Good design

Apr 15 2006

If you don’t understand the fundamentals of landscape painting, you don’t understand the fundamentals of web design.

So says Andy Rutledge in his latest article on his (newly redesigned) blog. He goes on to state:

Professional Web designers who don’t understand the fundamentals of design are frauds … You’re about to be obsolete; downsized, optioned out. That’s right, unemployed.

It’s not the first time that he has berated the web design community for only seeming to care about the “web” side of their livelihood and not the “design” aspect. I’m inclined to agree; my feedreader is always full of CSS, HTML or Javascript tips’n’tricks, but precious little actual design advice.

Perhaps part of the problem is that it takes a lot more time to write a considered piece on effective design than to Copy+Paste a CSS technique you’ve just developed into your blog; I know that I occasionally think it would be nice to write about some aspect of design, but I just can’t find the time. It’s one of the reasons that Andy’s site is so good, because he writes consistently well about design, why things work, why others don’t, and just generally knows his stuff.

Not sure about his analogy of landscape paintings to ballet and music, though – possibly stretching the concept of effective composition a little too far there…

Filed under: Design.

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Comments

Rob Mientjes
1429 days ago
It’s funny, I always forget there are so many fakers around. I’m inclined to agree with you on this as well, Matthew, as most “design” tips these days are just “funny” things to do with CSS. Back when I still learned from all the weblogs on the standards topics, there would pop up many of these posts. Nowadays, as Andy hits it on the head, only a notable few write about design.

I feel I should help that cause. Maybe, one day soon… :)
#1
Matthew Pennell
1429 days ago
Perhaps the tide is starting to change after all…
#2
Brock
1425 days ago
Making the right design for a website is relyed to so many factors that many so called web”designers” don’t have to urge to go that deep.
#3
Jim
1423 days ago
I once mentioned poor use of whitespace to a ‘web designer’, he asked me what colour I thought it should be…

...I learned my trade using a scalpel and letraset, i how i miss gallies, gutters, margins and grids, leading and kerning…

...sigh.
#4
Matthew Pennell
1423 days ago
"I once mentioned poor use of whitespace to a ‘web designer’, he asked me what colour I thought it should be..."

Heh – maybe lime green, for that Web 2.0 look?
#5