Why conceptual Art Sucks

Just read Fresh Styles For Web Designers. I seem to be about 2/3 Htminialist and 1/3 Gothic Organic. Yeesh. And here I just thought I was me.

A lot of designers seem to be focused on overcoming the web’s shortcomings. Hence the large selection of books purporting to teach designers how to work with the web, how to teach non-designers to work with the web; hell, how to teach cats to design for the web. But the web only has shortcomings if you insist of looking at its properties as shortcomings. For someone trained in oils, watercolors have a lot of shortcomings. The same thing applies to print folks who get thrown into the web. They want a level of control that it still isn’t always rational or possible.

For someone who first learned design by working with the web, print has a lot of restrictions. A smaller color space. More color costs more. Changing content requires a re-run. Trapping. Overprinting. Spot colors. Ink viscosisity. Dot gain. Varnishes. Die cuts. Thermography. Finish processes. Spiral binding versus saddle stitching versus folding. Lots of very technical stuff that one needs to be familiar with for one’s work to well, work.

So I think that most of the folks who bewail the restrictions of the web aren’t really looking at it correctly. They’re looking at the web like it’s supposed to be print, and shame on it for not behaving correctly! I think we still don’t know what the web is. Maybe in ten years we’ll have a better handle on it.