The Daily Lifeweb design and personal blog by Evan Skuthorpe

Web Design isn’t art!

Web Design is communication. Visual, aesthetics, layout, structure and flow all play a huge part in conveying a message to a user. In the cut throat world of the web, a user will take only moments to judge and take action on your site. If you get it wrong, a few scrolls down is the most it takes before they hit backspace and head out to google. If you get it right, your users will read on and click through to what they’re after. They’ll do this because you will have presented to them what it is you do or sell and rant about.

A web sites content doesn’t all need to be presented above the fold. The fold is a myth. A myth propergated by no less than marketers. People who have only a faint understanding of design, human interaction and web site usability. People who hear buzz words and carry them around like gospel. A web site only needs to convey an aesthetic that invokes a sense of interest, a sense that they can easily find what they want. A clear interface, a nice font perhaps, healthy white space, beautiful imagery… All these go some way to keeping a user on your site.

As with other forms and mediums of design; posters, signs, maps, book covers, stickers to name but a few, communication is at the very core. How many time have I been on the tube, sitting, reading the posters on the tube carriage walls and thought, I can’t read that message under the tampon, the strap line next to the deodorant bottle or the core body of copy that’s next to the bottle of vitamins. This is poor design.

Why? Because they’re targeting an audience on a tube carriage and I can’t read it only feet away. Often the font is too small or perhaps the copy is white sitting on a bright yellow background. This is poor design regardless of how ‘nice’ the artwork might be.

Web Design is communication.

What about that arty web site about graphic art you like? Well sure, there are sites out there that are purely made to be a peice of art in themselves, but they still have a message to get accross. Art isn’t communication, it’s a form of expression. A web site is the communication medium of that art. Just as a gallery or canvas is in a traditional sense.

Web Design is architecture coming soon…