Precisely. Either you are an artist, or you are not. Creativity cannot be taught in schools or books, it can only be developed.
"Engineering cannot be perfect unless it is perfect aesthetically" - Ettiore Bugatti.
Everything in this world must be designed. Nothing just "happens."
Programmers make poor designers. Designers make poor programmers.
The best websites are designed first with the creative vision and talents of a graphic/web/UI designer, and then programmed by an equally talented coder. Neither should try and do each other's job.
But perhaps the single most important aspect a good web developer should posess is an understanding of consumer culture.
The visitors to all these websites we are building are not artists, designers, or programmers themselves. They no not look at your source code nor do they really care how it works.
The only things they are concerned with is, in order of priority:
1. What does it look like.
2. Does it work.
3. Does it tell me what I came for.
You programmers should face it - we live in a visual society. You're kidding yourselves if you think the design is not important. It is in fact the ONLY thing that really matters. Consider the following examples of the value that design has in our lives:
Better yet, tell me one aspect of your life that hasn't been influenced by Design?
"It is no exaggeration to say that designers are engaged in nothing less than the manufacture of contemporary reality. Today, we live and breath design. Few of the experiences we value at home, at leisure, in the city or the mall are free of its alchemical touch. We have absorbed design so deeply into ourselves that we no longer recognize the myriad ways in which it prompts, cajoles, disturbs, and excites us. It's completely natural. It's just the way things are.
We imagine that we engage directly with the "content" of the magazine, the TV commercial, the pasta sauce, or perfume (or website), but the content is always mediated by design and it's design that helps direct how we perceive it and how it makes us feel. The brand-meisters and marketing gurus understand this only too well. The product may be little different in real terms from its rivals. What seduces us is its "image." This image reaches us first as a visual entity - shape, color, picture, type. But if it's to work its effect on us it must become an idea:
Slashdot Mirror
Very much so true. Show me a website you've done. In ten seconds I can tell you if you have "it" or not.
I don't need to know anything about web, design, programming or anything at all for that matter.
All I need to know is if I like it.
Design cannot be taught in a book. Sure you can learn from it, and it can be studied infinitely, but a true artist is born, not made.
Design and "art" is like quality. You know it when you see it, but it is hard if not impossible to define or quantify.
Do artists get better with practice? Absolutely. But no one goes into art school without talent and emerges with it.
Precisely. Either you are an artist, or you are not. Creativity cannot be taught in schools or books, it can only be developed.
"Engineering cannot be perfect unless it is perfect aesthetically" - Ettiore Bugatti.
Everything in this world must be designed. Nothing just "happens."
Programmers make poor designers. Designers make poor programmers.
The best websites are designed first with the creative vision and talents of a graphic/web/UI designer, and then programmed by an equally talented coder. Neither should try and do each other's job.
But perhaps the single most important aspect a good web developer should posess is an understanding of consumer culture.
The visitors to all these websites we are building are not artists, designers, or programmers themselves. They no not look at your source code nor do they really care how it works.
The only things they are concerned with is, in order of priority:
1. What does it look like.
2. Does it work.
3. Does it tell me what I came for.
You programmers should face it - we live in a visual society. You're kidding yourselves if you think the design is not important. It is in fact the ONLY thing that really matters. Consider the following examples of the value that design has in our lives:
1. Automobiles.
2. Music.
3. Architecture.
4. Technology - Computers, Operating Systems, Cell Phones, etc.
Better yet, tell me one aspect of your life that hasn't been influenced by Design?
"It is no exaggeration to say that designers are engaged in nothing less than the manufacture of contemporary reality. Today, we live and breath design. Few of the experiences we value at home, at leisure, in the city or the mall are free of its alchemical touch. We have absorbed design so deeply into ourselves that we no longer recognize the myriad ways in which it prompts, cajoles, disturbs, and excites us. It's completely natural. It's just the way things are.
We imagine that we engage directly with the "content" of the magazine, the TV commercial, the pasta sauce, or perfume (or website), but the content is always mediated by design and it's design that helps direct how we perceive it and how it makes us feel. The brand-meisters and marketing gurus understand this only too well. The product may be little different in real terms from its rivals. What seduces us is its "image." This image reaches us first as a visual entity - shape, color, picture, type. But if it's to work its effect on us it must become an idea:
NIKE!
This is the tremendous power of design.