I’ve thought for many years that web design emerged from an awkward pairing of software design and print/magazine design. Practitioners have certainly moved it along but it still boggles my mind how badly some agencies screw up web design, and how some “award winning” designs fail in so many real world ways.
Anyway, I don’t have an answer but I can tell you this article Understanding Web Design from my old friend Jeffrey Zeldman is probably the smartest thing I’ve read on the topic of web design in the last couple of years.
A couple of gems:
Architecture (the kind that uses steel and glass and stone) is also an apt comparison—or at least, more apt than poster design. The architect creates planes and grids that facilitate the dynamic behavior of people. Having designed, the architect relinquishes control. Over time, the people who use the building bring out and add to the meaning of the architect’s design.
Web design is the creation of digital environments that facilitate and encourage human activity; reflect or adapt to individual voices and content; and change gracefully over time while always retaining their identity.
and on a related note Joshua Porter on “do canonical web designs exist”
Both of these wonderful articles were lifted from the always fun and memorable Daringfireball.net
“Web design is the creation of digital environments that facilitate and encourage human activity.”
I wish more websites did that. There seems to be a lot of sacrifice in terms of usability in favor of design. I think a lot of website designers/marketing boffins forget that the website is there to encourage interaction with users - regardless of the specific objectives of the website.
I’d love to see “award winning design” not simply focusing on the outer shell of a website - the foundations are what counts, because if they’re weak then the website is nothing more than a pretty picture.
The fact that the web design has to establish an identity and retain it while gracefully changing is so very much apt here. I believe the conflict and the challenge lies in managing the change while satisfying the internal and external agents. To take some of the attributes that Mr. Zeldman mentioned, the challenge is to create pages that are distinctive and quietly but unmistakably engaging.