SIGIA-L Mail Archives: RE: SIGIA-L: You people are ruining the
RE: SIGIA-L: You people are ruining the Web!
From: Ted Booth (ted_at_method.com)
Date: Fri Jan 26 2001 - 13:13:27 EST
As someone who works with graphic designers-boarding-on-Picasso, I'm
not surprised by this article. Over the entire history of graphic
design the profession has rarely gotten any respect and doesn't at
all in the web-related projects I've been involved in. After all you
too can be a designer! All you need is some drawing software and a
color printer!! Moreover, can you even quantify aesthetic decisions?
Few people recognize the knowledge and expertise that a designer
attains through years of study and practice in typography, letter
forms, visual communication theory, art history, art theory &
criticism, color theory, visual balance and hierarchy ... Most
people I've met through web projects feel fully justified questioning
a visual designer on minute details of their designs. Nothing is off
limits when critiquing a designers work because there is few people
recognize that the designer has a specialized knowledge. The only way
to protect your credibility as a designer is through sheer
personality and elitism.
Ask yourself, do you consider graphic design a profession on the
level with IA? If so you'll have to recognize, design has been around
a whole lot longer than this nacent IA professional aspiration. Or do
you think of design as an economic alternative for
wanna-be-fine-artists who want to afford that $3 latte?
Design has it's own internal perpetual argument about 'is design
art?' 'is art design?' 'are they different'. It's never resolved but
generally there is seen to be a major difference between the two
practices. The main one being that art is about personal expression
and design is about solving problems for other people, about
communicating and about enabling.
In interface design, IAs cross a line with designers when they seek
to deliver a specification that is basically a coloring book and
don't allow for an interplay between the visual design of an
interface and the navigation structure and page layout/content
structuring. IMHO.
--
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Ted Booth
415.901.6353 Direct
415.901.6310 Fax
ted_at_method.com
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Method
512 2nd Street, 4th Floor
San Francisco, CA 94107
www.method.com
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