• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Margie ClaymanMargie Clayman

Marietta, OH

  • About Me
  • Marketing
  • Librarianship
  • Random Musings
  • Contact Me

What is design?

September 28, 2010 by Margie Clayman 1 Comment

Last week an article came out from Smashing Magazine titled “Does the Future Of the Internet Have Room for Web Designers?” Our web guy at work sent me a link as soon as it came out and then @LizStrauss, among others, tweeted it over the weekend.

I have a lot of thoughts and sentiments about the issue. As an agency person, I would love to tell you that there is only one real answer to this question. I have a bias.

There is something I would like to add into the mixing pot, however. I think sometimes that in the marketing world, people think “design” just means “how something looks.” People say that a well-designed ad is good because it is aesthetically pleasing. The design of a website is judged on how the website looks and any fancy, cool programming the site offers. This is part of design, but it’s not the only thing. Design in marketing is like architecture. A good architect wants the building to look pretty, but she also wants the building to work the best way possible.

In the information age, information needs to be accessible

The argument that Smashing Magazine makes is that people aren’t really visiting websites anymore because everything is becoming app-based via mobile devices. When people do go to websites, they want the site to be simple, easy to navigate, and they want it to be attractively utilitarian. To me, this would be a reason for more web designers, not fewer. You see, a web designer’s ultimate job, when it comes right down to it, is to make sure that a person who has no idea where they have landed can find the information he or she is looking for. Drop-down menus, easy navigation, sensible site maps – these are all part of what web designers offer.

In an era when content is king, it seems to me that this would be the ultimate time for web designers and web design to shine. Companies have key pieces of data that they want visitors, leads, prospects, and existing customers to find. While this seems easy, it takes expertise in how the web works to bring other people into a world and, without live support, help them find not only what they need, but also what the website owner wants them to find. It takes a nuanced balance of giving information and selling. It means walking a fine line between offering enough information to avoid frustration, yet also enticing people to stay a little longer and dig a little deeper.

Not just an online question

The article in Smashing Magazine is symptomatic of what is going on throughout the marketing world. “Oh, we don’t need those people, we don’t need these people. We don’t need professional photographers, right? We don’t need people who have studied art and graphics because we can kind of sketch things out now, and there are programs that make it serviceable. And after all, people are just after information. They don’t care what things look like.

I have my doubts about how much of that is really true. I think that people want to access information with ease, but I think they gravitate towards places that make the search pleasing and maybe even fun/informative. Whether we are talking about an ad, a sell sheet, or a website, “design” means more than just making something pretty. It’s making a beautiful cooking knife that glistens in the kitchen light and cuts a can as easily as a tomato. It’s making a car that makes everyone jealous and yet also has great gas mileage.

That’s what design means to me. How about you?

image by Zsuzsanna Kilian. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/nkzs

Filed Under: Marketing Talk

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. DogWalkBlog says

    September 28, 2010 at 8:02 am

    Join us in the next #letsblogoff http://letsblogoff.com

    You may find this set of articles especially interesting. http://letsblogoff.com/what-is-design.html

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Previous Post: « An agency is like Prego Spaghetti Sauce
Next Post: What kind of symphony is your life? »

Primary Sidebar

Recent Posts

  • Seeing Double: African American Literature
  • Book Review: Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow
  • Book Review: Land of Lincoln, by Andrew Ferguson
  • The portrayal of the infertile woman in entertainment
  • Chapter 3: A Weird Thing Happened Today

Recent Comments

  • Delores Baskerville on Are you locking out blog subscribers?
  • frank c tripoli on Book Review: Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow
  • Lyv on #30Thursday number 10 (we’re in the double digits?!?)
  • Fitoru on New Recipes, 2013
  • Anna Wyatt on Help me petition to deactivate driver-side airbags for Little People

Archives

  • February 2021
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • April 2017
  • October 2016
  • July 2016
  • April 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • December 2014
  • October 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • February 2014
  • December 2013
  • October 2013
  • August 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011
  • July 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • October 2010
  • September 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • June 2010
  • May 2010
  • April 2010
  • February 2010
  • January 2010
  • December 2009
  • April 2009
  • March 2009
  • February 2009
  • January 2009
  • December 2008
  • November 2008
  • October 2008
  • September 2008
  • August 2008
  • July 2008
  • June 2008
  • May 2008
  • June 2007
  • April 2007

Categories

  • Book Reviews
  • Crafts and Charity
  • Gardening for Renters
  • Marketing Talk
  • Molly Maggie McGuire
  • Musings
  • PassionPlayers
  • Uncategorized

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org

Footer

marjorie.clayman@gmail.com

   

Margie Clayman © 2021