Drawar

I was going to save this, but it ties in nicely with today’s post by Nils Geylen, Design is history, so study.

Going through almost any online design gallery, a majority of the sites are portfolios for design studios and freelancers. When I come across these sites I like to look at the other work done by the designer to see if there are other sites I can draw inspiration from. Rarely do I find any. This can’t just be a case of clients ruining the work of a designer, this seems more like a case of one hit wonders.

Then it hit me. What if the majority of designers out on the web, aren’t really designers at all?

Design Observer does a wonderful job of taking a very low level approach to design. You have to know your stuff to really gain an appreciation for what the authors of the site talk about. How many of you out there read everything that comes from them? There was a discussion on QBN a while back that included one of my articles and one of the points brought up is that the print design and web design communities are separated because web designers aren’t really designers at all. That struck me as pretty strange because immediately I started calling out names in my head of web designers that I knew with print backgrounds and ones that could definitely go toe-to-toe with the great print designers of the world. Beyond that you have an over-abundance of people selling services as a designer, when they know almost nothing of design.

Armchair Designers

Call them armchair designers if you want. Call them people that see a trend on the web and make sure to follow it on their next design no matter what the requirements are. Call them people who hit the galleries for inspiration and leave with a little too much inspiration if you catch my drift.

When Khoi Vinh and Mark Boulton talk about designing with a grid it is a wonderful thing, but does anyone else find it shocking that so many people treat the grid as if it were something new? For example, here is a comment I found while reading another designer’s blog.

Can you go into detail on “the grid”? I don’t think I’ve ever heard a designer mention that before…and now I’m interested. How can I use it to my benefit my designs? I’ve always made my designs by color and just what I feel looks right… never with a grid system.

I find it hard to believe that someone in this profession doesn’t know what a grid is or how to use it. I didn’t go to school for design, but when I thought I might get paid for some design work I made sure to dive head first into the many great books on design out there. I became a student of design. How many designers know about kerning and the psychology behind colors? How many designers understand the principles of typography and white space? You ever wonder why articles on these subjects are so popular? It’s because 90% of the web design community don’t know about these subjects.

Back in 2007, Greg Storey, wrote a cry for help asking for more qualified designers. There are plenty of people who can chop up a design in XHTML/CSS. Hell, you can outsource that for a couple hundred dollars. There are plenty of people who can AJAX-ify your interface to “increase” (whatever the hell that means) the user experience. There are plenty of people who can create a design that looks nice.

The problem is, how many people can design solutions to fix the problems a site has? How many people can take the ideas of their client and translate them properly to the screen? How many designers can look past their own style and design a site that fits the current project?

There aren’t many. There aren’t many people that treat design as an art and passion that must constantly be improved. There aren’t many people that understand design is a craft that should be studied and poured over until you get tired of it and then you get up and do it again. There aren’t many people that understand what design is and yet wish to call themselves designers.

I’m Not A Musician

I am by no means a designer. If someone were to come up to me and I knew they needed a graphically rich website with vibrant colors, there is no way I could produce that for them. I do my own sites because I only have one style and work with limited colors and keep myself constrained to the graphical properties of CSS. I am no designer in the sense of the word that I now speak. To be honest, most of the people out there are no better than me and yet they want the big bucks. They want the glory. They want to know why their site didn’t make it into the gallery (do galleries even reject sites anymore?).

No, you are not a designer. You are someone that can piece together some stuff in Photoshop or add the right pieces of code in XHTML/CSS. You aren’t the person that creates experiences. You aren’t the translator of ideas that people never thought could be produced visually. You aren’t the person that can toss their own style to the curb and come up with something even greater because of it.

Doing work on a house doesn’t make you an architect. Splashing paint on a canvas doesn’t make you a painter. Taking a picture with a phone doesn’t make you a photographer. I have some pretty decent dance moves, but I would never call myself a dancer. That would insult the true dancers out there they make it an art. We live in a world of hobbyists and the majority of our peers are hobbyists parading as professionals. They are not designers.

But you could be. Maybe. Just take the time to study like the greats before you. Push your limits. Test your boundaries. Designers like to work within their comfort zone because they know what they will like. Make something ugly to help you come up with some ideas on how to make something beautiful. When you need inspiration create your own.

Taking The Time To Understand

Ever walk into an art museum and you see the pretty paintings, then you come across one that looks like a kid threw a wet paintbrush at the canvas? You stand there wondering why that painting is there…you could have done it. Then some art enthusiast walks by and mentions how the painting is actually millions of dots made to look like splashed paint. You might wonder why someone would create a piece of art like that but you understand WHY the painting is there.

Look at the designs that inspire you and even the ones that don’t and try to understand what part of them appeals to you. To simply say you like the colors doesn’t help you as a designer. Question why that particular color combination works for that design. Figure out if the fonts used were the best choice. Ask yourself why some designs look awesome. Even when you know design, you are always learning design.

You can become a true web designer if you work at it, just not many people out there really have that desire. I know you do though.