From professional designers like Jason Santa Maria I expect thrilling and radical designs, but most of the bloggers out there just aren't talented like that. I most certainly am not anyway.
So I don't mind visiting 'mainstream' sites, but you do have a point when you say that a lot of designers copy the style of others. You could call it trends, but for the amount of designers out there, the number of trends is indeed amazingly limited.
hitler.
OPEN-APPLE-Y?
Trying to make sense of the keyboard command translation. Was that meant to be "Preview" in Illustrator? "Proof Colors" in Photoshop? "Check Syntax" in BBEdit? "Put Away" in the Mac OS 9 Finder?
Frantically reconsidering my two-column layout! Excellent article! - cheers
To be honest, I think this is less of a problem than you're making it out to be. Look at something like the CSS Vault, where - while there are a lot of derivative designs - there's still a wide variety of looks, many of them unique.
I personally did crib my design - but not from another 'web guru'. I took the London tube map and adapted the look to a simple design; perhaps not the prettiest, but it's not a direct ripoff of anything I've ever seen.
So, while for many bloggers personal design is 'dead', I'd say it instead probably never existed. No one on Blogger really designs their own layouts, and hundreds/thousands of movable type & textpad users simply use and acquire templates. They never did their own design - how can they be killing personal design?
I use my CMS, BlogPress, and my "original" design.
It's unfortunate that my post will probably be skimmed over a lot. :(
Regardless, I believe that it is true that Web Standards are creating a general template that is easy to use. Within the blog community, I don't think it's that big of an issue, because with blogs it's about content. That's why Zeldman.com, designobserver.com, and SimpleBits.com get my daily browsing.
You talked about how creativity is dying, which I agree with. For example:
I'm stuck with a design for this law firm. They keep telling me "Professional, Flashy, and Modern." I keep coming up with designs equal to that two-columed-drop-shadow scenario you described. It's true - I see that kind of design a lot, and I'm falling into the trap of looking to this style first lately, rather than focusing on how to communicate with a specific purpose through design... not make it look good.
So in conclusion: Web standards are generating a generic design that extends beyond the 'blogsphere.' It's about content with blogs, so using tricks already established isn't that big of a deal to me. But when it comes to designing for businesses, it seems like we (especially me) are falling into this generic style.
Kris-
Just wondering why you feel your post will be skimmed over?
I, for one, read the whole thing and tend to agree -- the traditional blog layout is popular first and foremost because it works -- for blogs. I am also starting to see it in places where it doesn't work quite so well. Bummer.
Consistency doesn't necessarily equal blandness. Same for simplicity. As far as I'm concerned you can have your "each page is a masterpiece" days of Hotwired and Linda Weinman. Same for the K10K "designer sites" era with all that Flash noodling and unnavigable nonsense. But I'm a little biased - I love design systems almost more than I love design.
My point is that everything stagnates. Everything good that gets popular eventually gets commodified. The old Hotwired style got knocked off and butchered all over the place, as did the self-congratulatory flashsterbation fest of all the designer/portfolio/interactive experience sites. They all had some great (and original) ideas and designers at the core (Jeff Veen and the Hotwired crew really were doing something new and interesting in the 90's, and folks like Josh Davis and others were doing the same in the early 00's), but they all spawned massive waves of imitators, lookalikes and drones. The more people adopt a paradigm, the more diluted it becomes, and the lower the overall quality becomes.
Just because the "blog" format is overused, doesn't mean it's not effective. I think the opposite is true. The 3-column blog format isn't dead, it's just become a utility instead of an innovation (like Kleenex). Way I see it, this is a Good Thing. Now my Mom can have a blog, and the rest of us leading-edge brillianti can move on and forge the next great paradigm.
So the call-to-arms is great, and well-placed. Those of us who make the Internet do need a fire lit under our ass every now and then to keep us from settling for what works now and come up with something new that might work next (and might not, but we're the ones who take the risks, right?). What I think we have to remember is that we're not just doing this for our health (or because we can, or to satisfy our creative urges).
We're people who care about the web, as it is and as it should be. If we're really doing this to move things forward, and not just to drive our egos in circles like go-carts on parade, maybe the ultimate result of any great innovation on the web could be that my mom can use it.
It's all math*. Just be glad at least you and some of us still take the time to try to come up with semi-original designs. (Semi-original because there is just so much you can do with the limited set of elements present in the traditional weblog... title, entry, datestamp, etc...)
* Increase the accessibility, availability and ease of use of a medium (in this case, personal publishing/templating) and watch the "quality" go down - or rather, watch the templates take over. I for one am comfortable with the trade-off: more expression. Compare and contrast to the availability of digital cameras, music mixing software, home movie making software, etc etc etc...
Parting thought: put a portable film camera in Warhol's hands and he'll make you famous for 15 minutes. Put a video camera the size of a pack of smokes in yours and make yourself famous for 15 people. ;)
Form? Content? Can't we all just get along? A great dialog here, even if it isn't brand-spanking new.
I understand Greg's frustration. I actually have a similar opinion about the content of most blogs, much of which is redundant or cookie-cutter. Whether it is a shrill liberal/conservative, a self absorbed diary-diarrhea, or a web-standards nazi blog, not much new is being said, especially in the comments, where the brainless fawning is nausea-inducing. Many of the "A-List" bloggers' (a truly stupid term) sites have fallen into this category. That's why, after blogging for two years myself, I stopped. I discovered that what I had to say wasn't terribly interesting or original. The Blogosphere (another loathesome word) is pretty insular and stultifying; it tended to stifle my creative energy. I think my creativity has improved because of it.
As for design: it matters. Presentation affects people's opinion of the content being presented. I work as a writer in a corporate environment, and I have seen it a million times: mediocre content in a pleasingly designed format will be judged as equal or better than great content presented in a lesser format. Often people like the mediocre content in a pleasingly designed format better without even knowing why. It is almost subliminal.
I should clarify that I don't mind have a problem with people lamenting the similarities that are popping up within the blogosphere.
What makes my unhappy is that there don't appear to be any better ideas coming out of the dialogue... just a lot of "i don't like the way things are, despite being a part of the way things are."
Artists for years and years have come up against walls and broken through them. Where would we be if Picasso and Braques hadn't worked together to bring cubism to the world? If you come across a brick wall, break out your sledge hammer!
Perhaps you'll find through trial and error that what seems stale is actually functional? It's a cliché, but you'll notice that newspapers have stuck to a formula for ages. Take one look through this book, though, and you'll see that the same general layout doesn't prevent innovation.
At any rate, nothing is going to change unless those who CAN make the change DO make the change.
Why are people so quick to pronounce things dead in that doomy Nietzschian way? Pronounce photoblogs and moblogs alive (even though that moniker is ridiculous). Pronounce RSS feed aggregators alive, del.icio.us alive, podcasting alive, sIFR alive, compliant flash movies alive. While not every site is going to end up on Stylegala or the Vault for an overall elegance, originality, and clarity, a weblog site is not necessarily the sum of its parts. With so many elements available to spruce up the place, there may be a gem or two in the unique application of common devices.
I'm probably not one to post; I suffer from the two column with a drop-shadow, and I do mean suffer. I think I need Drop Shadow Anonymous. I could do better, I could do more original, but for now I'm personally content to improve the paperclip than reinvent the wheel. I don't see anything wrong with that.
As always though, Greg, a fantastic post and worth every letter if your readers respond with, "Uh, two-column with a drop shadow? Heh heh heh.. I don't have a two-column with a drop shadow--*FRANTIC REDESIGN* See?" I'm certainly hoping this post will take people back to the drawing boards and I'm certainly interested in the response. :)
In regards to Brian Ford's comments:
Heather Champ is another person who has had elegant words on this topic: http://www.hchamp.com/other/archives/000201.html
And I generally agree with Brian. Design blogs are more similar than just in design these days. Whether its in structure (putting up a side bar of short links with descriptions) or content (many of the same links appear in everyone's sidebars), we're all mirroring the same pop culture interests.
I agree with Greg, though, in that before blogs, personal sites were just weird, funky outlets for non-standards-compliant self-expression. And that's what got us addicted to this medium.
I'm happy to have joined the bandwagon and learned a great way to build sites. But I'm looking for sites outside the design blogs for inspiration these days.
I'm happy to have joined the bandwagon and learned a great way to build sites. But I'm looking for sites outside the design blogs for inspiration these days.
Interesting, care to share?
Hey, if it wasn't for this "tried and true" comment formula (commenters' names link to their site) I wouldn't be able to read your words and then see your blogs.
Almost every newspaper in the world has a basic style template; masthead at the top, with a big photograph and headline on the front page.
There's a reason this format works - because it appeals in a general way.
Research shows that users prefer - and, indeed, expect - things to be in certain locations and in a certain order. There's only so much you can do with the basic structure of a weblog before it starts losing functionality in favour of flashy design or abstraction.
How many more gimmicky Flash intros must we suffer?
Weblogs are firstly about the content and the links - the design is largey a secondary consideration, and usually nothing more than window-dressing.
Of course, there's nothing wrong with pushing the boundaries of good design - and similarly, 'sampling' the work of a skilled designer should be viewed as flattery, not theft - unless it breaches trademarks or impacts negatively on the reputation of the originator.
Wilson Miner:
I'm about tired of you saying everything I mean in a more clear, concise, and better-sounding way than I can myself. You ass.
Back off, WillieBoy.
Jeff
I visit illustrators and indie comic creators websites often for design inspiration. They have, to me, always been some of the most creative websites, bar none, using Flash or not, blog or portfolio or whatever. People that work in sequential art and illustration tend to push the envelope more, because they're used to breaking the limits of whatever medium they're working with.
There's still a lot of great looking websites out there, even personal ones, but they're kind of obscure.
Just a couple of examples
http://www.atomictoy.org/
http://006.tenkuu.net/
http://andyrunton.com/
http://www.lowbright.com/
http://www.ninjarage.com/ano/
On top of the design, I love looking at pretty pictures and reading comics for free. :-)
I think content and design aren't easy to seperate when you are a designer. Fellow Philadelphian, Jason Santa Maria's site is great because he does blur those lines. My old site before getting messed up by my CMS tried to do that. Currently I use a version of Michael Heilemann's Kubrick template for WordPress until my re-design is complete.
What I took from Greg's argument is that as designers we should take the extra steps to blur the lines, to lead and to innovate. That will often require more time and energy and thinking outside of the box (someone should think outside of the box and come up with a newer cliché).
I think non-designers should stick to using the plethora of free templates that are out and are quite nice. Michael Heilemann's Kubrick template is slick, Todd Dominey has a nice one for Blogger and many other designers have offered ones for different CMS. These templates and standards are great though because blogging is now not just relegated to designers or web guys, but I now have bookmarks from bloggers who are photographers, writers, musicians and even my pastor has a blog. This is a cool thing in my opinion
LED ZEPPELIN and THE ROLLING STONES and ERIC CLAPTON and blah blah bah borrowed from older blues players.
VAN HALEN and AEROSMITH and ACDC and blah blah blah borrowed from Zep/Stones/Clapton etc.
That's the way it goes with all the arts. Little by little we move forward. Every once in awhile there's something of a renaissance and you get a Mozart or a Jeff Beck or a Andy Warhol or a Greg Story (sincerely) or whatever. But nothing happens in a vacuum and it most certainly doesn't happen over night.
I like your post Greg. Clears out the cobwebs to make room for new thinking. Just don't expect a miracle in a heart-beat ; )
Incidentally... I believe web design has come along way in a short period of time.
Want we now need to do is take everything we've learned (standards, low noise, color palettes, typography, grids... everything) and start moving forward with it. Implement and play with everything we've learned so far. Once people start to run freely with everything we've learned in the past few years, we'll see some funky stuff start to surface.
It just takes time 8 )
Agreeing with your thoughts here. I'm also pleased dioxin face has been bumped down from the top of the page.
How many ways can you design a site where you have a large amount of content associated with a large number of links? Two column layouts with a sidebar and content may not be original, but it works.
I think that if there was a better (or equivalent) way to present the content, people would be doing it. It seems to me that declaring personal web design dead based on this is like declaring fashion design dead because everyone's wearing pants with 2 legs.
(btw, I also think that deleting comments for anonymity is lame)
Oh boy! More whining about anonymous comments! There is nothing wrong with two columns people. Sure, it's a lot of content and that is a good way to dice it up. So is three columns. So is four columns. There are still plenty of ways to make your site distinct. Look at Coudal. Or Coda Coza. Two shit hot sites that look real pretty, and don't look like a lot of other stuff. The point is that stealing design is awful (duh), and so is complacency. We aren't saying every site needs to be original and smack everyone upside the head. We are saying that there is always room for advancement and new directions, blog, schmog. Good design doesn't need a label. It communicates it's message and retires for a nap on the couch after a job well done.
Well Randall you just don't like much around here do you?
I never said that a two column layout doesn't work for blog like content. You, like several others, missed my point entirely. Maybe you can go back and read the whole entry without scanning and then write a more informed comment.
Oh and if everyone was wearing pants with two legs, yes fashion would be dead or very close to death.
(btw, I think that people who hide behind anonymity are mouth breathers and don't deserve to have their comments posted here or anywhere else)
"I won't even get into what I think web standards did to design between 2001 and 2003."
Aw, why not Greg?
It's not like that retarded topic(the implication that standards hinder creativity) has been beaten to death, into the ground and to a pulp by now or anything like that(not to mention exposed for its asininity).
Well there are two strains of discussion here. One is that *designers* have started slacking off, and the other is that design on the web in general is getting too bland.
I strongly disagree with the latter. In 1998, J. Random Highschooler would have signed up for geocities, screwed around in a Warez-downloaded Photoshop, put up a 'Under Construction' graphic and given up.
Today s/he would sign up for blogger.com or the like and get to writing, linking and exploring because they already have templates made by superstars and an post/archive/search/publish system made by people who care deeply about code and the web.
I'd say the average personal website has improved. Vastly.
Remember that with the web standards--and the discouraging of useless Flash--came interconnectivity. Like Rob said, things are coming alive, not dying.
I think standards made it more challenging to create web pages. Not because it's not possible to be creative within the framework standards provides, but because it increases the length of time it takes to finish.
Before I got into standards I was creating weird layouts in Photoshop, chopping them to bits and shoving them into tables. I came up with all sorts of strange layouts and really enjoyed the challenge of getting rid of all the gaps. Now I still enjoy the challenge with CSS, but there is a lot more to consider while coding. Much more than just making sure cell widths perfectly match the image widths.
I think I've had to spend time learning how to to increase my paycheck. At some point I realized just knowing HTML, Photoshop and some javascript wasn't taking me anywhere, fun as it may be. As someone who really enjoys working on websites but can't afford to be a graphic designer (I'm talented, but not that talented), going the database, info arch, programming route is a way I can still make websites and get payed. I've learned that I don't have to be a creative graphic designer because on the type of websites that pay any decent money there's a graphic designer to do that part for you. I just conform to a style guide and present data.
What happened to the days when I hacked up photoshop layouts? I spent years learning how to do backend work and now I feel like the design part of me that did exist has weakened even more. I actually think about this a lot and it does bother me.
Interesting discussion (and I don't care if it's been thrashed before), this sort of question should be raised by every designer in their own head when it comes to "the nth redesign".
I still see a number of "A-list"ers out their trying to stretch the boundaries.
It's a scary thing deviating from the norm. Sometimes too much difference can scare away our readers. I know that when I redesigned, I wanted to break free from the box (excuse the pun), but I didn't want to do it in a way that would confuse my regulars or baffle the new visitor.
In some ways, I had to rely more on layout and CSS because my graphical skill are weaker than most.
Another point is that I wouldn't have been able to get to where I am without "borrowing" design ideas. As designers ourselves, we are constantly looking for new inspiration. It's being able to put our own spin on that inspired idea that will set apart the ripoff loosers from the real stylemerchants.
Hell how doe sone even get to make a new design. The web is so full of broswer bugs. It sucks to even try sometimes. You spend what free time you have and make somethi ng work and then BAMMMM it sucks on IE or the 'supose to be perfec' mozilla.
And what of tools ? Dreamweaver not everyone can afford so they have to use code editors. And what of so called developers, they charge such out ragious fees now. 60$ an hour! Egh. That is more than I make. !
I think there needs to be a CSS WYSIWYG tool, But I am told countless times that is impossible.... :(
Also, there aren't any real "distinct" voices in the blogging world. Nobody has content that is radically different from the content of anyone else.
Ahem.
How did zines get thrown in there? I'm so confused, I think of zines & blogs being so different. I really don't think they are very much the same at all, even zines these days. When I think of zines, I usually think of small, personal publications that are tangible. You can still have the same sort of commentary through zinewriters that you can through blog-writers & the post/comment format, but it's much more personal and not everbody is out there to show themselves off. I suppose some blogs do that, but it really hasn't been that way for me. Blogging, to me, seems to be a fad. I don't think zines have ever been a fad. If they were a fad, they wouldn't be zines anymore. Zines are about doing it yourself, and about creating something out of your own self-expression with your own hands, not about having Moveable Type or WordPress or whatever post your thoughts for the world to see. Zines, I guess, are about self-worth. Blogs, I guess, are about bling.
On the other hand, this broken-record-argument is the exact reason why I don't have a personal site right now (to put my zineography on, write a blog, and show off my portfolio...you know, that whole cookie cutter thing). I can't get anything I like well enough that doesn't just look like everybody else's.
i wish i hadn't started using gallery as my CMS for drawings. combined with mt it works, but people get confused and it's engineer-ugly. I'd like to migrate all my drawings + paintings back to mt, but it's built more for text. even with brad choate plugins.
I did my blog + portfolio by hand for two years and it sucked ass. right now i'm using mt, gallery and a heavily modified 3 column from http://glish.com/css i'd love to roll out a redesign but my cms decisions have hamstringed me.
Pretty much, it's all about first movers, just like in business.
Once you miss the train, you're a look alike, the farther you are from the first, the harder and harder it is to make it to the "top", whatever that top is. CSS already has its champions, the names that you can't forget to say when you talk about this new generation of designers. I remember when the flash layouts started coming out by the thousands looking like that of Eric Jordan or the people of FI or Wireframe. Now it's kind of calmed down and matured.
I've been a spectator for a long time now, I've had my time in some kind of light, and the internet is really a high school popularity contest, not in the sense of dog-eat-dog, but it's all about who you know. Either that, or you're pretty damn good at marketing yourself. There are some that care about status on the web, and then those that don't. Some just want to let their words paint the picture while others use Photoshop. Sure we all want to see something.. different. But JSM's site can be different for somebody viewing styles like Stopdesign's bleached all their life, for example. I've always had my site, and it is who I am on the web.
Some designs that combine a little bit of everything are always being knocked for how they are taking the style of another, wasn't it Cameron Moll that said that "stealing" is a part of learning? It's an evolution, and I think that people are just too new to the web can't get out of that box, and it'll take a really good set of hammers and crowbars to do that.
Now, I guess I'm rambiling. But subjects like this always get me going. o_o;
I guess, it's just kind of sad that every new thing on the web has to work that way, that the doors are closed once the gurus are picked, and there are a lot of people out there with great talent, but it'll never be seen.
I welcome disagreements, because I really dislike saying that this is true.
You didn't mention that you use MSWord as a html/css editor, did you? Oh lord, please no.
I think what's happening is that we're all learning that design is as much about function as form. The two-column blog /content format sticks around because it works pretty darn well. It gets out of the way of what most people are there to do: read, comment, leave.
You can still find quite a few edgy designs on non-blog sites, however -- including CSS-based ones.
Greg (may I call you Greg?) isn't saying that the 2 columns are the problem; he's saying that when those two columns comprise the design in its entirety, even when spiced up with a drop-shadow, that's a problem.
Of course an $n column layout works well, but don't limit yourself to a newspaper layout in a magazine world; design wise or content wise.
There can be more to it than one or two designs dumped out as a template, this is that reminder, and we needed it.
At what point does being fashionable and cutting-edge become more important than the message? When does the redesign cycle end? Once I find something that works well I don't understand the need to keep changing it merely to keep up with the times.
i think much of the discussion can be illuminated by discussion at newspaper/magazine-design sites. there are clear two distinct philosophy of design: 1. design is to bring out the content, 2. design is art in itself. they might not be opposites, but i think in most instances it is hard to accomplish both.
so if information is the point, then blogs are more like newspapers than zines. in which case, simple modulized design is probably the best.
however, i disagree with the sentiment that uniformity like css discourages creativity. restrictions actually help creativity. there's a post on newsdesigner.com about that, for one. i think web people can learn a lot from looking at what is happening / happened in the traditional media.
I will fulfill every stereotype and ignore all poloical commentary to tell you that the "shoewawa" link made my day! Long live stiletto's and small dogs (not to mention well maintained pedicures)!
Thanks, Greg
Greg,
I'll be sure to have my attorney reference this entry in the annulment paperwork.
Cliff
(aka Mr. Olivia Johnson)
It feels good to let off a little steam every now and then, doesn't it? It's just too bad it never gets us anywhere ;)
My bottom lines on this topic:
1. Two columns works for a blog. Keep using it. But, there are plenty of ways to use it creatively.
2. It's absurd to suggest that CSS limits creativity over table-based layouts. CSS is capable of doing everything that tables can do, and more. What probably is true is that the early adopters of CSS were mostly technical folks who were not particularly creative -- the designers came along later.
3. Good blogs, the ones we keep coming back to, are about content. As much passion as I have for design, I still read blogs with great content and crappy designs, and I still ignore boring blogs with great designs.
4. I wish there were still a lot of 'zines around.
5. Relatedly, I wish there were more personal sites that weren't blogs around...every personal site is now a blog. Sometimes I miss the old days (and there's been a lot of them -- I created my first personal site in 1994).
6. The content of blogs is every bit as "all the same" as the design, generally speaking. Thankfully, this blog (airbagindustries.com) doesn't apply -- it's only of the few that keep putting out unique content day in and day out.
Well put Jeff - my site has been through personal site to blog journey (from 96) and might actually be heading back that way soon.
Particularly spot on with point 6 (which is leading me back to point 5!) - ok so I've got a blog, do people REALLY care that I had a crap train journey to work? Unless I'm a really good writer, and then the actual topic is almost secondary (think DOOCE, she could make .. well anything funny I think). Already my posts are tending to longer 'article' length pieces, which is how my site started out (currently lost in the maze of "Words" in my site links.
What say a return to the 'homepage' of old?
P.S. Part of redefining my site content includes actually JOINING conversations like these - I've been following web design since that zeldman bloke zipped past my radar and have been silent too long.
I wish there were more personal sites that weren't blogs around...every personal site is now a blog. Sometimes I miss the old days (and there's been a lot of them -- I created my first personal site in 1994).
That pretty much sums it up.
Yet another heated discussion about how web design has gotten stagnant, repetitive and boring. Methodology – CSS vs. HTML vs. Flash . . . has little to do with it. Design is meant to serve a purpose and it seems that many so-called Designers have no purpose whatsoever. Other than to retrieve a meager pittance for a hurried work.
When a client calls me to get a quote on a "basic" web design to "get their company name on the internet," I don't care if it sits there with the same content for 10 years. It's not my concern. But I do care about the design. If it is not designed to “push” a company's image, product, services, etc. than I have screwed up. Design is the key to usefulness. Move the viewer's eye around the page, push the viewer to respond to questions, move the viewer's attention to pertinent content. That's what design is all about - evoke an emotion, a reaction. Understanding color, typography and space goes along way in grabbing the attention of viewers.
Sure, it can get boring, so what. That's what marketing is all about - repetitive visuals. People, other than web designers, don't give a hoot about the fact that this site may happen to look a lot like another site. They want information, and they want it NOW. And proper design gives you the opportunity to shove it into their head without mercy!
When people complain about the current boring nature of web design, they should also consider that “boring” is in the eye of the beholder – or should that be “in the eye of the intended audience.”
Sure, it can get boring, so what. That's what marketing is all about - repetitive visuals.
Wow, they never taught that in my college advertising/marketing classes. You must have an advanced degree.
You're not being sarcastic are you Greg? Did they teach you that "if something works, use it"?
That's what I mean by being "boring." It's boring to anyone that's in a creative field but that's because it's so overused, repetitive - it's so overused because it works. I wish that all my clients would say "get creative, do something incredibly different and unique, don't worry about the cost, go nuts!" But alas, that seldom happens. So you get creative with what works. That's not always easy to do but can be very rewarding. Hopefully the next client will say, "money is no object, shake it up!"
I don't even know where 'clients' came into this discussion. I specifically said personal website but I will add that any designer worth two-cents will try to come up with good creative no matter the budget. Only the amateurs smorgasbord the level of their talents to clients.
Hey, most books meant to be read look the same for a reason. Same with blogs.
Many people designing personal websites these days are not formerly trained in design. They may be code-savy (so don't use systems like Blogger and opt for more complex tools), but may not know how to create sound design. To learn, they resort to imitating what they like.
Though I oppose the outright, intentional copying of a design (and this definitely happens), I think there is a place for some degree of imitation. It's a way of learning. And hopefully it will open the door to something truly original. In my opinion, what we're seeing is actually the result of widespread self-taught, imitation-based design.
I swear to dog it's the standard crumudeons that have corned the creatives into a single form of presentation. Yeah it's faster to dev and to modify, but certainly has a homoginizing effect.
On the other hand so few people risk designing their own page because they know how silly a homemade page can look compared to a designers or large-budgeted company. So it's safer to look like the rest than be different and look worse.
But I'd still rather see different than same-as-everyone
The current state of css standards support in browsers is about as bad as it can get. Using css for layout (at the moment) is more of a hack than tables ever were, because the standard is incomplete and unsupported. Yes personal web site design is struggling - even a professional designer is hard pressed to place a couple of boxes on a page, and, say, **have the bottom edges line up (gasp)**. The state of affairs is pretty tragic. In hindsight it is because the standards were created by engineers. Not that I could have done any better of course.
I have thought about this a great deal as I am redesigning my "ancient" site (I used Flash and DHTML! What was I thinking?)
Yes, it seems a like every site is cookie cut from the "blog" look, but I think we are just in a transitional phase during which Visual Designers have ventured into and focused on writing-sometimes very creative writing none the less.
The positive side of this trend is that it is expanding our creative arsenals; this is crucial as the role of the "Web Designer" is changing rapidly. We have a lot of responsibility thrown at us and not enough credit (in my opinion, of course). As the Web grows and evolves, we are the ones holding the friggin thing together!
Or pulling it appart - depending on your view of course.
eric - your so right! (did I just say "so"?)
Of late, I have been agonizing over the same issue and found this page today by chance. I could not agree more. When I say I've been agonizing, I am not exaggerating. This issue is absolutely killing me! On the one hand, there are a lot of blogs (this site included), that look mighty tasty. But after surfing from blog to blog for a few hours, one begins to feel uneasy. It's as if there is an unseen force gaining power and forcing conformity in the name of Standards and Clean Code and Content. Like fetuses in jars rolling off of a belt driven platform...
Indeed, where has the art gone!
I must agree with you, great job!
But what is the answer? people want blogs, and "blogs" mean "easily posting, mostly text, easily comments management", for now. you say we should take "blogs" to another step forward or sideways? making it better of differenter? what is more important, making the best of what people want or making a different? making the future of blogs or a new present wich lead to a very unique future?
I'm currently working on a flash-based blog system, that is both, a different view of the "blog" system, and still, the classic stuff of blogs. but it makes me wonder - it could be the wrong thing to develop, and it could be the exact development that the net needs right now... I just can't handle it... oh...
oh well, I'll continue working on this project...
if you want to see it, I'm using it now as a blog about the progress of the blog, quite cool.
http://www.orrkislev.com/flash/mainblog.html
so damn true! great article...
peace.
bv.
I like this, anything to combat stagnation and shake things up is a good thing. I love the photoblog explosion but wanted to do something a bit different, thought of some collaborative collage projects I had worked on in the past and came up with a digital image mutation blog at toegristle.com. It has energized me these past few months working on the same digital collage daily. It's a blog as sketchbook / studio, very fun!
I am consistently amazed at the utter worthlessness of comments in weblogs.
You mean, like the one you just wrote?
The early advocates of Web Standards were, by and large, coders rather than designers. Therefore they tended to produce designs that were functional, but uninspired - and which were then imitated by a legion of followers. This seems to be producing a belated backlash of articles bemoaning that "Web Standards are killing design" (despite the fact that CSS actually gives designers far more options than did the old table-based design methods), whereas a more accurate statement might be that "unimaginative designers are killing design". As a previous poster pointed out, sites like the Zen Garden show that imaginative design and Web Standards are not mutually exclusive.
Moreover, although the leading lights of the design community all seem to be declaring themselves "sick of standards", a quick google for any non design-related subject (whether it be lawnmower maintenance or the mating habits of the orang-utan) is enough to show that Standards-based design has barely gained a foothold on the web as a whole.
Webdesign is dead, but there are still some highlights:
http://www.deaddreamer.com
http://www.snecx.com/core.php
http://www.iamvica.com/
http://www.shanewang.com/
http://www.biorust.com/
...
I just don't see what you see Greg. I still see designers doing incredble things, experimenting and re-envisioning what can be done on the web. I still see new layout ideas being tried, new structures tested. I still see strange and often times amazing interfaces.
I do see a great deal of blog style design, but I'm sure that coorelates with how many people are designing blogs these days. And that lack of uniqueness is more a function of most people opting to use off the shelf software such as WordPress, TextPattern or MT than a slacking in the creativity of web designers. To do something other than a two/three column layout using these engines you really have to both know what you're doing and care about what the outcome is. Most designers are not programmers, no matter how fancy their HTML skills get.
What helps me is seperating mentally what different types of sites are up to. What are blog sites currently doing? Lots of worn looks, tighter grids, less whitespace. What are corporate sites doing? Lots of gradients, more whitespace, better typography and fewer stock-car homepages. What are application developers doing? XHTML/CSS table free designs with gorgeous and colorful 37signalesque palettes, more concise language, fewer features. The flash guys are off in their own little world, but that's always been the case.
Personal sites are far from dead. Web design is far from dead.
This whole thing reminds me of people screaming about pop music killing music. No, music is doing quite well thank you. You just need to turn your radio dial.
Turn your radio dial Greg.
I still see new layout ideas being tried, new structures tested. I still see strange and often times amazing interfaces.
Show me but spare me the Flash crap.
Personal sites are far from dead. Web design is far from dead.
Misquoted and misinterpreted again. If I was British I think this is where I would say, bollocks.
CSS actually gives designers far more options than did the old table-based design methods...
Just for the record, this isn't true. CSS is a smarter, leaner, more flexible and more compatible way to structure page layout. That's all. CSS vs. Tables is a red-herring. One is a better methodology, but that argument is about markup, not design.
A great designer is never frustrated by the tools but rather turns limitations to their advantage. What I think Greg is lamenting—and he's a great example of what he complains about, as he admits—is that personal expression online has become more about the written word and less about an online experience. Blogs have replaced design experiment sites, and photo-blogs have replaced mini-gallery sites. Tools like MT have made it easy to throw up canned, readymade layouts where writing or photography is the content, and where the design remains static. It's not that these tools (or CSS) has made designers less imaginative, rather it's turned them into hobbiest writers and photographers, instead of experimental designers. The danger is you only have to have so many outlets for your creative juice before there's no more juice left.
Tom makes some great points; I see them mirrored in my own path as a designer (c.f. turning into hobbiest writers & photogs). A few reasons why I think this may be so:
- Many got tired of the emphasis on pure visual design at the expense of quality content. I think a desire to get back to basics ("ok, the web is fun, but I'd really like to read/see something interesting") may have contributed to this.
- Cutting-edge, experimental site design is just harder than writing or photography. The barrier to entry is higher, as well as the time required.
- I just got tired of redesigning my site all the time... I just wanted to let the design rest and try something different for a while (i.e. writing & photography, my interests in which predate my design training). I felt like the ROI on my time diminished as the web audience matured.
- Speaking of maturing, I think a demographic shift has occurred - the web is out of its infancy and "experimental" phase; other "fads" have replaced it to a degree (blogging, digital photography, RSS, etc.). People may just experimenting in other areas now.
As powerful as blogging apps and CMSs are, they are not as simple to use as most people would like to believe. Many people are at the mercy of the app's defaults (what they think you want.)
I don't think these designers are being lazy. I think designers see these apps as a way to do more, but don't always have the know-how to make them do exactly what they want.
Isn't this just the pendulum swinging back the other way? Once there were complaints of too many design sites, all eye candy and no content. Now we have blogs galore, more reading than the Library of Congress, updated daily. But not so much design and experimentation.
Most of us can't be good at everything. We design well, or code well, or right... um, write well. Now some people are good at all those things, but I'll bet they can only be good at one thing at a time. It takes focus. So we want them to go quiet and head back to the drawing board for a while, is that it?
We have been glad to read and respond. And it was good design that fostered community in the first place, but now we the designs to diversify and for the community to grow.
One last little comment from me ("last" is industry slang for "many, many"):
The Web was orginally created, or imaged-dreamt-whatever, as a collective space where people could not only find information using hyperlinks, they could CREATE content just as easily.
O.K., CREATE it as well. So let's not pretend we are different than all those we tear down; everyone want to own the sucker, let's all do a mea culpa and get real.
Thank you. I feel much better now.
There are blog engines that allow "Premium" (paid) users to create their own look and feel.
Have you seen some of the stuff? Take a look at some of the "creative" stuff in the links section of Xanga.com to see how bad it can get.
Blogs have a specific function, and a basic design works for most. A "creative" blogger will probably design his own site anyways.
- Frank