What does it mean a good Web design ?
A rectangular space with thin, gray borders. A white and tight paper on which you have to write ideas, concepts, words, conclusions; it all must create images, states, emphatia, comfort… As it does a painter's canvas. Support for a reality or for the imaginary. This way it can be described the browser's window on which the designer is manifesting his ability. And as in the case of the painter, what he has to say it must be evident and of course each time different.
So that the Web design has certainly a motivation and more, a finality. Besides it's multifunctional role, the information even structured must be attractive. Way beyond it's content. There aren't many that would buy poems written on napkins! The information got nowadays so many forms that one is inventing almost monthly new words to redefine it. No matter if we talk about a text, an image or a relationship between certain objects and the sensation their layout gives, the information must be legible as much as transmissible. The abstruseness of an artwork is prohibited in Web design with the exception maybe of the personal sites in which the expected effect is that of extravagance.
Web design is a trade similar to tailoring or hairdressing. What it produces is customized for every client, made especially in order to present it as personal as possible. The Web page or the entire Web site must give an integrated impression the curious visitor needs to associate the trademark or the company with. Hence the expressions' diversity met all over the Web, corresponding to the huge number of individualities.
What makes a good Web design? Inspiration, I would say. And a lot of good sense. It may cause you wonder what I just said. Why didn't I mention about talent first? Well, because unlike a picture, a Web page has to offer useful information in a special way not artistic ecstasy. Not this was it made for. Moreover, any Web design needs the information the page will be built on. It is known for quite a time that fine Web pages start from fine information. So that an important part of an (in)success a Web site can have comes from the information therein.
Finally there is another factor which I let it at the end, not accidentally but in order to make it stay longer in your memory. It is the teamwork. That is what makes a difference in the case of complex Web sites. In the far past the division of work made the evolution of every known civilization; nowadays dividing the whole site creating activity in definite tasks and discharging them by qualified personnel can give the chance to apply a design with real chances of success. Graphics and animations became much to complex to be done by a single person. Making text with evident psychological effects belongs to another occupation, as those working in advertising know well. Not at last, what we would do without the help of those people in the back that "power" the search engines, databases, audio and video streaming?
It is not simple to design Web pages. But what is? The satisfaction a Web page with thousands hits creates worth all the effort.
Simple solutions, fine information, good taste graphics, teamwork, respect for the visitors that don't have neither the ultimate technology nor the connection to the backbone of the Internet are the recipe's ingredients. All of it adjusted with some inspiration means a good Web design.
martines
June 2001
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