When design becomes more important than content.
Reflections February 23, 2008
Only a few days ago I stumbled across The Graphic Mac » Don’t design a dead-end Web site - it’s all about the content which I found an interesting subject.
The article started out with:
When I look at a lot of Web sites these days, two things jumps out at me. First, many sites look absolutely stunning. Beautiful mastheads, delicious AJAX everywhere, blinky, swooshing Flash and Web 2.0-style graphics adorn tons of Web sites. Competing with these gorgeous Web sites requires not only great graphic design skills, but you’ve got to be a coding genius as well.
The second thing that I notice right away is that many of these sites contain little if any useful, informative content.
My own, spontaneous answer then had been to say:
Have been on both sides.
For this reason I understand both viewpoints. I feel that, as with many things, there are different reasons why somebody wants to communicate on the web: some have written content but others sell visuals like photos or graphics or even… emotion.
For myself, I have very specific reasons to go onto the web (next to working of course) : I am looking for information and then I want as little add-on as possible and definitely no slowing down due to flash movies which can’t get skipped or too many little gifs which make it impossible to find the relevant information.
But then there is the complete other side, and I go for inspiration; or I go to just… experience and then I am open to something completely time consuming, mind altering, weird, slow, illogic… because then I am processing the data I come across completely different.
From my standpoint, when I do a website for a client, it is a service I render and my job is to help the client formulate and be clear in what his message to the audience actually is and then to translate this message into something visually interesting and appealing with logic and a clear site structure behind it and something with which the client - and his clients - can be happy. In an ideal scene I am happy with it all too :-)
Now, only a few days later I realized that I was in a situation where I have to say that sometimes design can become more important than content. Specifically : this site, this blog on design.
I was in the business of reaching out to people and make them aware of mStudiosTALK and I found myself constantly backing off. On Tuesday I got to the point that I could no longer continue on the path before fixing the problem. I was outputting content, content, content on my blog in regards to my subject, design, but was still using somebody else’s WordPress theme because I was waiting on a custom made one. From the beginning I was a bit uncomfortable with this arrangement, but due to time pressure and no free minute, I had been going down this path for 3 weeks.
How can I preach design without even having my own? This just did not ring right with me. My site not only communicates words but also visuals and thus it has to encompass both, I feel that the visuals carry the content. So here you have it: in this situation design indeed has become more important than content.
Hope you all like my new design!