Learning Web Design

July 23, 2003 | 7 Comments

This one goes out to graphic design schools everywhere. It’s time to either get it right, or seperate traditional graphic design from Web design for good and all.

Lately I’ve had the unique opportunity to work on several freelance projects where I’m doing all the development and the design is someone else’s. I’ve had the chance to work with some talented designers who’s experience with the Web, to my surprise, has been very limited. I’ve said before, graphic design and Web design are two totally different things.

Unfortunately I don’t think they are often taught that way. For some reason, probably a good one in general terms, a staple of a graphic design education is a bit about the Web. I don’t have much of a problem with that (although why they are always lumped together baffles me), my problem is they don’t teach enough and what they do teach seems way off base, out of date or just plain wrong. You learn just enough to think you know what you’re doing and get you in trouble.

I have had some formal graphic design education that I have been able to put to good use on the Web. In fact I took on that education as a supplement for my Web skills. While they aren’t the same, graphic design and Web design are related and carry many similar themes and skill sets. However, learning graphic design all buy itself does not prepare you to be a successful Web designer. Just as learning Web design doesn’t prepare you to be a successful print designer.

A successful print designer understands paper and the printing process, usually in great detail, if not they at least know how to talk to a printer. So it goes with the Web. If there was nothing else I wish every graphic designer had a grasp of the basics and some of the larger issues dealt with on the Web.

The biggest issues: Context and Form Follows Function

The largest problem I’ve found working with traditional graphic designers is that of context, and the fact that, on the Web form should usually follow function. Not the other way around. This is a larger issue in communicating via the Web that stretches over many disciplines, writing and graphic design being those that come to the front of my mind. On the Web you have to think differently.

On the Web it’s very hard to achieve the same context that is the basis of many traditional graphic design techniques. This is a fact that many graphic designers either don’t know or are unwilling to concede to. If there is one thing that could be taught to everyone working on Web sites, this is it.

Some points to consider:

• With print you can control what a person sees absolutely.
• Users and readers are impatient and are more than happy to look elsewhere if you can’t provide what they need.
• Users ultimately control their own experience.
• What they can’t control they can and will avoid.
• Web sites aren’t simply looked at — they are interacted with.

A Web designer needs to realize that at the end of the day their work is not only open to interpretation and opinion, it can be changed, modified, disabled or easily ignored.

This will happen no matter how hard you try to control a users experience. Imagine if you designed a print ad for a magazine and as soon as someone came across it they took out a sharpie and drew all over it — then read or looked at it — that’s kind of like what the Web can do to your designs.

The function of a Web site or application should almost always trump it’s look and feel. The good news is that if you understand that and are willing to compromise and find a middle ground, that is often not to hard a thing to reconcile. It seems that this simple tenet of the Web is often overlooked by traditionally trained graphic designers.

To be a successful Web designer you have to take the time to learn about the Web. Learn how people use it, how coders code it, how best to write for it. All of that. It might sound hard but you can’t really succeed on the Web with graphic design skills alone. A good Web designer needs to have a wide skill set, graphic design being part of that, and a willingness to continue learning all the time.

Filed under: Web Design