Is Web Design Really Boring Nowadays?
I’ve recently read Owen Williams piece on TNW about how boring web design is today. He’s definitely right at some points. It’s true that a few years ago websites were more varied, crazy and sometimes even insane. But was it better? Not so sure…
So, is web design boring nowadays? This case has double bottom. The thing is: today’s web design is different, it’s more mature.
It’s been here for a while and we, as designers, managed to get to know it better. We’ve been experimenting with the medium, we made some things wrong (You can read a great piece about making things wrong by Tobias van Schneider here) and in the end learned from our own mistakes.
In his article, Owen says that once upon a time the internet was conceived and we dreamed up crazy websites. Sure. But it was art for art’s sake. Let’s be honest. The Nike Air website that Owen gave as an example is a beautiful nightmare. You’re unable to quickly scan through it, to learn where you are and where you can possibly go.
I’m not even talking about its mobile capabilities, but hey.
You don’t usually visit a website to be stunned by it’s technical or visual wow effect. We’re visiting websites with a certain purpose.
There are much better ways of spending time or relaxing than experimenting or changing website backgrounds with your keyboard, right?
While the Nike website is still very impressive in its own right… trying to find information about a product or learn something valuable about it… right… It’s so time consuming.
And here we come to the second thing. It’s a fact that many, many websites today look almost the same. They duplicate hackneyed schemes. Let’s be honest. Mature doesn’t mean dull and boring. Print design is much more mature then the web design but is still more varied.
So, why? We can complain that it’s the workflow fault, that there are technological or financial limitations. We can say that the users are familiar with some patterns so keeping them around is the best practice, that Bootstrap is so great working around it makes no sense. But hey. none of this explains the lack of creativity in 90% of today’s web design.
So, is web design completely boring now? No. The designers are just lazy.
It’s easy to say that something must look like this because you’re using bootstrap and making stuff this way is cheaper and more efficient. That your user expects this. This is bullshit. Being creative doesn’t mean creating horror-like extrovert designs like the original Space Jam website.
I know that it’s not easy. I, myself struggle with it sometimes. Sometimes you don‘t have the great idea, sometimes the client is a pain in the ass but we must try.
After all if it’s possible to make Times New Roman look modern and elegant there’s definitely a way to make web design more creative without making content a victim and preserving user familiar patterns.
You can follow me on Behance, Medium or join my private mailing list to track this little side project progress.
Thank you for reading,
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