Web 2.0 Design Is Disposable Design
Tuesday, November 28th, 2006 by MR
I love when people put together their “top designer” lists because no two are ever alike — they always represent the subjective views and opinions of the list creator since design (and art) are both open to subjectivity. Andy Denton and Jason Calacanis just put together theirs. One person’s masterpiece is another person’s 00.com, so when creating a list you’re not really making a Top 10 Designers list you’re making a My Favorite 10 Designers list and there’s a big difference.
I just read a good article about Jay-Z in the latest GQ magazine, and one of the interesting things he talked about was the concept of making music that’s not just a flash-in-the-pan but everlasting and continually solid. Lil’ Jon makes club music that has a big beat but no symbolism behind it, so in a few years we just won’t listen to it because he makes disposable music. Jay-Z said that his goal is to always make classic songs and albums, ones that we can listen to over and over and always retrieve deeper meaning. I still listen to Reasonable Doubt (his first album, dropped 1996) because the entire album is comprised of classic, solid music. All the pop songs, jewelry raps, and emo ballads will soon be forgotten just like the vast majority of albums made in the 60s and 70s were forgotten except for a handful that were timeless and great.
Great design isn’t about mashing the latest trends together and throwing against the wall and seeing what sticks. So much of the design work I see in the industry today is what Jay-Z called “disposable” — designs that only represent the trends being used currently but will look foolish and outdated in a year, or a few months. If you want to see what classic web design looks like, just hop over to Stopdesign andCuban Council. Those two sites have looked essentially the same for years and are still two of the most beautiful agency sites out there. Doug took some stock photography and brought them into Photoshop to add new colors and linework, then coupled that with a solid layout (who else does 1/3rd width per column so eloquently?) and perfect typography. The Fantastic Four from Cuban Council have worked on everything from the iPod Store to Suicide Girls so their site is a pixelized feast with useful Flash additions and only the most relevant information shown. They don’t talk about superfluous junk like the processes they use, they just show you who they are and what work they’ve done. Usable and timeless.
Unfortunately, timeless creations like Stopdesign and Cuban Council are few and far between because design like that just isn’t appreciated in this disposable industry. Ah! That’s what Web 2.0 really means, it means that applications, design, and companies are disposable, flash-in-the-pan creations with no individual redeeming values. A dozen social networks, a hundred bookmarking sites, a thousand Office-replacement web apps, all with designs that look like this, this, this, or this. Plain sites with no zest, no visual direction, no classic layouts or typography, nothing to separate them from all their competitors.
The best visual design stands the test of time like a solid album, where you can visit it now and a year from now and it still has the same allure. Disposable design is me-too design, throwing the trends everyone else is using into a blender and then churning it out into HTML with no overall sense of visual direction, flow or cohesiveness.
Create classic albums, not disposable songs.
Reader Comments
16 Responses to “Web 2.0 Design Is Disposable Design”
Nice entry, Mike. I’ve never read another article comparing what Jay Z does and good web design before, but I think the analogy works on most levels. Although, you do mention Jay Z’s Reasonable Doubt and how you can still listen to it ten years later, but what about a lot of garbage he’s done between now and then?
Do you really think the best web designers really don’t diverge from their roots at all? Wouldn’t Jay Z say that he shapes his music based on what he feels at the moment and what society is going through? I just really think that most artists (web designers and musicians) would say that they adapt and grow through the years and that’s how it should be.
November 28th, 2006 at 1:13 pm
I agree. Web 2.0 is the new 1999-2000 dot.bomb–just waiting for it to explode and take all those cookie cutter “creations” (Massimo Vignelli surely would refer to them as “masturbations”) with it. I am so tired of reading about, “Web 2.0 this” and, “Web 2.0 that”. Other than exploiting delicious bookmarks and tabbed menus, what other redeeming quality is there, when everything looks the same? I’ll stick to web 0.9 please.
Brett
November 28th, 2006 at 1:18 pm
Thank you. Although this has been said before, it needed to be said again. But next time, put a gradient behind it!
November 28th, 2006 at 1:59 pm
I’ve found Mark Boulton and Richard Rutter’s guides to web typography invaluable in redesigning my own site — poor typography isn’t just aesthetically awkward, but let’s face it, if it’s difficult to read, I’m not going to bother.
November 28th, 2006 at 2:06 pm
Hey Spencer, I wasn’t saying that Jay-Z should continue to talk about the topics he did back in 1996, only that the album itself is timeless and still has the allure it did ten years ago. Some of the music he’s released since then has been too commercial, or disposable, but I don’t think his overall *goal* was to make disposable music. Lil’ Jon’s goal isn’t to remark on societal issues or make people think about what he says, it’s just to make a song that will be a hit for a few months and then forgotten.
“I just really think that most artists (web designers and musicians) would say that they adapt and grow through the years and that’s how it should be.”
Well of course, all musicians and artists pick up things along the way that influence them, and growing is a good thing. I was commenting on how people are picking out certain new trends and mashing them all together rather than integrating them within a solid design like they’ve always done. Design techniques are being used not because it enhances the communicative process between the site and the user, but because it’s the “in thing” to do regardless of it matches with their userbase or goals. There’s nothing wrong with using gradients or pastel colors if you’re doing it for particular, positive reasons. If you’re just dropping them in with big, bubbly type because it’s the “Web 2.0″ thing to do then that’s just stupid.
There are “Web 2.0″ companies that have excellent design, blending new trends with existing best practices — Newsvine, Wayfaring, LinkedIn, Mint, Crazy Egg — but those are far outnumbered with people who just slapped big text on a page and called it a day. That’s what I was trying to get at, that there are ways to blend “Web 2.0″ design into a solid interface but few spend the time to do so.
November 28th, 2006 at 2:14 pm
Mike: I completely agree with what you’re saying about keeping a steady foundation and then building with functionality in mind rather than just what’s trendy. It’s really nice seeing that in websites like Newsvine, which although I don’t use their website, I think is the best web design currently out there, period. It blends unbelievable functionality with what’s new and innovative nowadays.
November 28th, 2006 at 2:49 pm
I agree completely, Mike. Nice post. I think at least some of the “big text on a page and call it a day” thing comes from accessibility and usability culture being taken a bit too far.
There are those who believe that accessibility/usability and captivating visual design are at odds with one another. That you can’t have both, so you should err on the side of function, instead of form. Some of these people would have you believe their “big text on a page” is a visual design statement — and in some cases, it is. But more often than not, it’s boring, ugly, and distracting. I’m all for simplicity — but there’s a difference between boring/plain and minimal/elegant. The difference, largely, is in the details.
One can have both a usable/accessible site and a great visual design. The two are not mutually exclusive. Sometimes, there are trade-offs. But, there’s a balance to be struck, and I think many of these “big text on a page” sites either don’t believe it’s possible to achieve this balance or simply don’t care to.
November 28th, 2006 at 2:51 pm
Jay-Z’s newest album is a critical flop, how does that play into longevity? Additionally do you ever notice that the best designed “Agency” sites are always one to five man jobs? It seems like any Agency over 5-10 people is incapable of cutting through the paperwork and putting up a decent site instead of flexing their design/development muscle. Websites are getting to a point where they all look the same, and no offense this one and many others I enjoy are included. (I think Airbag touched on this) It’s all verse-chorus-verse, content-links-footer. Not that I have some grand solution or anything but it’s time that sites stopped concentrating on shiny gradient buttons and thought about maybe NOT looking like they’re a modded WordPress theme.
November 28th, 2006 at 3:02 pm
Hey Joe, I don’t know if I would call his album a critical flop — it nearly went platinum in its first week of sales. Forgetting about the sales figures though, there are a bunch of solid songs on Kingdom Come: Lost Ones, Do U Wanna Ride, Trouble, Beach Chair, and I have no doubt that he could pull 3 or 4 singles off the album and sell each one successfully. I agree that tracks like Show Me What You Got and Hollywood aren’t very representative of the type of music he likes to make, but not every song on an album can be a classic. Hell, Reasonable Doubt sold less than 500,000 copies its first year but it’s still heralded as the best music he ever put out. I don’t think anybody can say with certainty whether Kingdom Come is an amazing album or not yet, but time will be the verdict I think.
“Additionally do you ever notice that the best designed “Agency” sites are always one to five man jobs? It seems like any Agency over 5-10 people is incapable of cutting through the paperwork and putting up a decent site instead of flexing their design/development muscle.”
Totally agree here, and I think it has to do with spreading the creative process too thin. Larger agencies have to cater to larger audiences, larger clients, the press, etc., whereas small firms or one-person firms are still doing it for the love. They’re not trying to prove themselves to Fortune 500 company marketing departments, they’re just trying to do good work but the large firms might be interested in selling out for the dough instead of doing it for the passion.
November 28th, 2006 at 3:18 pm
Are you sure you’re not referring to the “Web2.0 aesthetic”?
November 28th, 2006 at 4:39 pm
oneLotus doesn’t make my top 1000. omfg.
November 28th, 2006 at 5:49 pm
LOTS of design is disposable… I don’t know that we need to single out just “Web 2.0″ sites. 90% of the online stores out there have horrible, boring websites. But no one writes about that… because it’s not buzzworthy enough?
November 29th, 2006 at 10:10 am
Hey I’m glad you didn’t take that as a slight on your design style, because I certainly didn’t mean it that way.
Jared, I don’t know if you were referring to me or Mike, but I wasn’t speaking about just Web 2.0. There are plenty of very nice sites with original style that still look like modded Wordpress templates.
Anyhow back to Jay-Z, yes there are some solid tracks, but for the most part (to me anyway) it seems pretty lazy as compared to the Jay-Z of old. Jay-Z could record himself pooping and it would go platinum though ;)
November 29th, 2006 at 12:15 pm
There is a lot of trendy design going around the CSS world. We are a fairly incestuous community as we’re all watching each other and building off of the trends. Part of me has worried about whether or not that means I have originality as a designer, but then I think about the similarities between the work of the great designers of major art movements. I think we’re just in the middle of a period that has a definitive aesthetic: drop shadows, gradients, cartoony-plasticy-icons, intense colors, etc.
I think there will be sites that become the defining examples of this era much in the same way a Alphonse Mucha’s Job Cigarettes poster is iconic of the Art Nouveau period. Conversely, there will likey be many examples of sites that don’t offer anything fresh to the 2.0 style that come off like bubble gum pop songs.
November 29th, 2006 at 2:55 pm
Interesting, the Jay-Z comparison. It’s the end of a long day of typesetting, so I can’t really formulate a cogent thought around this, but one of the promises of Web 2.0 is the potential mashups that can be created. So, too, with Jay-Z and his A Cappella Black Album, now remixed with Weezer, Nena, the Flaming Lips, and more.
There’s something there, but I’ve got to get back to my kerning.
November 30th, 2006 at 6:25 pm
So true. And so possibly true of all the work I’ve done.
December 18th, 2006 at 8:45 am
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