One of the biggest problems in the web development industry is the volume of artists under the DELUSION that they’re some sort of “web designers”. They seem universally devoid of any knowledge of accessibility, HTML, CSS, browser limitations, bandwidth concerns, or any other meaningful piece of engineering knowledge essential to good design.

Simply put:

Design is engineering that incorporates art as one of its many facets. It is not art unto and of itself!

You can see it time and time again in posts on forums, site owners having chosen so-called designs riddled with artsy-fartsy nonsense at scam artist whorehouses like AWWWARDS, and articles across the web. Sure they can be really pretty, but are they actually useful to users?

That question: “Is it useful to visitors to the site” is the make or break for the difference between web design and art. And we’re not just talking the perfectly sighted at the perfect resolution and default font-size the ALLEGED “designer” was using.

Actual design involves taking into consideration accessibility, speed, ease of use, limitations of the medium, specifications, and all sorts of other things the majority of people out there calling themselves “web designers” are utterly ignorant of.

When I say automotive design, or architectural design, or aerospace design, do you picture some skinny-jeans wearing dork in a man-bun sipping his rancid burnt Starbucks latte with some goofball name for its size, spanking their crank on a graphics tablet in the back seat of their Dodge Aries K? Or do you instead think of a nerd in horn-rimmed “sterility glasses” with a pocket protector, seated at a drafting table double-pounding a pair of large Dunkins dark-roast frozen coffee double-cream double-sweet whist browsing auto-trader looking for a replacement windshield washer fluid sprayer nozzle for their Saab 900 Cabrio?

A Comparison Of An Artist Vs. A Designer

The difference between the two is oft lost on the layman, but becomes apparent if you take two real world examples of the two and hold them up side by side. One of the best pairings for this in my opinion is the difference between Ralph McQuarrie and Chip Foose.

#css #web-design #html #art