Communication Arts is considered a leading source for design in the U.S. I have been looking at it every now and then, ever since I got my first copy in hands in 1991. They have have published yearly annuals too, about topics like photography, design, typography and interactive design.
If you compare Communication Arts as a magazine with others in the industry, they have been followers, not pace makers. Hong Kong based iD magazine does a better job covering what is moving the design scene. (But their website could be more Web 2.0.)
I think Communication Arts has a conservative approach towards design, which doesn’t make it bad, it’s just not a leader in visual arts. It’s covering the arts and crafts of design on an established level, giving a good cut of the design mainstream. For this, I had a lot of respect for Communication Arts. But their views of design and mine, and those of the entire Web movement, fall apart.
Communication Arts considers two aspects of interactive design as good Web design. For one, they look at how beautiful a page is made. If it’s got a cool look to it, then it must be good. Second, they love Flash, because it is serving this purpose perfectly, overcoming all obstacles web developers have to fight with, like a limited set of fonts or helping to create animated interfaces.
The problem is, this is not what web design really is about. These days, the very idea of how to design a website has changed entirely. We don’t have 2001 anymore, but apparently Communication Arts thinks so.
If Communication Arts would take seriously what is going on in web design, and if they would focus on real design issues, they would have to consider other elements than pretty pages. They would have to look under the hood of how something is made (which is the actual design process), considering things like W3 standard compliant code, or accessibility. Because considering accessibility of a website is a part of the design process.
I just browsed through the list of past years winners of the annual contest of Communication Arts. And to be frank, it made me shake my head.
Two out of three websites awarded by Communication Arts were made entirely with Flash, and the first thing the first page does is running a script that blocks my entire screen. Blocking a screen when opening a page, taking up its entire space, is considered intrusive behavior. It is bad for the user experience, a design flaw that should not be tolerated. Websites doing this should certainly not get an award for ignoring the user’s preferences.
The list goes on. If you browse through the websites awarded by Communication Arts, you’ll find all sorts of strange candidates. But nothing that is really innovative or noteworthy in terms of good design. Maybe pretty design, but that doesn’t necessarily fulfill the circumstance of “good design” for me.
I don’t know if Digg.com ever participates in such contests. But they should get an award for best user interface of the year. It’s really a big improvement on many levels, if compared to the previous version of Digg. Their new design serves its purpose perfectly, and it puts the user experience in focus, without being obtrusive.
How come Communication Arts is so disconnected from what is really important in interactive design? The reasons may be historical. They were first all about graphic design, which covers mainly print. In print design you have never to think a lot about taxonomy, standard compliant websites or anything close to user experience.
Everything in traditional graphic design is focussed on impression, not the user experience. Letting go of this concept of design, that impression comes before the user experience, is something the old league of designers has a hard time with. If you were free to use any color, shape, font, position, cropping any picture you like, adjusting it with absolute accuracy, then it’s hard to understand what is so different about designing something that’s used interactively.
Designing for the web includes interaction, which is in the very name of Communication Arts’ contest. It requires considering contributions from people. It requires flexibility in thinking, and a lot of it. It requires you to let go of the idea you can control everything.
I guess Communication Arts, or the people behind it, are still driven by this old spirit. And the old spirit is not something we should get rid of entirely. It just hasn’t anything to do with what interactive design is about.
Or maybe they should just make a name change for the contest. From “interactive design” to “lovely pretty looks on the web”.
Resources
Communication Arts
Communication Arts Interactive Design Contest
I haven’t been paying too much attention to Communication Arts’ Interactive Annuals. This year I got it at the office, and I paged through the winners and was scrunching my eyebrows. With all that happened in Interactive media in 2006, these were the standouts? The commentary in the editor’s column made things even stranger. Did they accidentally publish the 1997 editor’s column?
Scott McAndrew, September 18, 2007 10:29 PM
I think there is a disconnection between some traditionally successful media and the reality of the design scene. The scene has changed, enriched by a crowd joining who were coders or autodidact designers.
But the standards that are important in nowadays Web design aren’t from tomorrow. They are based on principles that have been ruling for a long time in fields like architecture and engineering. Why is there a split between print designers and online designers?
Maybe because print designers have gotten lost in indulging themselves in “it looks pretty” and forgotten what it feels like to hear “it works so well, you almost don’t notice why.”
Henning, September 18, 2007 11:05 PM