20
Fall of the Designer Part IV: Credible Threats (elischiff.com)
over 8 years ago from Catalin Cimpanu
53 comments
Tom Wood, over 8 years ago (edited over 8 years ago )
This piece begins talking about automated tools and then ends up positing that flat design is the threat to all designers.
The 2 are surely not related, nor do they pose similar threats.
I would argue that flat design isn't a threat, it still takes skill to produce a lovely illustration in a "flat" style, or to distill the essence of a UI into something flat. I for one enjoy the challenge of flat design, but as Google's Materials shows us, the flat of 2 years ago has now got subtle shading and gradients. No doubt in 2 years the flat of today will look different still. It's not some cataclysmic designer-killing comet.
Meanwhile automated tools.. well I had to learn to use Webflow for my job, or Flite to create ad units. But I still have to create the assets for these, and I still need to have a good idea in the first place. I mean, in this example the broccoli farms logo is comically awful - I don't think anyone expects this tool to seriously produce logos for all. Logos are only 1 part of the branding package, someone still needs to work on the rest.
And finally, the reason a client-designer relationship is nothing like a doctor-patient relationship is because being sick/ill/in pain is objective, and design is subjective (with objective frameworks). The reasons behind being sick are super complex, so to go to your doctor and have an opinion about your treatment is weird. But if my clients didn't have an opinion about my design, or just said "thanks Mr. Wood, I trust you completely, I'm sure that's a good logo", then that would be weird too.
Sorry for rambling, I really should have written less and gotten back to work.
Kyle Bavender, over 8 years ago (edited over 8 years ago )
Agreed that Eli's link between automated tools & flat design is tenuous. I can somewhat see where he was intending to go with his argument, but this piece didn't flow as well has his recent writing has.
Perhaps if Eli more clearly stated, researched, and argued for:
- commoditization of the design industry is a danger
- some commoditization is inevitable; some is not:
- flat design encourages commoditization
(Or, if his intent was to focus more on automation tools in this piece, to not bring up flat design at all.)
In any case, I will continue reading Eli's pieces; I find it refreshing to read a dissenting voice from the herd.
Eli Schiff, over 8 years ago (edited over 8 years ago )
Updated the conclusion a few minutes before you posted this. Spot on!
Forming a connection between flat design and the economic forces of automation and globalization may seem a strange juxtaposition. It is true that the two are not themselves related, but the quality of design they inspire is quite similar. Moreover, the expectations they set for what qualifies as good design in the minds of clients are similar. Clients cannot be blamed for drawing improper conclusions about the value of design when it is commoditized.
Sean Lester, over 8 years ago
He takes everything in existence as evidence that supports his narrative that flat design is the end of the world.
Flat design is not the end of the world. It is the latest incarnation in a longstanding ideology that happens to be incredibly damaging.
Elizabeth Adams, over 8 years ago (edited over 8 years ago )
Ok, so I've been wanting to ask you...
1) What is this ideology that supposedly has its latest incarnation in flat design? (You've provided versions of responses to this throughout your series, but maybe if you could just sum it up here again...)
2) Why is it "incredibly damaging"?
3) To whom is it "incredibly damaging"?
Daniel Fosco, over 8 years ago
Waiting for an answer to these as well, if only to see further elaboration for the arguments in the article. Specially when later in the piece you say:
Forming a connection between flat design and the economic forces of automation and globalization may seem a strange juxtaposition. It is true that the two are not themselves related, but the quality of design they inspire is quite similar
So it's hard to see where the "incredible damage" is, other than in the obvious and self-fulfilling profecy of bad flat design is bad design.
Some other thoughts:
Prior to flat design, visual design was approached holistically as a key part of an ongoing strategy, and accordingly commanded relatively high compensation and respect as a functionally integral aspect of product design.
Strongly disagree with this. For all I know, we are just beginning to see designers treated as strategic to the product development process, whereas in years before we were considered "the folks that make things look pretty". Then again, we are both talking anecdotally.
Lastly, the image with the Twitterfic logo is a terrible comparison. One is a detailed illustration that probably took 10++ hours to be done, the other is a circle with a plus sign inside. The latter is not the flat version of the former.
Lastly, the image with the Twitterfic logo is a terrible comparison. One is a detailed illustration that probably took 10++ hours to be done, the other is a circle with a plus sign inside. The latter is not the flat version of the former.
It isn't the flat version of the former, and for good reason. Iconfactory clearly couldn't find a flat version of the icon that would suffice, so they kept the depth (for the most part). It's pretty obvious from the caption that I'm not comparing the dimensional Twitteriffic icon to the flat Twitteriffic icon. I'm comparing the Twitteriffic icon to another icon that was designed by the same team after iOS 7.
Still seems like comparing apples to oranges for me, at least in this case.
John Flynn, over 8 years ago
That's not obvious at all; you're comparing them directly. Don't be lazy. You have a good article in there somewhere without resorting to visual bad journalism.
The ideology is modern minimalism.
It is damaging in a number of ways, though I will note a few that come to mind. 3. They tend to affect both designers and users:
- It makes indicators of interaction difficult to discern. Designers are forced to user subpar replacements for those indicators.
- It falsely treats reduction as the ideal instead of encouraging the use of the appropriate amount of detail and elements.
- It hypocritically encourages demonization of aesthetics, while engaging in its own form of vacuous aesthetics completely divorced from utility (see last article about blur and parallax).
- It commoditizes the visual designer because bespoke visual design is seen as overly sentimental, rather than a crucial element of well-planned design.
Mitch Malone, over 8 years ago If point 1 were true, wouldn't we have felt that in the market? If products become unusable because of a poor visual design, it would affect their bottom-dollar. We can have opinions about these things. But after 2+ years of flat design, the market has answered that question.
Related to the last point, commoditization is a market force, not a result of a visual design pattern. If you can make a button look flat or skeuomorphic or the next iteration in UI visual design, it doesn't matter. It just matters that what everyone's buying; the competition between the manufacturers (in this case the designer I guess) increases thus lowering the price of the commodity.
I discussed this in The Armchair Fallacy:
Appealing to user evolution assumes that users have grown in sophistication, ability and skill with computers. Very often it is not the user who has done this, but the designers themselves. It is wise to be skeptical of a designer who claims that 'all of a sudden paradigms have changed.' It is most likely they cannot see past their own narrow design mental model.
and
A work's profitability, or lack thereof, is not the only nor is it the best measure of its value to its audience.
and
The fact that a design or method is universally adopted does not make it the optimal solution. Design practitioners consistently bandwagon as part of a cargo cult of trend-followers. They also often take the easy way out by getting caught in the Abilene Paradox, in which everyone forms a consensus so as to not look like the odd one out. Add to that the common situation of being forced into a set of practices because of lock-in with a particular set of technologies or with a company one might not want to publicly disagree with. In any of these cases, that a practice is popular does not make it right.
I also discussed this in The Mental Model:
Users have just been forced to suffer through ambiguous designs because there are effectively no alternatives on the market. It is in the nature of humanity to adapt. But the fact that users adapted to flatness says nothing about its relative value compared to expressive interfaces.
Users do not necessarily know that there are potential alternatives to the prevalent inexpressive and illegible flat designs. Nor do they know that these could be easily executed. Furthermore, the changes are not so abrupt that a user will explicitly notice dark patterns in a conscious way. Even if they could, they would not have the vocabulary to explain what was going wrong.
In no way should users be required to propose these alternatives. The truth is, users have better things to think about than what the most enjoyable and usable UI is, because that is ostensibly what designers are there to advocate for and produce. Users are thus easily swayed by marketing, because they trust that their interfaces are in good hands with industry designers.
Nevertheless, modern minimalists in the industry maintain a false belief that users have collectively evolved past the need for expressive user interface designs. They are consistently guilty of being unaware of, or worse, deliberately ignoring this gap between themselves as omniscient creators and the consumers who use their software.
Michael Aleo, over 8 years ago
I'd argue a work's profitability is a damn good measurement of it's success. Business goals are really important. I'm not saying it's the best measurement, but it's certainly up there.
Look at Gowalla. Gowalla was superior to Foursquare in almost every way design-wise. It stood out in the crowd and it was fucking beautiful. Those badges made me want to check in places (and I've never been a check in warrior), but it lost the race to Foursquare for a variety of business reasons.
Ah, ok. Thanks for adding more to this thread. I think that here, as opposed to in your blog, you are somewhat more sympathetic to the user experience. There, I found it hard to discern where you were speaking up on behalf of the user. You're certainly trying to stick up for the designer, which is also admirable in a way.
It makes indicators of interaction difficult to discern. Designers are forced to user subpar replacements for those indicators.
I am willing to believe that this is true, though as others have said here, I'm not sure why this problem is particular to modern minimalism/flat design. It seems to be particular to bad design. In the end, I think only some seriously robust usability studies about flat design would prove once and for all that the best examples of flat design do a poorer job of providing cues for interaction than other aesthetics.
It falsely treats reduction as the ideal instead of encouraging the use of the appropriate amount of detail and elements.
There's nothing "false" about reduction (and/or minimalism) as an ideal. Ideals in the design world accompany schools of thought, and I think it would be very hard to come up with an unimpeachable set of criteria by which to assess one aesthetic ideal over another. Yet again, I feel like your real critique is (or perhaps should be) of bad flat design, not simply flat design.
It hypocritically encourages demonization of aesthetics, while engaging in its own form of vacuous aesthetics completely divorced from utility (see last article about blur and parallax).
Ok, now I'm going to be more or less repeating myself, but being a proponent of a competing aesthetic does not mean one is demonizing aesthetics. Designers (and users) are choosing another aesthetic. Your claim:
Appealing to user evolution assumes that users have grown in sophistication, ability and skill with computers. Very often it is not the user who has done this, but the designers themselves.
Is kind of an interesting one. If we as designers and developers are paying attention to our usability metrics and our profit margins, then we're probably not interested in whether or not the user has evolved and will somehow be able to cope with whatever newfangled flat thing we want to throw at them. We're probably more interested in whether they're using our product and using it well. If we design things badly, people won't use them, or they won't use them in the most effective or powerful way. They won't be able to make use of the tools we've given them. That's on us. I guess it's true that the design community likes its faddish things as much as any other community, but all of the talk (blogs, conferences, etc) about these fads does not translate into what we're actually seeing from our users.
It commoditizes the visual designer because bespoke visual design is seen as overly sentimental, rather than a crucial element of well-planned design.
And this is, I think, more indication of what I talk about above: your tendency to stick up for the designer, as if we are under attack from the denizens of Flat Land. What we can't do, I'm afraid, is try to change the minds of the user about what is really good for them. That doesn't mean they know more about design than we do. You've said it yourself-- they aren't experts. They only know what they do, whether a design frustrates them, whether they can get through a couple of screens and complete a task. But what they do know better than us is how they interact with what we create. How they feel when they see it. How easily (or not) they succeed (or fail) in the tasks that we, qua designers, have appointed for them. Users are experts in something. They're experts in showing us whether or not what we've actually done is what we've hoped to do.
I think that here, as opposed to in your blog, you are somewhat more sympathetic to the user experience.
Both design practice and user experience are central to my message.
It makes indicators of interaction difficult to discern. Designers are forced to user subpar replacements for those indicators.
I am willing to believe that this is true, though as others have said here, I'm not sure why this problem is particular to modern minimalism/flat design. It seems to be particular to bad design.
Modern minimalism is not a style that can be modified to make good interaction design. As I said, it's an ideology that necessitates reduction regardless of usability.
only some seriously robust usability studies about flat design would prove once and for all that the best examples of flat design do a poorer job of providing cues for interaction than other aesthetics.
Aesthetics cannot be separated from usability. In visual systems they're one and the same.
There's nothing "false" about reduction (and/or minimalism) as an ideal
Reduction is just as much a false ideal as addition. As I explained, the appropriate amount of detail is appropriate.
I feel like your real critique is (or perhaps should be) of bad flat design, not simply flat design.
I'm not against all flat design. Flat is part of dimensional design. I'm against dogmatic flat design. Much of flat design just happens to be ideologically modern minimalist.
being a proponent of a competing aesthetic does not mean one is demonizing aesthetics.
In fact there is such thing as an anti-aesthetic aesthetic.
If we design things badly, people won't use them, or they won't use them in the most effective or powerful way. They won't be able to make use of the tools we've given them...They're experts in showing us whether or not what we've actually done is what we've hoped to do.
People will use what they're given. They will make do.
What we can't do, I'm afraid, is try to change the minds of the user about what is really good for them.
This is precisely why flat design went uncontested, because users don't have a choice. Designers imposed.
Modern minimalism is not a style that can be modified to make good interaction design. As I said, it's an ideology that necessitates reduction regardless of usability.
Ok, I'm going to guess that we disagree about what minimalism means. You say minimalism stands over and against usability? I say minimalism means "reduced to necessary elements only." And in this case, affordances that facilitate interaction are necessary elements. Minimalism isn't none-ism.
Aesthetics cannot be separated from usability. In visual systems they're one and the same.
I think it's a bit of an overreach to say they're one and the same, but I they're certainly interrelated.
Reduction is just as much a false ideal as addition. As I explained, the appropriate amount of detail is appropriate.
For those who hold reduction to be the ideal, the minimal amount is the appropriate amount. It's awfully difficult to make a case for either side of this that doesn't boil down to "what I prefer," keeping in mind, of course, the hypothesis that minimalism means "reduced to necessary elements only."
People will use what they're given. They will make do.
Unless, of course, they don't. And the data that we record about our web and mobile apps should tell us whether or not people use what they are given. Why else do we have usability studies other than to tell us why people aren't using what they are given?
This is precisely why flat design went uncontested, because users don't have a choice. Designers imposed.
Sure, designers imposed. Bad designers impose. There are lots of bad designers. Good designers don't impose. Good designers put a design in the world that is more or less a hypothesis, and they test it against what users actually want and do. But users always, always have a choice. It's our responsibility as designers to keep them choosing our stuff and not the other guy's. Once again, I find myself thinking that your attitude toward users is condescending and, ultimately, self-defeating. You certainly aren't going to be doing a lot of learning from users if you think they're all just absorbing the status quo by no choice of their own.
I say minimalism means "reduced to necessary elements only."
You are one of a small few. Also this assumes a particular process that I don't think even the most ardent minimalist engages in: throw a bunch of decorations on something and then take them away.
The best result isn't "taking away until you get to the best result" or the opposite. The whole justification for reduction is idiotic.
Minimalism isn't none-ism.
Again, you're in the minority.
People will use what they're given. They will make do.
Unless, of course, they don't. And the data that we record about our web and mobile apps should tell us whether or not people use what they are given. Why else do we have usability studies other than to tell us why people aren't using what they are given?
People don't necessarily just stop using a product when it becomes harder to use. They still need to do the tasks they had to do yesterday. If all the buttons go flat at once on all websites people aren't going to stop using the web.
Good designers don't impose. Good designers put a design in the world that is more or less a hypothesis, and they test it against what users actually want and do. But users always, always have a choice.
Users really don't "always, always have a choice." The move towards flat design is a case in point.
Also this assumes a particular process that I don't think even the most ardent minimalist engages in: throw a bunch of decorations on something and then take them away.
I'm not sure what you mean by this or why you think my comment "assumes" this. What my comment is getting at is a minimalism that looks at the world and reacts to it. (Minimalism was indeed a reaction from its ideological beginnings.) It doesn't throw things and then strip them away; it observes, and then it says what is too much and seeks to get rid of those things.
People don't necessarily just stop using a product when it becomes harder to use. They still need to do the tasks they had to do yesterday. If all the buttons go flat at once on all websites people aren't going to stop using the web.
But the "using" that I'm talking about isn't binary. It isn't on or off. Usability is vastly more complicated. People "using what they are given" means using all of what they're given in the most efficient way and in a manner that accomplishes a variety of goals. In your example, people are probably going to stop using parts of the web due to their frustration, but they also might use other parts of it more with better results. We don't have to wait for our users to leave us before we decide that we can improve the usability of our designs.
Users really don't "always, always have a choice." The move towards flat design is a case in point.
But of course the choice I was talking about was between bad design and good design. Users can always cast off bad flat design for good flat design. And, as others have noted, we're in the thick of the flat trend. We don't know what's going to come after. We're not at the proper point in history to know whether or not something else will come after this. You speak as if we're at the end of design history. I predict that we aren't.
Philip Lester, over 8 years ago (edited over 8 years ago )
Flat design is a threat if your job is solely aesthetic. A designers true value is problem solving -- communicating complex ideas/values visually and making the complex simple. That type of deep problem solving will never face the threat of commoditization.
The next article in the series addresses this point.
There are some valid, good points here, but I think a lot of key parts are missing. I don't think Eli understands what clients are buying.
They're not buying a flat design or something pretty. Hell, most of our clients haven't even heard of flat design. Often they're not even really buying a website — they're buying a solution to a problem and they're paying for trust, experience, and guidance. The end deliverable is a product of that process.
Most designers weren't outraged at the Squarespace logo design tools. I sure wasn't. Because the client who was looking to spend $free.99 was never going to pay even our base branding fee. That customer is looking for a logo right now to check a box and move on with their business.
The customer who is open to spending $10k+ is looking for something totally different. They want the research process, they want buy-in and excitement from their internal team, they want to be a part of the process and work with a designer to craft something that feels intimately like their brand. It's not a box to be checked, it's so much more than that.
Plastic surgeons aren't threatened by Neosporin's scar-hiding abilities.
Ferrari isn't threatened by a $9,999 new Daewoo.
They're totally different markets and customers, and in the end they're buying two totally different results. The Ferrari buyer wants the driving experience, prestige, and excitement of driving a finely tuned racecar with hand-stitched leather and a sub 4-second 0-60. The Daewoo buyer wants to drive to work and back—and it would be nice to have air conditioning.
It's much less sexy and alarming for an article, but I think it's more likely that our infantile industry is just leaning out in the middle and independent designers, studios, and agencies will have to decide if they're going to be the Ferrari or the Daewoo.
Jim Silverman, over 8 years ago
gotta watch out for those Daewoos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDinIMBsjsw
A great comment!
They're not buying a flat design or something pretty. Hell, most of our clients haven't even heard of flat design. Often they're not even really buying a website — they're buying a solution to a problem and they're paying for trust, experience, and guidance. The end deliverable is a product of that process.
I would put it this way: the solution is a holistic combination of the process and the deliverable. The value of the deliverable is strengthened by the process, but not limited to it. In other words, people do buy websites.
Also, I don't really believe Daewoo-buyer is a good metaphor for Microsoft.
Flat design : Microsoft and Iconfactory :: Squarespace Logo : The rest of the market.
Food for thought: when I sell a website, we spend almost zero time talking about the end product. We spend nearly the entire time answering questions about and explaining the process that gets us to that end deliverable.
I wasn't using someone who buys a Daewoo as a metaphor for Microsoft, you're looking to far down the rabbit hole. It's simply an example supporting that different customers expect different things out of what is essentially the same deliverable.
Food for thought: when I sell a website, we spend almost zero time talking about the end product. We spend nearly the entire time answering questions about and explaining the process that gets us to that end deliverable.
That's a good thing! Your process and expertise are being respected. That doesn't mean your client's intention isn't to get a website.
Drew Beck, over 8 years ago
Prior to flat design, visual design was approached holistically as a key part of an ongoing strategy, and accordingly commanded relatively high compensation and respect as a functionally integral aspect of product design. With the commoditization of visual design, low wages are made to appear ideal for an aesthetic practice that is now seen as largely superfluous.
I find this assertion incredibly strange. It has never been a better time to be a product designer. Imma say that again. IT HAS NEVER BEEN A BETTER TIME TO BE A PRODUCT DESIGNER. Yes, some companies at the low end won't hire a designer, but everybody wants to be Apple, everybody wants an app that is beautiful and intuitive.
What's the evidence that designers aren't being valued? All I can see is the opposite.
What's the evidence that designers aren't being valued? All I can see is the opposite.
The next article in the series should answer that.
Chris Newton, over 8 years ago
There seem to be two conceits that are extremely prevalent in the digital design industry, which this article touches on repeatedly but never quite pinpoints.
The first conceit is this incredibly arrogant presumption that being A Designer automatically makes someone superior in knowledge and ability to The Client, and therefore that clients need to be “educated” so they don’t “draw improper conclusions about the value of design”. When beginner designers require no specific skills or experience to enter the industry, and when very high profile designers can bring us the kind of junk we’ve seen in the flat design era, the idea that someone becomes inherently better at design just because they call themselves a designer is laughable. Moreover, while plenty of clients will be contacting a professional designer because they don’t know what they’re doing, that doesn’t mean people who do know what they’re doing won’t also outsource work, and often those will be the smaller/simpler/easier parts because the person doing the outsourcing has more important things to do.
The second conceit is a belief that professional design work inherently has value and so professional designers somehow deserve a certain level of compensation for their work. This isn’t what happens in free markets, and certainly not in increasingly global markets. Usually what really defines the value of a professional designer’s work isn’t what their client thinks of it, it’s what their client’s clients or customers think of it and therefore how much money it makes for their client as a result. They can follow whatever long, formal process you like, but if they get to the end of it and four weeks later they still produced a bright orange plus sign in a circle, then that work does have the same value as what their client’s neighbour’s 15-year-old kid could do in 20 minutes for pocket money, and that is all the professional work is worth.
So here, I suggest, is the real credible threat: hard data. In a modern, on-line world, the value of digital design work can frequently be measured objectively using metrics like click-through rates on ads and engagement on web sites and ultimately conversion rates and the bottom line.
I do believe that there are plenty of jobs out there where the kind of creative, detailed design that we used to see before so much of the world went flat does have real, measurable value. There is a place in the world for distinctive and detailed icons, and for carefully designed and well-hinted fonts, and for bespoke photography, and for original illustrations. And there is a place for creative professionals who are experts on these things and really can achieve much better results than a casual amateur.
But if those professionals want to make their case and convince business or technical clients of the value such work can add, then they need to be showing it using those objective measures, not vacuous ad copy, a flow chart showing their oh-so-important creative process, and assuming their client is an ignorant fool.
In short, a lot of professional designers whose work simply isn’t very good have previously got by on talking a good talk. Now they’re in a war with hard data over how much that work is worth, and they’re losing decisively.
Duke Cavinski, over 8 years ago
Agreed here. If one looks at design simply as a possible solution to a host of problems, there are going to be ways to measure how well a design does that, and designers should be responsible for it.
The problem, in my experience, is almost never: "this looks old and untrendy," so applying trends won't really ever be a solution.
A Wordpress or Squarespace theme, can, in fact, solve a problem for a client adequately, especially if homogenization isn't really an issue for them (think a plumbing company in midwest Ohio, for instance.) I never bemoaned that sort of thing, but rather thought this commoditization frees us up to solve other really tough problems that can't be addressed this way.
Now, the issue as to whether these otherwise tough problems are being simply being addressed in a poor, trendy and homogenized way, well, I suppose that's a real argument being presented here.
A Wordpress or Squarespace theme, can, in fact, solve a problem for a client adequately, especially if homogenization isn't really an issue for them (think a plumbing company in midwest Ohio, for instance.) I never bemoaned that sort of thing, but rather thought this commoditization frees us up to solve other really tough problems that can't be addressed this way.
I agree, but I think the same commoditization also creates new opportunities below the top-end of the industry.
For example, it takes considerable skill to create reusable work that is good enough to be used with minimal customisation but also still amenable to further customisation without spending too much time and money on it. It’s just a somewhat different skill set to creating a fully bespoke design for every client, still applying good design skills but with different priorities and constraints.
After all, a lot of the reason that your plumber in Ohio can now get a basic but reasonably professional-looking web site created in a single day for a few hundred bucks is that someone made that professional-looking WP template, someone made those professional-looking icons, someone designed that professional-looking font, someone took that professional-looking photograph to use in the background, and someone identified a complementary collection of those resources and combined them into an acceptable result quickly and cost-effectively.
All of these things require a degree of skill just like any other creative work. While I fear a lot of “real designers” tend to look down on the people who create stock resources, the quality of the best stock material today is nevertheless impressively high.
Mike Bulajewski, over 8 years ago
The first conceit is this incredibly arrogant presumption that being A Designer automatically makes someone superior in knowledge and ability to The Client
First, ad hominem arguments are unpersuasive.
Second, this is called the principle of division of labor. It's foundational to the way that modern societies are organized. Design is a profession (a specialized skill requiring many years of practice and training) and like other professions (lawyers, doctors, software developers), the professional knows more than the client.
So here, I suggest, is the real credible threat: hard data.
Empirically measuring the long term value of branding is quite difficult. Obviously its easy to test different logos and how they affect the conversion of a web page, but longer term studies of branding aren't quite so simple.
But your argument strikes me as motivated reasoning. You think hard data is the only important criteria because establishing that standard will offer you and your profession the highest level of prestige. Designers can offer other criteria which enhances their position. It's not a very interesting conversation IMO.
The fact is that designers get a lot of resentment because our contributions are so visible. Design tends to offend people who believe they're more deserving of the spotlight.
Design is a profession (a specialized skill requiring many years of practice and training) and like other professions (lawyers, doctors, software developers), the professional knows more than the client.
Sometimes, of course. Probably the majority of the time, even.
However, unlike lawyers and doctors and engineers in most places, design is not a regulated profession, nor in most cases is design work subject to any form of rigorous peer review or objective acceptance criteria. While good designers may indeed have many years of practice and training behind them, there is nothing to require this before you can call yourself a designer. Surely we can agree that there are plenty of people working as designers who lack any specific level of formal training, verified knowledge, professional experience or proven skill.
Of course a good professional does know their own field very well, because they spend their career studying it and keeping up to date. But even then, most real projects live in the intersection between the professional’s field and the client’s field, and most of the time the professional probably doesn’t have any particular expertise in the client’s industry. To get good results, both parties need to step a little into the other’s world. Even the most skilled professional is likely to produce bad work if they fail to heed a client’s instructions or take into account the information the client has provided about their industry. (Please notice that nothing in this paragraph is specific to designers. It applies just as much to all of the other professions you mentioned.)
And even if we’re talking about a skilled professional who has made a real effort to understand the client’s situation, you still get cases like the outsourcing scenario I mentioned before, where in fact your client may have considerable knowledge of design as well but it’s not their primary role on that particular project. They are delegating, but that doesn’t make them any less competent or qualified to assess the work that comes back, nor any less responsible if they approve sub-standard work from an outside source for use on their project.
In short, isn’t the type of argument you seem to be defending here — “I’m a designer, therefore [without any reference to the quality of my work] I know more than you and my judgement will be better than yours.” — exactly the kind of ad hominem argument you (rightly) say is unpersuasive? If we’re playing the ball not the player, shouldn’t designers be judged by their work, not their job title?
Empirically measuring the long term value of branding is quite difficult. Obviously its easy to test different logos and how they affect the conversion of a web page, but longer term studies of branding aren't quite so simple.
All true, but I think perhaps we’re worrying about entirely different levels here. If you have a new site with a trendy flat design and stylish monochrome line art icons and all that jazz, but then you do a five-person usability experiment and 5/5 fail to complete the test purchase because they couldn’t figure out how a web page worked and where to click next, evidently the design for that page is poor. Secondary effects like long term brand recognition aren’t worth much if the design is failing to meet its most basic requirements.
You think hard data is the only important criteria because establishing that standard will offer you and your profession the highest level of prestige.
No, I just think that if a designer produces work that performs terribly by objective, measurable standards, no amount of fluff about their motivation and the underlying concept and the detailed process they followed makes the work any better.
Certainly not all of the value of good design is so easy to quantify. Given two decent designs that perform similarly in handy data you can get hold of straight away, there is plenty of scope for considering more long-term and/or subjective value when making decisions.
But rather like asking senior software developers to write FizzBuzz in a programming interview, a remarkable number of supposedly qualified people fail to get even the most basic things right. All the clever and harder-to-measure stuff really doesn’t matter at that point.
In short, isn’t the type of argument you seem to be defending here — “I’m a designer, therefore [without any reference to the quality of my work] I know more than you and my judgement will be better than yours.” — exactly the kind of ad hominem argument you (rightly) say is unpersuasive?
I wouldn't say that's my argument. I think of design as a profession, i.e. a specialized skill requiring years of specialized practice and training. If you accept this definition, then its obvious that (in most cases) designers know more than clients.
The specific claim I was reacting to was that designers who assert their superior knowledge and ability and believe that clients need to be educated are arrogant. If you define design as a profession, that can't be right. That doesn't mean that designers know everything, just that they have a certain scope of expertise—but that fact doesn't exclude "stepping into the client's world" and so on.
Defining "designer" as someone with a certain job title casts a wider net. You mention people who call themselves designers but lack any real experience or training. Is it arrogant for them to say that they know more than the client? Probably. Should they defer to the client? That's hard to say. If you hire an untrained person to cut your hair, should they defer to you or should you trust their judgment? Either way, the result won't be good.
A second exception you bring up is designers who work for people who do have design expertise. This happens all the time. Lots of designers work for and with creative directors. Even if "the client" is a creative director, they still have to be "educated" on why a proposed design achieves its goal.
There are designers whose work fails basic usability tests. I see this most often with print designers who started doing digital design. Their work sometimes has weak affordances. I'd say this falls under print designers having the interaction designer title but missing some of the training and practice.
In design work that involves the company brand, there can be tensions between designers and non-designers in the company, who see the brand as a kind of mascot or personal emblem. Non-designers might say the work is too trendy, which means they don't feel comfortable with the style, they don't feel it is representative of them, they wouldn't wear it on a t-shirt, and so on. That creates debates about "why are the designers the only ones who get to decide!", and the notion that design is subjective is brought up. It sounds like a debate about aesthetics, but really its a debate about the audience for the design: for the client (or client's employees) or for the client's customers.
OK, by your definition, I would certainly agree that a [good, experienced] designer will usually know more than their client about design. I’m just trying to consider the bigger picture as well because, as in any industry, the highly skilled and experienced people are the top tier but most practitioners aren’t (or at least aren’t yet) operating at that level. Those who do operate at that level probably aren’t the ones feeling threatened by automated tools that produce so-so logos and thinly veiled Bootstrap-derived web sites, and I got the impression that those people weren’t really the ones Eli was talking about in this series of articles either.
Uh oh.. let the quote-gate commence.
Zach Taylor, over 8 years ago
I like your icon.
why gee Zach, thanks.
I like the boldness of yours.
Reminds me of this: https://youtu.be/IIW9sL-Yf6Q?t=53
Dean Hayden, over 8 years ago
Any tool that gives the average Joe the opportunity to be on a level playing field gets a thumbs up from me. Squarespace has given friends and old clients the opportunity to have a web presence they can be proud of without the expense of a custom theme / development and steep learning curve of a CMS.
I would say aesthetic trends have made this possible more than advancements in technology. But let's look at the core of those trends; use of space, typography, grids. The web has grown up and is such a nicer place than it was even five years ago. There are more parallels with traditional print design then ever and it's appropriate tone and style that should differentiate between aesthetics much of which can be done with content, photography and illustration alone.
The future of the web design is all there, in print and available at your local newsagent.
the premise is that skeuomorphic designs require more skill and expertise than flat design is flawed. the windows 10 icon set referenced in the post illustrates this well; bad design comes in any style.
(those icons, by the way, have already been replaced by equally bad skeomorphic icons in the latest build. they are still terrible.)
pjotr ., over 8 years ago
the premise is that skeuomorphic designs require more skill and expertise than flat design is flawed
I have to disagree here. The execution of flat design is much simpler than skeuomorphic. Take for example:
What color should this button be?:
Flat answer "Well it's flat! I'll just make it solid green"
Skeumorphic answer "Well the lighting is coming from a 90˙ angle on the rest of the elements on the page so I'll have to account for that. The backdrop behind the button is slightly green so I'll want to use that somehow in the rendering of the button. I want the button to have a sense of illumination so I might bring in a brighter green towards the top of the button where the light could have penetrated through a touch. The text rendering should feel embedded so I'll need some inner and drop shadow to account for that. Probably 20-25% darker than the base green, etc. etc. etc."
exactly. takes much more skill to make a simple design great.
It's more rare to find someone who intends to make "simple" design great.
I posted something similar in the thread about Part III, but I think it bears repeating:
The simplicity of flat design has, yes, made it so many people can create things without paying a designer. Perhaps that negatively effects the design profession but it has been an incredible boon to the rest of the world. Countless websites and apps are created these days that are visually successful due to the modular, repeatable, and simple nature of flat design. Great? No. But definitely successful.
I think there's more than a bit of resentment in Mr. Schiff's pieces — resentment that people are making things without consulting a designer.
The thing is for most people who aren't designers, the old days suuuckkked. If you were making a website you needed to find someone who could do it for you, and unless you knew where to look and had a decent amount of money you ended up with your friend's nephew, or someone who learned a few things by playing around with Dreamweaver on the weekends. And, really, even if you did have the money you might end up with some flash site that seemed like a good idea at the time but was impossible to update and horribly dated within 3 years.
Automated site building tools (Squarespace, Bootstrap, etc.) make the lives — and the websites! — of folks in these positions so much better, and by extension they make their clients' and users' lives so much better.
I'm not against Squarespace or bootstrap. Far from it. I simply argue they don't need to be paired with flat design. Flat design makes Squarespace and Bootstrap on their own sufficient to being a solidly designed site in the eyes of many business owners. Before flat design, these clients might have engaged with consultants to improve their visual design on top of a framework or platform.
Flat design makes Squarespace and Bootstrap on their own sufficient to being a solidly designed site in the eyes of many business owners. Before flat design, these clients might have engaged with consultants to improve their visual design on top of a framework or platform.
Are you arguing that this change bad? I can see that it may result in less work for designers, but on the balance I see this as a net win for the world.
It depends on the client and customer base. For users, it means visual monoculture, to use Frank Chimero's words. It also means for users more obscure and difficult to use designs, as I've pointed out higher up in the thread. For designers, less work in visual design. For the design world at large it means devaluing what visual design has to offer to the point that visual design is seen as unnecessary.
Mike Wilson, over 8 years ago I would take the time to write a detailed rebuttal, but honestly I don't think this discussion will go anywhere.
We're designers, not economists or art historians. Nobody knows where the future of communication will lead. And even economists have an extremely hard time predicting the future.
It sounds like you are scared and bitter (or even worse, just insincerely trolling for clicks). For me, that would signal that it was time to find a new career that will be more fulfilling.
Taron Ghazaryan, over 8 years ago (edited over 8 years ago )
edit: looks like image embedding doesn't work
Joe Blau, over 8 years ago It's been broken for a few weeks.
Dan G, over 8 years ago
See also: my profile.
Joe Blau, over 8 years ago LOL! Although I will say that I do like that 500 page.
Mitch De Castro, over 8 years ago
In regards to the debate about flat and skeuomorphic, I don't necessarily believe one is better than the other. Although, I do believe flat can feel like an excuse to put in the least amount of effort possible.
However, I've come to realize a shift in design as it's being centered around the idea of "products" as opposed to just interfaces so, I assume that flat is usually the go-to because it focuses more on the the content/function. (i.e. a weather app that tells it like it is in words instead of icons.)
Now, that doesn't apply to every design situation out there. I think homogeneity should be a concern because things get trendy and then all of a sudden everyone starts going with the same aesthetic just because; applying it to things that don't really need it or could've worked just as fine with a different style. Site-builders, automated tools, cheap logos should also be of some concern to us. I get that they appeal to low-balling markets but they also get more publicity than the $$$ branding projects that only designer-folks would know about so it becomes hard to justify design (at least in casual conversation) as a lucrative career and business when a lot of what's advertised as "design" is cheap and easy.
If my summaries are correct, I would have to say I agree with the points you've made: Flat design makes everything look easy. Implementation gives the okay for boring visuals. The trendiness of it all gives non-designers the wrong idea about everything because it looks simple and it's everywhere. And all the automated, weak-sauce, cheap stuff sorta benefits off of the flat aesthetic.
Login to Comment
You'll need to log in before you can leave a comment.
LoginRegister Today
New accounts can leave comments immediately, and gain full permissions after one week.
Register now