Web Design is Like Nothing Else

I may be about to shatter a few common presumptions about web design in this article, but I would be lying if I said it wasn't intentional. You see the problem is that there are so many "have a go" web designers out there who simply don't understand the basic principles of design, which results in an Internet which is overflowing with bad design. So much so that the general public believe all websites should look like 90% of the terrible ones out there. This misconception has become so common that when people ask me what my profession is I lie and say I'm a Graphic Designer. Consumers perception of graphic designers is all things print essentially, which is brilliant. You see print design is often only practiced by experienced individuals who really know what they're doing, or in cases where a trainee is designing for print they are often being over-seen by an experienced individual. So the quality of print design is most of the time very high. In many web agencies the same hierarchy of experience is not applied to designing for the web. In DUSZA however, our experienced designers aid our trainees and all our designs are critiqued before they are shown to clients. This is why looking at our portfolio you will struggle to find a single website which isn't up to scratch. Of course we all have our favourites, but our portfolio displays a wealth of variety and good design.

Does this now mean that print designers can do web design and vice versa? No, well not immediately anyway. Print and web design are two different disciplines entirely, of course they do mesh in certain aspects, but the considerations for each medium are vastly different. The audience in most cases will also be different. Interactivity is the main separating factor, print being static and therefore requiring no interaction from the end user. Web however is at the other end of the scale, where interactivity can be as engaging as a virtual reality scenario within a 3D world. Many print designers can become web designers with the correct training, which is why many of our designers can utilise both mediums interchangeably. Other than their obvious training and experience in both, they are able to accomplish this because they are aware of the core differences and considerations which apply when designing for each medium.

Hopefully in this short article I have offered a new perspective to your assessment of web design and you will have become more aware that it is not an easy skill to master. Of course just from reading this you may not still fully understand web design and that's fine, we tackle website in more detail in another article - The Fundamentals of a Great Website