Most design schools have put together a curriculum that focuses on the “Principles of Design” with the assumption that the same principles apply regardless of the medium. While there are elements of truth to that, the web is a completely different beast. A beast that needs to be handled with a different mentality.
The University Setting
For my curriculum in school, the sole web-component was a one semester class where we sliced mockups in Photoshop and slopped together rollover states in Dreamweaver. I never want to go back to that and thank God technology improves at the rate it does.
The understanding provided to me as a young graduate was that 90% of designers focused on print and the other 10% on some mild form of design that was centered around websites. At the time, there were so many constraints put around the language, education, and technology of the web – that print design felt pure and uninhibited.
Maybe it wasn’t a total misconception at the time, but it is now. Unfortunately, I still know a number of excellent designers that are stuck solely in traditional print design. If that is the bed you want to make and sleep in – then go for it – but it shouldn’t be because you are unfamiliar with the alternative or have incorrect information about it.
The Need to Evolve
Print design isn’t dead, but one could argue it is dying. Whole newspapers are going online and more people are getting their information from the web than ever. Why wouldn’t we? There is more information on the internet than has ever been gathered in one place since life has been on this Earth.
Just as we evolved as humans and created the internet, we need to evolve as designers and adapt to the changing landscape. And here is a secret for you…
It isn’t very hard to do!
HTML and CSS can be intimidating to a print designer hoping to take the plunge, but it shouldn’t be. Both are languages that are based on each other. Like any language, once you understand the key components the idiosyncrasies fall into place.
Don’t be discouraged when you first get started. I recently looked back at one of the first sites I built once I made the transition into a web design job (they knew I was going to learn on the job) and it made me laugh. I didn’t see it at the time, but every failure has led to a success. I’m more comfortable with both languages now simply because I failed originally.
If you can see the failure and frustration that will inevitably come – not as a barrier – but as a bridge, then you will have the patience to keep moving forward. And I truly believe that all designers should have a fundamental knowledge of web design.
The truth is that better education is developing. Adobe is creating a way to make Photoshop documents into easy-to-use applications and the gap between pure designer and pure developer is growing narrower by the day.
But like with any skill, the more knowledge you have about the foundation of that skill, the more adept you will be at handling its evolutions in the future.
And I think we all can agree that the web is far from finished evolving.
Thanks for your website — You’ve really inspired me to look toward the future of design. Keep up the great work; I’ll check back regularly.
This is an interesting post on a subject that I’ve been thinking about a fair bit recently. When I was at university (my degree is in Graphic Design) the entire course was built around print design because that was what my tutors knew. So my ‘background’ is in print design, although it wasn’t particularly through choice!
I think a lot of designers’ fear or misunderstanding of the web comes from these environments. For instance, on projects which asked for a campaign to be developed across media, web material was always expected as printed layouts. In fact, on the one occasion where I actually coded up a prototype of a site as part of one of these projects and presented on screen, the reaction was that I had gone to a lot of effort. In contrast, the time when I left it too late to get a poster professionally printed, this was severely marked down for not being presented as it would be!
This is not to say anything negative about my tutors, who were all excellent people to know and who gave us an extremely good grounding in the rules and techniques that we needed to know. But the fact that web was handled as something that a designer ‘conceptualises’ and then sends off to ‘technicians’ seems to have stuck with a lot of people I know. A lot of print designers are never taught that a site needs to work – not just in the same way that a print layout works (ie visually), but as a usable, functioning piece of design.
Take care,
Andi
@ Andi,
My instructors treated classes very similar. Anything beyond concept seemed like icing on the cake. In their defense, the web design classes weren’t advertised as a place to learn in-depth CSS, but that would have better prepared me.
With other subjects like history, an instructor can teach the same lesson plan for 10 years and it will still be relevant. But when technology evolves at the rate it does, it would be ideal to have instructors ahead of the curve, not behind it.
I have read a few of your posts and they are all interesting and informative…keep up the good work.