SiteCrafting Blah Blah Blog
Feb. 15, 2007 at 4:15pm
Design is Not Art
and neither is your website
When I was back in school, I would often tell people how my combined Art and Computer Science majors did not mean that I was doing graphic design, web design, or any other kind of mix of computers and art. To them, it was obvious that I would combine two usually separate majors into the usual combination. To me, however, art and computer science are totally separate. The purpose of art is in my mind to either 1) evoke an emotional response in your viewer or 2) create something beautiful. Computers are a communication medium, and the purpose of communication is to deliver information.
You can see examples of this every day - in websites of art schools that are impossible to divine information out of, or in strictly information websites that have no graphical content whatsoever. In the case of these two ideas, the graphic-less sites win out in function and usability, but the art school sites look better. The problem is, that the art school sites are impossible to use, and so it doesn't matter how good they look. The clear winner here is the plain, yet content centric site. And the lesson to learn is that content is king, and communicating that information well and effectively is the key to building a good website.
For practical examples, let's take a look at two actual websites, craigslist.org and Seattle's School of Visual Concepts. Craigslist is a well known classified ads site, and very successful. They have thousands of posts everyday, and get all that information across to the users in a clear and effective means. But the site looks terrible. Even so, people all over the world use craigslist to buy everything from old couches to hot tubs to fill dirt. Craigslist works because the information is easy to find, and readily available.
SVC, on the other hand, is a piece of digital art. It's got a downhome/street grunge design that's really appealing. When I first saw this site, I loved it. But today, I think differently of it. While it's not the worst site I've ever seen, it's pretty close to the worst. Trying to find any kind of useful information on the site is futile, because all the text looks the same, and the busy-ness of the design distracts from the information. Try looking class information from the homepage. The class schedule isn't too hard to find, but once you're there, finding information about a specific class, say something in Advertising is terribly difficult. It's hard to find the Advertising category in the first place because the text that denotes "advertising" is really small, has low contrast, and on top of that, isn't actually text - it's an image.
Once you've found the class you are looking for, try clicking on the class name to get more information. You'll see a popup window that barely matches the rest of the site design. You can't scroll (at least, not on a Mac or with Firefox) down if the information is too long to fit in their pre-defined window, and if you've got an extension like FireBug on, you'll see that there's a continuous Javascript error.
Once that window is open, click on the Course Outline link on top. I think that's supposed to open in a new window (how many windows, exactly, does this site want me to have?) but it opens in a tab that I can't read because I can't scroll the popup window. I'd expect more from a school that teaches web design classes, but I can't be too surprised because their intro course covers such topics as "Frames – Advantages, disadvantages, how to create" and "HTML tables and how they can be used to create interesting layouts". Personally, I'd never want to hire or work with anyone that learned how to make websites from this school. They're only about 10 years behind current web technology.
The moral of this story is that having a good design does not mean that you will have a good website, but taking time to insure that your content is easy to access goes a long way to establishing a great site. And to anyone at SVC - I didn't intent to be mean to you site; I love how it looks. But seriously, redo it. You can do better. I'd even manage the project in exchange for free tuition.
Most people confuse design with art because it's visual, but design is more than just ink on a page or pixels on a screen. Design, or at least good design, is about the communication of information. Graphic design is not exempt from this. Many schools, including PLU, teach students how to use Photoshop or Illustrator to make pretty pictures, and largely those schools succeed. That's not design. What they are teaching is best described as digital art. Good design is something that few classes will teach you, and fewer people actually learn.
That's partly why good designers are hard to find. To be a good designer, you have to have obvious eye for what looks good and what doesn't. You have to be able to communicate the important information to people using the website, and you also have to be able to communicate well with the people that are hiring you to design the site, and also the people that build the site. It's very frustrating when the designer gets second guessed by clients or users simply because said client or user has delusions of grandeur.
At the end of the day, what makes websites successful? Good content, and information that is easy to access. Pretty images are not useless, but they can't be used in place of good information. But as sites like craigslist show, you can have an ugly design and still have a great website. All the best websites are the best because they have good functionality, information, and content. But it helps if your site looks good, too; it's just not vital.
Posted in Critiques, Deep Thoughts, Design by Dave Poole
Comments (4)
Joe says:
I think there's a balance that needs to be struck. At times a good graphic design can actually aid in the transmission of information. I know that plenty of people use Craig's List to great effect. I, however, can't stand it. I can't navigate around the screen to find what I'm looking for, because it's all a jumbled mess. A website that's too arty can have the same trouble of too much jumble.
I do think some sites should have that level of art to them. I've seen some great looking websites for movies and the like which focus more on the immersive visual feel. For those, as long as they have a footer at the bottom with the rating and the release date, pretty much anything goes.
I guess it all comes down to the goal of a site. To me it seems that the home page of a school, even an art school, is under some obligation to communicate information efficiently. A school is, after all, a business, and it seems likely that the less information customers and students are able to access, the less success the business is going to have.
1 | Feb. 15, 2007 at 5:04pm
I disagree. Websites, Architecture, business cards, pizza boxes, can all be art. You said "the purpose of communication is to deliver information," but emotions are information. Beauty is information. The feeling of security or love, or inspiration, or hunger, these are all valuable messages that search engine-optimized, keyword-heavy, html text cannot deliver. This is where art comes in. There is a very narrow place where Form, and Function overlap, where both can live happily together. This is design. Design can be both Art and Effective Communication. I agree that some websites get too fussy, but that is not an example of the failure of art to communicate effectively, it's simply the failure of the artist to actually achieve "design." It's the selfish, self-serving side of art. On the other hand "the plain, yet content centric site" is not the winner. It's like reading a story in a monotone voice. You lose the real meaning, that must be laden with emotion. Content can be just as overrated as art can be. No one wants to read endless amounts of information unless it is tastefully presented. Unless of course one is designing a website for government. Then you're right on.
Ryan
2 | Left by Ryan | Feb. 15, 2007 at 6:26pm
Brian says:
Good points all...I believe that it all boils down for me to the purpose of the site. In many cases, a website needs to portray more emotion than others, sites like builder websites that need to sell a lifestyle, etc. need to portray more emotion than sites designed for the purpose of delivering relevant information quickly. (e.g. google)
This is not to say that information sites should be boring, just that their purpose is different. This does not mean they get a pass on looking good, it just means I'm not identifying emotionally with the results of my latest Google query.
3 | Feb. 15, 2007 at 6:41pm
Ken says:
Another point to always consider is the target audience. Some people are visual and will look for an image that links to what they want, some people are looking for specific content, some people are browsers and like to click categories and/or hover over drop-down menus just to see what's there.
For example, craigslist would be good for people who are already used to trolling the classified ads. I imagine the same people who pickup the Little Nickel, http://www.littlenickel.com, every Thursday would enjoy using craigslist.
The key is to know your audience.
For me, I'm content driven. When I go to a web site, I already know what I'm looking for. My favorite thing to do is searching the text on the page using firefox's progressive search. I like pressing control + f ( or apple + f ), typing in some text and getting to the information or link I'm looking for and if I get the beeping noise while typing, time to move on to the next page in my google search.
Also, I would like to point out that when a customer approaches SiteCrafting to develop a website for them, they are asked to fill out a survey, which covers functionality, purpose, and audience. Then the design is based upon that survey and personal meetings with the client.
4 | Feb. 16, 2007 at 9:17am