4: My thoughts on web design

It’s actually quite simple and when I thought about it last night it went on and on in my head for what seemed like forever. That probably has something to do with me just having been angry or something. You’ll probably also notice the lack of updates here (if you’re still one of those folks who come by my web sites), for that I’m sorry. I’ve no excuses. Although this rant might clear some of that up. Hopefully. 1 – I don’t think they’re have been many new websites that’ve gone up since the Thinking For A Living site, that are wildly different from each other (problem the first). 2 – Actually those are all the points I have. Just one.

I apologize for this being a big angry rant. It wasn’t planned out. This is more of a drunk rambling. Without the drunk.

So let’s see, what new sites have come out that are fantastically different. Well everything that The Antenna Research Facility (Ben Wise) creates is freaking amazing. The new site for Build is great. Everyone Forever got a facelift… err… rather got some behind the scenes love. Studio Output got a new website that made me a real solid believer in what you can do with WordPress (built by Antenna, Tom Muller @ Kleber, Studio Output). Build & Antenna worked together on a few really stunning websites. So …yes… there have been websites that can be talked about, perhaps I’ll go back and talk about some of those sites, or do a whole post about why I love Ben. And Kleber. And Studio Output. And Build. And Suprb. Yeah, Suprb dropped a new site for David Bailey, who used to work at tDR. Andreas also relaunched his media sharing service Dropular. So yes, lots of stuff happened and I’ve just been neglectful. Moving on.

Some of you probably didn’t notice any of these releases because most of the big fancy pants web design blogs didn’t mention any of these sites. Which is rather upsetting. These are the guys who are pushing what can be done with nothing more than HTML, CSS, and Javascript (you know, the internet Apple wants, the internet that all the web design celebrities want). Every site Antenna builds should be immediately and instantaneously posted to every web gallery in existence. But nope. We’re just gonna see a two column WordPress blog that has content going down the left hand side and some advertisements going down the right hand side. Everything will have a grainy look. Buttons will be round and slightly textured. Websites are trying to look like letterpress objects these days. Not gonna lie, I’ve used the grain texture and letterpress look recently. Not for a blog or portfolio though. Not that that makes it any better. Fuck that. The best the web has to offer is a few blog style wordpress templates? I don’t think so (that’s pretty much directed to Smashing, Web Designer Depot, Abduzeedo and the rest of their inbred siblings). Now, I’m not ragging on specific authors. I’ve talked to some of the folks who write for those blogs and they’re all quite pleasant people. I just hate that all these top ten web design lists are basically modified versions of the default wordpress theme. With a fancy illustrated header and a fancy illustrated footer with all sorts of flourishes and swirls and flowers and colour splashes.

That’s my first big issue with web design. There’s a small group of self important people who seem to speak louder than the really important people. Probably an ego thing. Or maybe it’s a lack of confidence thing. And if you big up your 2 column blog layout with and use acronyms like CSS3 or HTML5 you’re instantly better than everyone else. Guess what I know HTML5 and CSS3 as well. You know why? Because it’s part of my job and it’s not much different than what I’ve been doing for the last few years already.

Speaking of HTML5, it’s not just the video tag. And that tag isn’t really all that impressive. You read Youtube’s view on it right? It’s only just okay. Actually I’ve come to hate video served through the video tag. There’s no buffering. I have yet to see a video where the audio is synced properly. Have you paid any attention to how much RAM it burns up. I mean, Firefox is already a RAM whore and trying to load in a HD video pretty much kills the browser. Chrome can handle it pretty okay RAM wise. Safari, well, I hate Safari. *note: you notice now in Safari 5 that every time a tab crashes it blames it on Flash? Even if there’s no Flash on the page. Apple can go… Anyway, if you’re using the video tag you may also want to look at your server logs. And see how much bandwidth it’s burning up everytime a user has to download a full video. Yeah, that’s a bit problematic when you can’t do any streaming right?

ROUNDED CORNER’S YEAH!! ‘nuf said on CSS3. I actually enjoy some of the new CSS attributes. It makes life easier. Actually actually, I’ve no issue with HTML5, or CSS3. Provided you’re using it correctly. I welcome change.

Moving on, Apple vs. Adobe kept on battling. I’m still on Adobe’s side (I’ll get to that in a minute). I still love my iMac. I’ll most likely get the iPhone 4 when Apple is so gracious as to allow Canada to have units. If you follow me on Twitter you probably noticed all the Apple hate I’ve been sharing regarding the antenna problems. As well as all the closed wall development and content censoring that they do. I still respect Apple’s design sense. That’s all they’ve got left for me. Anyway, on why I still like Flash. When I decided I wanted to build websites it was because of two websites. The first was A Is For Apple by David Clark, Rob Whynot, Ron Gervais and Randy Knott. The second site was the website that Hi-ReS! made for Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem For A Dream. Those two websites blew my mind away with what could be done on the web. Everything else became boring. I found similar work being posted early on by Netdiver, Newstoday (QBN), Dreamless, etc. Hi-ReS! kept releasing work that was awesome. A few years back I discovered THA Ltd. from the Uniqlo work. And I’ve been to every FITC event since the first. Actually I missed FITC 2007 or 2008. I can’t remember. I have yet to come across a web experience made in HTML, CSS and Javascript that has had the emotional impact that those early websites had on me. That is why I still love Flash.

Quickly changing topics, a few months back there was a big rant on web designers being specialists or generalists. Actually this was probably weeks before FITC 2010 Toronto. Jamie Kosoy of Big Spaceship did a presentation that I really enjoyed. I had a chance to talk to during the after parties and a bunch of us ended up at London Tap House after the party on the boat. He wrote this post about specialists and generalists. I tend to agree. I don’t think I’d be very happy with myself if all I knew how to program was HTML. That’s not even programming. I’m not a specialist. I’m not a generalist. I’m a designer. I do a lot of interactive work. Which means some of my tools include code. Some of my tools include physical hardware like Arduino. Some of my tools include a soldering iron. Some things even get printed. Or even fancy printed with silk screens or letterpress. Which I know how to do as well. I’d love to make wearable electronics. Augmented reality is awesome. I’m not a web designer. Being a web designer is just as pointless as being a flash designer. What happens when desktop web disappears. Don’t think that’ll happen? You might want to start looking at the landscape. Soon you’ll have to become mobile developers. Or you’ll have to learn Objective-C and make fancypants iOS apps. By the way, Objective-C isn’t the easiest thing to learn. I don’t even think I want to call myself a designer. Maybe Designer/Creative Coder. Or Interactive Designer. Maybe just Maker. Yeah, Maker. I like that. I’m a Maker. If you and your specialist friends think you’re better than me and my other Maker friends you can go fuck yourselves. Seriously.

I’m going to keep doing what I do. I just needed to vent some angers and this didn’t fit into a single tweet. For those of you that decided to read this, mostly I’m sorry you read this. I want the web to be a better place. I want the same emotional experiences I had when I came across sites like A Is For Apple and Requiem For A Dream. I don’t care how it’s made. I don’t care who makes it. Currently I’m getting that emotional experience from offline interactive installations. Work by UnitedVisualArtists, Universal Everything, Eyewriter, Design and the Elastic Mind, and tons of other things. You know, stuff that’s meanigful. Maybe I need to go away from web design for a while and rediscover what it was I drew me to it. But currently it’s not doing it for me. It’s full of fighting and conflict and elitism and mostly nothing I want to be a part of.

Again, I apologize for this being a big angry rant. It wasn’t planned out. This is more of a drunk rambling. Without the drunk.

—

« Tronic

—

—