writing » net working
Attention clients: Beware of geeks bearing GIFs. The days of getting the systems guy or gal to whip up the corporate Web site are long gone. Creating effective and memorable design projects on the Web requires the keen eyes and skills of trained visual communicators.
Many traditionally-trained graphic designers have grudgingly learned the basics of Web coding just to stay conversant with clients who are demanding Web presences as part of their media campaigns. HTML is kludgy and boring, they whine; the layout problems are nightmarish, and the bandwidth limitations suck the life out of rich graphical endeavours.
Other designers, however, have happily jumped on the Web bandwagon, embracing its design challenges and revelling in finding good communications solutions in a dynamic new medium. The bottom line is this: The Web means business. It isn't going away — in fact, many believe it's only achieved a fraction of its potential, and is on the verge of an explosion.
What is clear is that there are an increasing number of opportunities for designers to jump into interactive jobs. The question is: “Do they have the skill-sets?” What do you need to know before choosing a career in Web design or moving into new media from traditional print design? What are the challenges and hot issues?
Cameron Wykes and Darren Wilson know the answers. Both are former print designers who now do much of their day-to-day work in pixels instead of picas.
“The core design skills are very portable across different media”, says Wilson, who started his career doing packaging and corporate design at Toronto's Russell Inc., and who now spends most of his time doing Web work at Reactor Art + Design. “It's just a matter of learning the ins and outs of what new media can and can't do.” Does he mean adjusting to its limitations? “I don't think of it as a matter of limitations. It just has different capabilities and different solutions”.
Cameron Wykes agrees: “Interactive media is more about graphic design than anyone realizes. The challenges are largely the same as those in print, except you're working in a 216 colour palette, and you have to take into consideration the fact that most of your viewers are looking at your work on a 14 inch screen.” Wykes is the creative director at Medialinx Interactive, the creators of the Sympatico and Bell Advantage Web sites. Before that he set up ad agency Palmer Jarvis DDB's interactive group, Enteractive, and did freelance print design for several years.
Is being web literate a must for today's (and tomorrow's) designers? “They don't have to be HTML coders, but they absolutely have to be aware of the parameters”, says Wykes. “They have to understand how it works”. Both he and Wilson teach graphic design at their alma maters (Sheridan College and York University respectively. Producing marketable graduates in today's demanding corporate world is a challenge.
“We went through a period where design firms specialized more in or multimedia”, says Wilson. “Today, we're getting back to design firms that do everything- that offer one-stop service to their clients- or design consultants who work with everyone involved to create an integrated campaign. It's to the students' benefit to be conversant in both, it makes them more valuable as designers.”
But let's face it, anyone who has spent any time surfing the Web has to come away pretty under whelmed by its design side- it's still an information driven medium. “I've had some really great clients that valued design very highly”, says Wilson, “but there are a lot of clients that are willing to spend huge amounts of money on servers, connections and programming, and design falls by the wayside, and into the hands of engineers and programmers. Sometimes we have to push to get the standards up to where we want them”.
Still, that's changing. The technology is ever-improving, and some of the drag-and-drop programs are now so well crafted and efficient that by the end of the year, many Web projects won't require designers to get their hands dirty with HTML code at all.
There are still clients who “look like you shit in their hand” when they see a reasonable price quote from a Web designer, “but people will soon start to realize that there is an expertise involved that is worth the money”, Wykes says. “When they start seeing award-winning sites that really hit home, they'll realize the difference. They'll see what they're paying for. And there will be a huge demand for designers that can give it to them”.
I sat down with both Wilson and Wykes in May — over beers, wings, and brio. Here is that conversation.
GORD: First off, why did you two move from print to Web design?
CAMERON: To avoid going to 3 a.m. press approvals (all laugh). And ironically you can't avoid it. As the resident print guy, probably my most notable achievement at Sympatico will be their package design. You can't hide.
DARREN: I haven't left the print world behind. I still do lots of print work. For me, the Web is just another medium. I mean, last week I was working on a Web site, two packaging projects-a cereal and an orange juice-and a couple of logos, and that was bliss. I've been offered all sorts of creative Web design positions, but I don't want to live only in that world. If I weren't doing that range of projects, I would be so bored.
GORD: Perhaps the biggest challenge Web designers face today is the stylistic limitations of HTML. With the latest tools such as Frontpage (and others) spitting out simple ready to use Web code from any document, anyone can publish pages. How can a budding designer's Web work stand out?
CAMERON: If you want your kid to slap up your Web site, with no finessing quality to the HTML, with no design savvy, that's fine. But if you want to sell a product or subscriptions, or increase traffic, a knowledgeable Web designer will have a whole set of tools, skills and solutions to accomplish your goals. It really is thinking beyond just how the thing looks.
A lot of projects really need a reality check, an honest assessment of their goals and how to go about accomplishing them. It's like it was at the beginning of the desktop revolution; when Illustrator and Quark first came out, the boss said “I'll just slap Quark on my secretary's desk and she'll do the annual report”. The Web is in that same space. All of a sudden anyone can do it, sure. But it always comes back to designers to solve the mess.
GORD: What is unique to Web design? Is it interactivity? I mean a magazine is pretty locked in to pages 1 to 100, and the reader can see the whole thing in front of him and open it up anywhere he wants ...
DARREN: Quark space is very two-dimensional and linear, and that's print. The skill in designing interactive media that work well, is being able to envision the information in 3D instead of thinking of it as linear, or even as a tree structure.
It's not like looking at the directory structure of your hard drive; it's not top down like that. It's a hybrid of this lateral and vertical space; you need to see the options that are explicit to a certain amount of depth, and then you allow the user to dive in at their chosen level.
CAMERON: Most, if not all, Web projects are basically hard core information design. Information and utility is the first thing to present, graphics and illustration come second. It all comes back to the conceptual sketch: is there going to be an ad on the page, and if so does it have to be at the top ... you build your architecture around the elements that have to be there: the feature blurb and sub feature blurb, the exits from the page, the utilities that are available...
GORD: But isn't that getting away from the usual conceits of graphic design? I mean, is the Web done best as just pure information design? Does a good Web designer have to be conversant with, say, perl scripting and the kind of information that can be pulled and presented from a database....
CAMERON: Absolutely, you have to understand what kind of information you can present, or else you fall back on the laurels of just making it look good. You've got to consider that the viewer should have many options-maybe chewing through 75 book titles by author, title or review, for example... a lot of the time it's hardcore engineered information design.
GORD: So the designer also has to be a bit of a propeller-head?
DARREN: I think our role as visual communications designers is to have a firm grasp of all that is possible with a certain project; even if you just blue sky something and say 'Is this possible?' you can work with really talented people who can execute and help you bring together a concept.
GORD: Are graphic designers really the ones to be leading Web projects? You need so much experience on the back end to develop good sites.
CAMERON: You need to be well versed in both sides, both sides of your brain, how cgi works, how dynamic HTML works, where there is ambiguity is in the interface and the utility, and then you need your standard information design skills, to put the frosting on.
GORD: Are there things that are better done on a sketch pad, rather than a raster or vector program?
DARREN: I find starting from scratch on a project very difficult on a computer. Usually I start sketching with a pen and paper, because it helps me stay fluid in my problem solving process.
CAMERON: It depends on the approach and the job, as Darren says, but if you've been mulling something over in your head for a day or two, you might want to get right on the computer and start generating it ... that's not the right face, it should be Mason ... maybe I should lighten up the blue.
But if it's a case of starting from concept stage, you always sketch out rough stuff on paper first, to deal with the proportions. You come up with a bunch of ideas, and then you take them to the computer.
GORD: That's using more traditional design skills ... so you're not working from the Web backward?
CAMERON: Again, it depends on the project. If it's a print-based job, like a logo for a company, you've got to think, well, it could be embossed, it should work in one color, in four color, in grey scale ... there's so much more to consider than just slapping up a GIF on a Web site.
DARREN: A lot of Web-based businesses don't really think much about how their identities will translate into print projects, and you end up with a lot of iconic drop shadows and bevelled stuff that becomes problematic when you move to print. To me, it's still all about communication.
GORD: What's the equivalent of a Web designer in the print world? Is it a magazine designer, an annual report designer, an ad creative?
DARREN: I think it's probably more the annual report designer. If you break those down, there are a lot of components, there's the corporate fluff and then there's the meat-the stats-but that's usually buried in the back; oh, by the way we made a billion bucks, and here's your stock dividend. That's what most of the Web is about.
I mean most of the stuff out there is just corporate billboards, look at how great we are, look at all our great products...
GORD: ...but that's the wrong way to go...
CAMERON: But it's the way the Web is now, it's an evolutionary step. People are just starting to figure it out-to figure out the utility.
GORD: You both teach and lecture to traditional design students. What do you tell them to focus on, skillset-wise? Is it Milton Glaser or is it Photoshop?
DARREN: I encourage them to focus on problem solving. The course that I teach is a second year studio which is open to non-majors, so I get people who are specializing in design and visual arts, and I get people who are studying kinesiology and economics-a broad spectrum.
I just try to instil a basic level of visual literacy, and start from there. Get them to understand the process. For those people who are intent on pursuing a design career, I always encourage them not to specialize. The whole field of design is becoming so diverse, it's the people with diverse skillsets who excel.
GORD: I'm betting that you'll disagree with that approach Cam.
CAMERON: I have a totally different philosophy than that. With the Sheridan students, I say, if you know you have one talent, to use that talent as a starting block, and then build on that. I lecture to second and third year students, and I go through their portfolios. In a lot of them, I can see the curriculum there-you know, the poster project, the logo project and all that bullshit.
I tell them 'You can only excel by showing above and beyond what they're teaching you to do, and you do that by focusing on what you do best. If you have a talent for illustration be it in Freehand, Illustrator, or with a pen, then fatten your portfolio with that. If you can kick the shit out of anything you've seen as far as Photoshop is concerned or photography is concerned, even though your a graphic designer, then put that in there.'
GORD: So maybe the answer is to be a generalist as far as knowing the landscape, but be ready to dive in and use your strengths?
CAMERON: Be bold, experiment. Now, the kids I get at Sheridan are trained in print-based skills, but I tell them not to forget that their skills will be needed by Internet companies, by advertising companies, by marketing companies ... I tell them not to focus only on jobs at Russell, or Gottschalk & Ashe, or Bang or whatever; don't think 'If I don't get a job there I'm sunk.'
Go to the BBDO's, go to the Vickers and Bensons, the smaller marketing firms , or the Internet companies. What you have will be useful to them. Let your environment force you to learn what you need.
DARREN: When it comes down to it, the core skill set is the same regardless of medium. The ability to anticipate and understand the problem you're solving. To present information in relevant and useful ways that communicate a goal. Good fundamental design skills can be applied to any medium. Only the tools are different.
GORD: But by the time a sophisticated layout gets to the Web, all your kerning and leading and careful placement goes out the window, because your dealing with default text and all that. These students who are taught to think inside that box, where are they without those tools to fall back on?
CAMERON: If they're open minded enough to say a design challenge is a design challenge regardless, then they can rise to it. You want a design challenge? Take Geneva 10 pt., and try and lay it out in white space and make it look elegant-that's the Web. Color of type, visual hierarchy, relative point size to other elements, bolding , spacing; that takes talent.
DARREN: It's learning how to prioritize your information blocks. The design fundamentals-how the eye gravitates based on type size color, density-apply to print, to Web, to broadcast; they all have certain technical challenges to overcome.
GORD: Are these things limiting or more challenging?
DARREN: I don't see any limits, and that was something that was always taught to me- there are only requirements you have to meet. Functional requirements, information requirements, technical requirements or production requirements.
GORD: What would you look for if you were hiring a Web designer?
CAMERON: Well, someone who knows Photoshop, who knows markup inside out. Someone who has come from a design background and found the time to develop and learn Web skills, and about the medium. On the other hand, you're not going to find someone who is an art director and give them a Web production job- they'll grow weary of it very quickly.
The two people I have working for me went to the Academy of Art and Design, and were given the stripped down basics of Web and multimedia design , but they are still responsive to color theory and typographic issues.
GORD: Are they cranking out HTML or are they cranking out graphics?
CAMERON: Well, it's funny, because they both have exactly the same education, but one has turned to really finessing html code, and the other one has returned to the Illustrator and Photoshop schools and is more concentrating on kerning for display, color, etc. They compliment each other quite well.
DARREN: I teach 3D Design at York University. The most frequently asked question I get about the course is “What software are you using?” [points at his head and hands] This is the software and this is the hardware. To me the biggest challenge is to teach them the conceptualization and visualization process, how to start, work through, and finish a project.
If you already have strong design skills, and want to get into 3D animation, the private academies and community colleges have excellent programs, and they can be much more responsive to market needs because they haven't got the massive inertia inherent in most universities when it comes to changing direction.
GORD: Let's change direction for a while. How much do the marketing initiatives effect the design process? Do they say that the ad banner is the most important part of the page from a business model standpoint and it must be fully rendered by the browser before the rest of the page appears?
CAMERON: [On Sympatico's Canada 411 page] we use ad banners, but they sit below the fold so they don't load in first, we put height and width tags so the rest of the page renders before the banner does, and people can be already inputting, and clicking.
This becomes a issue with Net Gravity, our ad serving people. From a design standpoint I don't want a page to be waiting for Net Gravity's server to serve up an ad. Something as simple as that can piss users off to the point where they won't use the service, and then how effective is your page?
Ad banners aren't the way content sites are going to generate sustaining revenue; the way sites will survive in the future is through transaction, the buying and selling of stuff, not ad revenue.
I mean why make an automotive site that will generate a few grand in ad banner revenue a year when you can make a site where people can research and order parts, or even whole cars right there on the page. Or talk to a mechanic, or order a magazine or a manual. People are too wrapped up in the technology. If someone ran into Sympatico and said 'Forget the ad banners let's develop sites that are going to produce transaction revenues,' you'd still get resistance. They can't let go of the banner model.
GORD: Aren't you going to compromise the editorial integrity of your information if you're just shilling for product?
DARREN: But aren't you then more unbiased because you're not supporting your car site through ad banners from GM?
CAMERON: Our Personal Finance site currently has an ad banner for Scudder Funds right at the top and to my mind that's shilling in a bad way; it's saying the content of this ad is more important than the content of this site.
GORD: In a magazine you always know where the ads are, and there is a pretty solid line between editorial and advertising; on the Web that distinction gets blurred so many ways. That's why the 468x60 banner became a standard: it said to users 'I am an ad,' so there was no confusion.
But new techniques and presentations are trying to obscure the advertorial and editorial content-'sponsored by,' or a contest-and all this gets dropped on a designer's plate to try and make sense of it and present it in a relevant and honest way.
CAMERON: I think that's dictated by the content of the page. If we have an auto site like Ignition and GM said we're going to pay you a million dollars to make this GM's Ignition page, we would lose all integrity for everything that was on that page. You would know there was going to be a bias.
GORD: But as a designer, when the marketing folks come and say, 'An ad banner goes here,' you say, 'No it doesn't go there because it compromises what's around it'?
CAMERON: Very much so, to a point where the ad banner becomes a part of the product. I mean, we've got to have the client's logo on this annual report, which is a fucking ugly logo, how do we generate a cover for this Annual Report so that we minimize the ugliness of this logo, and still produce a beautiful report-it comes back to design savvy. How can we work this in so we're not going to upset the client, and still produce good work.
GORD: Okay, who's the client on the Web?
CAMERON: It depends on what you're doing. For Sympatico, the clients are our subscribers.
GORD: Is that a mission statement?
CAMERON: Absolutely.
GORD: Okay I'm calling bullshit. That's maybe what everyone says, but in reality the clients are the advertisers.
CAMERON: (laughs) Well, in that case, the clients are paying the bills, yeah. But we're also a dialup service provider so our clients are also paying our bills.
GORD: Okay, change of direction, how much information can you get on a page? With attention deficit disorder, how many scrolls before a user is lost to another click?
DARREN: I've read some really interesting usability studies of the Web, and they all say that people don't read on the Web, they skim- they don't want reams of information they want little bits and pieces, a taste ... I mean it really is a battle for eyeballs more than anything. We've gone past the information economy to the attention economy.
GORD: But eventually they want to get somewhere, they want to get some Meat
CAMERON: Then they print it out (all laugh). I know that's kind of sad, but I'm the same way. E-mail longer than a paragraph, I'll print it out- go through it and highlight something maybe, refer back to it. So print is dead, eh? Yeah, sure it is. Think about how many trees have been used for Web for Dummies manuals.
