I have been following this thread and this is a wonderful answer. Nancy Johnson
-----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Mkear Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2004 9:45 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [WSG] Design Philosophy It seems to me that too many people confuse "Design" with "artwork" or "colours, pictures - the pretty stuff". But design goes a lot further than that. It's to do with "DOES IT DO THE JOB IT'S FOR?". A designer has to take account of the medium he's designing for. A designer for a magazine has to think in terms or 4 or 6 colour printing presses, A4 paper size, space for headers, page numbers, gutter margins, all that stuff. A designer of home electrical appliances has to think in terms of safety, fashion look, easy use for all people including children, people with disabilities, colours dictated by the capabilities of the manufacturing factory regarding powder coating or enamel, or plastics etc etc. A designer of warships has to think in terms of huge bits of steel, predominantly grey/green colouring, allowing for battle damage but still keeping the ship functioning etc. And a web designer doesn't have those parameters to work with. A web designer has to design with colours that may vary from user to user, font sizes (and therefore page layout) that differs from user to user, little control over the browser the user's going to use now or in the future, varying font sets. If a designer comes up with a pretty-looking design that requires every browser to produce exactly the same look on a screen, and doesn't have a way (i.e. CSS hacks etc) to make that happen in every browser, then it's a poor design, no matter what it looks like because it's too inflexible. I'd suggest that such a designer is probably still thinking like a magazine designer and isnt thinking in the medium he's working with yet. One of the parameters of the medium a web designer has to learn to work with is that the output is FLEXIBLE. If the design isn't flexible it's a poor design. As an example (obvious perhaps but it will illustrate the point): If the design requires a particular font to be installed then it's a poor design. The design should allow for a variety of fonts. A good design will look different, but acceptable if the font displayed is one of a range of fonts. Similarly so with all the other parameters. If the design requires a colour to be rendered in precisely the same way on all users' machines, it's a poor design, because you have no control over users' monitors, and how well they're maintained. Designers who think they just handle the way a site looks aren't doing all their job. It's conceivable you could have a gorgeous looking site that is poorly designed because it doesn't work properly in the browsers of the target market. Or it looks fantastic but its difficult to find the information you're looking for. It's also conceivable that a very well designed site might be very boring to look at but functions very well indeed. In other words, if you're a "web designer", and you think that is roughly the same as "graphic artist" you're a long way short of the mark. Cheers Mike Kear Windsor, NSW, Australia AFP Webworks http://afpwebworks.com ________________________________________________ Message sent using UebiMiau 2.7.2 ***************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help ***************************************************** ***************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help *****************************************************
