
The Dying Art Of Design - fogus
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/04/08/the-dying-art-of-design/
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SlyShy
I can't believe _Smashing Magazine_ is writing this article. They soundly
missed April Fool's Day. If there is a single thing I've seen Smashing
Magazine promote, it is imitation and mindless copying. Their analysis of
design is consistently surface level, of the likes of "Look at how this deep
blue makes this brand look expensive, also curved corners". The result is
"designers" who can make a flashy site, but have no underlying knowledge of
usability or _taste_. Taste is something sorely lacking in a lot of design.
Design should be useful, not ostentatious.

Anyway, I like imagining how laughable a Smashing Magazine equivalent for
programmers would be. "15 Great For Loops and Iterators"

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jamesbritt
' Their analysis of design is consistently surface level, of the likes of
"Look at how this deep blue makes this brand look expensive, also curved
corners". The result is "designers" who can make a flashy site, but have no
underlying knowledge of usability or taste. '

So, _is_ there a site or a book that teaches (to the extent possible) taste?
Because it's not just Smashing Magazine, it's most sites and books on design
that I've seen. They focus on certain mechanics without much to help you train
you mind and eye to manage higher visual concepts.

The few that are not simply prescriptive how-to's are in turn too vague about
notions of attractive design and aesthetics. Or they trot out the Golden Ratio
which, while good to know, mostly helps you make designs that are attractive
in a practical way, rather than truly striking yet not overbearing.

~~~
matrix
I have found that the best grounding in aesthetics and design is learning to
draw. This teaches you to truly 'see' and gives you basic techniques like
appreciating white space and better ability to perceive color/tone values.
From there it's much easier to learn and apply principles for creating
satisfying compositions and color theory.

Once you have the fundamentals in place, the next step is to learn about more
specific graphic design topics like typography and grid layouts.

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synnik
All irony about the source of the article aside, I think that they are missing
a demographic shift that underlies the topic:

Just as people are calling themselves CEOs and entrepreneurs without much
actual business experience, likewise are people calling themselves designers
just because they know HTML/CSS enough to create a web page.

And applying those labels to yourself is fine -- they are technically
accurate.

But in the past, there was an implied level of the depth of expertise in a
field before one would claim such labels. What we have lost is not the
expertise. There are still designers with very deep knowledge of the art, who
apply is very effectively. I'd even guess that there are more of them than in
the past. But they are overshadowed by the inexperienced designers who claim
the same title.

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taitems
Reliance upon lists? Reliance upon how-tos? Reliance upon tutorials?

Is it just me or did Smashing Magazine take a long hard look at its archives?

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kilian
Highly ironic.

~~~
chime
I even got a Getty images ad on that page. Thought it was pretty amusing.

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hopeless
I thought Bob the designer saying "Yay!" to the death of design was pretty
good: <http://tweetphoto.com/17624519>

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terra_t
the thrust of this article is good, but there are a lot of annoying details
such as: (i) no content above the fold and (ii) he cites "How to draw comics
the Marvel way" but shows an illustration of two D.C. characters underneath
it.

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dgabriel
I noticed the DC characters, too. I will give the author the benefit of the
doubt, though, and assume he did not select the accompanying images.

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terra_t
Normally I would, but if you're talking about fundamental issues about quality
in graphic design, I'm going to hold you to a higher standard than the usual
blog entry.

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shalmanese
This article should be more accurately titled "The Dying Art of Design among
those who never went to design school and don't know anybody who went to
design school".

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llimllib
Who is voting up this schlock? On Hacker News? Really?

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sree_nair
Someone who loves a bit of irony?. It's so sad that a site talking about the
art of design and creating something which can't be copied has a pretty
ordinary site template.

