

The elusive goal of lasting beauty in web design - pascal07
http://www.elezea.com/2012/01/beauty-in-web-design/

======
nsfmc
_People use architecture all the time._

I think what's lost in this is the fact that architecture, once constructed,
is fixed in space and barring any unforeseen disaster, is necessarily used on
a daily basis by a group of people. It is often prohibitively expensive to
raze a structure and start anew, is that a constraint we have in web design?

Architecture fosters an ongoing relationship that evolves over time: shock
turns to acceptance, cleverness becomes irritation, etc. The relationship
between the thing and its consumers is no different between architecture, the
abandoned ipod or even the humble webpage, but we adjust our expectations
differently based on how quickly we can replace them.

Fadell's point in the article, i think, is that we shouldn't expect all
consumer products to be disposable, which is why i think he uses architecture
as his foil.

I think it's unfair to say that web design as _thing_ doesn't fit into the
environment or that it doesn't have lasting beauty, but it certainly doesn't
generate the sort of physical artifacts that people romanticize in any of the
other graphic arts. You can yank a poster off a bulletin board and hang it on
your wall, but you can't very well do the same with a website. Let's be
honest, that page might not even be there tomorrow.

Finally, are zines timeless? Newspapers? Posters? Movie advertisements?
Craigslist? By what metric do we assign that label? Why? Are they really
timeless? Don't they all echo the hopes and fears of their times?

