We’re asked to review on the following criteria:

• Is the article well-written?
• Is the article applicable?
• Are arguments in the article valid and sound?
• How is information in the article applicable to Web designers?
• How can we interpret the article’s information with respect to visual design, usability, Web standards, etc?

To the first three questions: YES, YES, and YES! Here’s a seven year old article that is still perfectly applicable to web designers and the clients they serve today.

In fact I’m currently encouraging my clients to get more, not less, content on their pages, both so that search engine spiders are more likely to find them, and so that the folks who find them will find what they’re looking for. More often than not, they’re looking for information, not for an immediate purchase, and we want them to stay on the site, remember it, and use our information to make a good purchase decision.

The Bottom-Up development Cameron Moll mentions is just another way of explaining what we were taught to do in this class: create the content first and then use the home page to create logical, easy-to-use paths to that content. “Determine the final pages on which your visitors should land, and emphasize those pages on your homepage.” I remember hearing Cameron speak on Good vs Great design. Well, this article isn’t just good, it’s great, because it’s so brilliant and simple. I love it.

As far as web standards go, this thinking applies well here, too. After, if users can’t get at the content, it doesn’t matter how “flashy” the home page might be.

While the particular design suggested for his example, Salisbury, doesn’t look trendy by todays standards, that was SEVEN years ago. The principles still apply perfectly, and many of the features he’d suggested are in fact being used on Salisbury’s site today with an updated look and feel.

Personally speaking, I was glad to read this today; it reinforces exactly what I’ve been trying to do with my clients. This is a classic article for the ages.

I was looking for fun CSS tricks for my DGM 2740 class and happened across this one where essentially you just overlay your header with a semi-transparent .png.

But hey: forget gradients. Who doesn’t NEED some awesome half-toned out text, reminiscent of comic books or old 7-up cans? Let’s see how it looks. Starting with this halftone dot pattern I generated in photoshop:

Dots

Now I need a crazy header.

How’s this?

Put it all together, and what do you get?

Whoah Baby!

Would I use this every day? Probably not, but the possibilities are way out there, and it was fun giving it a try!

1) I’ve learned to speak up
In spite of the fact that my blog here mainly exists because of my web design endeavors, it had never occurred to me to blog ABOUT web design. I didn’t think I had anything more to say than what was already out there being said better by, well, better designers. So I’d post my course-required blog entries – like this one, incidentally — grit my teeth, and pray I wouldn’t come off as pretentious. Yet to my surprise, some people actually appreciated the articles. Even if they weren’t new concepts, they helped someone. So for all the years I’ve spent enjoying other people’s knowledge, it’s nice to know I’m still able to contribute somehow, and I plan to do it more often if I can.

2) I’ve learned to cut the crap
Not that I’m very good at it yet, but I will be. I’m a fan of minimalist design; who knew I’d become a fan of minimalist content as well? Krug’s Third Law of Usability says “Get rid of half the words on each page, then get rid of half of what’s left.” Fin.

3) Planning time is time well spent
Sometimes the planning stage seems to drag on too long. Now I’m realizing I probably don’t spend enough time in planning. Things seem to go so smoothly when the plan is very well thought out. Incidentally I’ve learned also just how badly things can go when the plan isn’t concrete. Scope creep is ugly. Miscommunication: also very ugly. Ugliest of all is the project that truly disappoints the client and alienates their audience. But all of that wasting of time and money can be avoided with proper planning, something and I’ll be putting much more effort into it this year.

There are many other little things I learned, but to me, these seem like they’ll make the most impact. I’ll have to come back and visit this article with other things I’ve learned, but for Mr. Stein, thanks for teaching me these concepts that will apply well anywhere I go.

“Lack of Flash in the iPad (and before that, in the iPhone) is a win for accessible, standards-based design. Not because Flash is bad, but because the increasing popularity of devices that don’t support Flash is going to force recalcitrant web developers to build the semantic HTML layer first.”

When Apple and Adobe fight, standards win. Sing that now to the tune of Particle Man by They Might Be Giants (and forget, like I did, about that hater Triangle Man always winning everything). Like the ubiquitous Particle Man, standards -should- be everywhere. Thanks to iPad, standards may finally begin to find the priority they should have had with every designer all along.

Developers will still use Flash, but they’ll have to use standards for their foundation. Without meaningful markup, a Flash site is just a castle in the clouds. Not everyone is capable of finding their way there.

Apple didn’t create this problem. Flash-only sites have been alienating audiences for more than a decade now. iPad will simply increase the number affected, and in the process will hopefully inspire these developers to come down to earth. Once their site does its job regardless of platform particulars, they can build from there as much as they’d like. Getting there might be a rough ride for the plugin-centric, but in the end the web just might be be a more stable place, and that benefits everyone.

This week we had two articles to choose from. I’m opting to respond to the one that is readily available online: “10 best-designed websites in the world” by Ben Hunt. I question his choice of titles. Reading through his list, it seems the post focuses much less on design than it does on trends.

As in any list of trendy sites, his top pick is Apple.com, of course. Now don’t get me wrong, everyone loves apple.com, but I am not sure about choosing it as the best designed site in the world. But Apple is Trendy with a capital T.

Remember Stacey from Junior High? Maybe I have her name wrong, but surely she went to school with you: she’d walk into class with a new outfit on Monday, and by Friday several other students were wearing the same thing. Within six months, you’d more or less be beat up for not dressing like her; and by the time you get the outfit, they’re beating you up for not wearing the next big thing.

Apple is the new Stacey in so many ways: ask any software author about the initiation to the iPhone App club and you’ll see a strong comparison. But I’ll focus on the wardrobe analogy. Stacey might indeed look fabulous, but isn’t calling it the best outfit ever going a bit overboard when everyone knows she’ll abandon her look as soon as the band geeks start wearing it?

Apple is the same way. They really do define trends on the web, but how well designed can it be when they change it so soon? I can’t say as I blame them, either, what with all the copycats out there, but I hesitate to list this design among the best of the best when they aren’t even using it anymore. For the life of me I can’t find a single page on their site that looks anything like the screenshot he’d grabbed. It’s not just the content, either. The navigation is completely different. I did find this, though, courtesy of the WayBack machine at webarchive.org:

Screenshot of Apple.com in 1997

You don’t see many sites looking like that anymore, right? Was it horrible design on Apple’s part, or did it simply go out of style?

Apple has changed their look and feel several times through the years, opting for a simpler layout in 1998, then adding tabs across the top and a news ticker that later went away. I had a great time digging through the archives, but I never found anything that looked like the screenshot Mr. Hunt provided. The layout has apparently been dramatically changed again since then, from the site with the cute icons and several boxes of information around the page, to this:

A screenshot of Apple's Site circa Jan. 2010

So now we have a few plain tabs across the top and a full-screen image with a brief description of the page. Users scroll down for some below-the-fold content. A glance back at his top ten list tells me Mr. Hunt would approve of that trend as well.

Tabs along the top, full screen image with summary, scroll for content.. wait a second!

The same thing happens with websites trends, and similar messages apply. When I’m evaluating clients, I like to try to figure out where they stand when it comes to web trendiness. Well-funded clients are happy to pay for a team of designers to give them a cutting edge look. Others are happy to pay, and re-pay, to ride each trend as it comes along. Remember the message? “We are successful enough that we can afford to keep up with the ever-changing trends!” — if that’s really what they want, I as a designer am happy to help them with their goals!

Some are happy to utilize whatever is already functional and cheap. Some balk at designers rates; bear their expectations in mind when giving them a quote. Personally, I’m the type that would rather find a neat and functional look of my own so I can stick with it for years as style takes a back-seat to content. None of these are wrong; use what fits your client best.

But real design work… the type Apple pays the big money for… is much less a question of which trend to follow, and more a matter of rational thought and strategy with style sprinkled in as a finishing touch. This makes judging a top ten list much more complicated, because how are we to know what a company’s goals are and what limitations they must work within? How are we to know whether their intentions are being carried out successfully? Design doesn’t start with a template or with inspiration from a trendier-than-thou model. It is learning what the client wishes to communicate, and finding the best way to do so.