5 Things Your Road Sweeper Can Teach You About Web Design

I’ve just read a post about how Leonardo Da Vinci can help you become a better web designer. I  see so many articles like this and while some of the articles are in fact very good and I understand the need to wrap the (usually very common sense) points about digital design into a vaguely interesting angle, it can get tiring reading these articles and their clumsy attempts at reworking their points so that they kind of fit with the chosen theme.  

So here’s my version of “5 things your *insert person/cat/walking stick/gardener/neighbour* can teach you about web design”.

I’ve randomly chosen: Roadsweeper

5 Things Your Road Sweeper Can Teach You About Web Design

1) Look left and right before you cross the road. Basic really, before you set off, make sure you’re clear on the brief. Ask, ask, ask people, if you’re unsure about anything, it will save you untold hassle later on into the project.

2) Be methodical, have a starting point and end point in mind. Don’t sweep the same spot all day. Yes, admit it, we’ve all been there. Focus on what you want to the end result to look like and how you’re going to get there, keep your eye on the prize and work towards it step by step. Or swish by swish.

3) Don’t get your broom stolen. Always have a spare broom, backup your work as you go along. Enough said.

4) Look at other roadsweeper techniques. A web designer needs to be constantly inspired and motivated. Look around, see how the other guy holds his broom. Does he have this year’s broom? How much is it, is it worth upgrading brooms? Did he get trained how to hold his broom that way, or did he read up on it? Ask around, search google for other roadsweeper techniques – you get the gist.

5) Unwind at the end of the day by putting away your broom and going to the pub.

So there you go. Amazing what you can learn these days.

I think road sweepers are cool.

[Digg]

The evolution of the Google logo.

Nice article on Wired.com about how Google got its logo. Ruth Kedar is the graphic designer who developed the now famous logo and she walks us through the process, from initial ideas and thoughts to how it looks today.

Are web/digital designers underrated?

So how important is the role played by digital designers in advertising and web design? As a designer, I’ve always felt slightly smug and slightly peeved both at the same time when it comes to most projects. Smug in that I know without me, the creative director/art director/copywriter/cleaning lady/junior intern couldn’t have completed the project and seen his or her vision come to life and peeved in that sometimes I feel designers don’t always get that recognition of having the difficult task of turning someone’s vision into something that looks good on screen. I’m fairly sure each person in the creative process will have his or her own argument as to why their job is the hardest, but I do feel that a good designer can make all the difference in turning an average idea or campaign into something that actually works.

A good digital designer also bridges that gap between the creative and the technical as he or she will make a concept and the design work within the myriad technical boundaries of design for the internet. I always find that I’m reminding myself that the internet was never developed as a visual concept, it wasn’t meant to take tables, it wasn’t meant to handle flash and everything else that it’s been asked to do now! As a quick refresh, it was basically meant to only handle text and was initially invented by the US Department of Defence as a means of communication in case they were attacked by Russia. We can at least give thanks to the yanks for that then. The internet evolved into the World Wide Web and then people later on tried to kill design on the web. Have a look at Microsoft’s first website and Google’s first website.

So in the past, its been a constant battle to marry good design with the inflexibility of the internet. As well as trying to design and develop in and around the constant battle grounds of Microsoft vs Yahoo vs Apple vs Netscape vs Mozilla. On that note, could everyone please just make their browsers display websites the same way? I don’t care about anything else, put extra features on the browsers, give out free tshirts, whatever, just please can we have websites that display consistently across browsers?

Design standards though, have evolved and continue to get better, although I feel South Africa could generally do with a big kick up the backside in this department. It’s not like there is a lack of good examples out there, but I feel SA businesses do lack a knowledge of what they can and should be getting for their money. Because of this, South African digital designers are not being pushed into improving their standards of design. I know there are many reasons for this, not least a lack of bandwidth and infrastructure, SA is generally 5 yrs behind the States and at least 2 years behind the UK and Europe when it comes to digital design, marketing and advertising.

And of course designing for an advertising campaign and designing an actual website are to very different things and thus there are different challenges, strategies and end results to take into account especially when it comes to user interaction. But I think that’s whole other post…

So then back to the heading of this article. Are digital designers underrated and how important are they to the creative process? Well, although there are still those out there who own a copy of photoshop and an HTML editing program and call themselves web designers, a talented and experienced web designer is crucial to bringing your digital vision to life, on time and within a budget, whether that be an award winning advertising/online banner campaign or a website to convert users into buyers.

I am important then. Phew.

Professor of Media bans Google and Wikipedia. Uh huh.

As an avid reader of books, literary novels, this article I’ve just come across on theargus.co.uk piqued (yip, word of the day toilet paper) my interest. A professor of media at the University of Brighton has banned her students from Google andWikipedia. If you’ve ever needed to give an example of irony to anyone, head on over to that story!

Her gripe with Google stems from the fact that students are simply repeating whatever they find first on the search engine. They’re just not reading books anymore and she bemoans the fact that in the quest for new technology, books and traditional media have been left behind. While I’m totally on her side in getting students to read more books and experience the wonderful print side of life, I think – as many of the people who left comments pointed out – that the idea of banning Google and Wikipedia and the like, to force students to read is clearly not the right way to go about things. As with most things in life, there needs to be a balance. It should also be up to the University to teach the students how to do proper and legitimate research on the web. Wonder if they’re allowed to read a book about Google?

Knowledge is power as Francis Bacon once opined. Or as someone else said later, books have knowledge, knowledge is power, power corrupts, corruption is a crime, and crime doesn’t pay…so if you keep reading, you’ll go broke.

I may have digressed.