

We Do Not Need You To Design Anymore - inmygarage
http://journal.drawar.com/d/we-do-not-need-you-to-design-anymore/

======
morisy
I think the underlying, unstated point - that the industry is disrupted -
holds, but misses out on a bigger, more interesting point: There is a huge
need and opportunity to help craft the total experience, and those skills are
costly and go way beyond what you can get at the budget freelance sites.

I can guarantee you that neither Foursquare nor Zappos used a $500 stock or
contest design, and I'd bet even money that MyTown, so deeply derided, spent
more on design and art than either of those (not including salaried
employees).

There's been undercutting forces in design for years. A decade ago a penny-
pinching retailer picked a punk high school kid to do his website (disclosure:
I was the kid) to save a few bucks and got a servicable if uneven product.
Today he'd do 99designs and get the same. Real designers learn how to create,
communicate and sell their value in tangible ways.

------
mikeocool
I think the author misses the point of what a really good web designer does.
Most of the websites you visit probably don't exhibit award winning visual
design, but I bet a lot of thought still went into the design of the user
experience.

Certainly Google's no winning any awards for the visual design of their
homepage, but they released it in a time when every other search engine had a
'Portal' on their homepage. On yahoo, lycos, excite, etc. search was one of
like 200 modules on the page. It actually probably took some unique thinking
and design for google to say "Let's make search the only the on the page."

You can certainly buy a theme for $500, but that theme isn't going to be
designed for the optimal user experience for interacting with whatever it is
that makes your site unique.

~~~
tptacek
Respectfully, every designer in the world says this, and if you believe it
without question you are setting yourself up to pay whatever _they_ say your
problem is worth, despite the fact that _you_ are the best judge of how big an
issue design is or how out of whack your UX is.

~~~
morisy
Now _this_ is a good point.

We (<http://muckrock.com>) launched our web app with a $30 stock theme and it
was, in my opinion, the right decision at the right time. We still happily use
it, and when we shopped around for designers, they were asking hundreds at the
low end for work we found subpar.

On the other hand, a media site a friend runs recently invested heavily in
design after years of frugality because advertisers demanded it, and the
investment's paid off in dividends.

Ultimately, outside experts shouldn't dictate your company, whether they are
designers, strategists, or even lawyers. You should, and in many cases forging
ahead with a budget design, plain-english ToS or other off-the-path choice is
the best one for your business.

------
systems
Ok, I think we probably need new words.

Picking the perfect font, colors, making the perfect graphics is an important
and in my opinion completely different task, than making finding products easy
by for example reducing the number of clicks required and such

Let use Vim as an example, the design of the interaction between the author
and text is completely separate from the colorscheme

Interaction design, is not the same as Look and feel design is not the same as
graphic design

I notice that most of the time, we speak of all design categories
collectively, which really hurt the debate

A good interaction designer is not necessarily the same person as a graphic
designer

------
Hyena
This sort of thing is weird to me. I don't have a problem with these services,
but the whole "this changes everything" meme has got to stop. We've been
through this every decade since, I imagine, the printing press. We still have
designers, people still pay them, etc. People who don't appreciate or need
designers insist that this makes them obsolete; they're almost certainly
wrong.

I suspect that no one who says this sort of thing would actually hire a
designer unless absolutely forced to. 99designs, et al simply replace the
hapless employee whose incidental knowledge of graphic software would have
otherwise put him in the uncomfortable position of building the website. It
likely also saves some GD an annoying round of emails that go nowhere.

Both are thankful. Neither are hurt.

------
tomelders
"you and I may understand [the importance of design], it doesn’t mean others
do. Especially when they can point out success everywhere around them that
goes against what we believe in."

That's a great point. I think the article ignores a lot and may even be a
textbook example of confirmation bias, and I don't think the author
understands what good designers do, or more worryingly, why an off the shelf
theme couldn't have worked for say, Facebook or Google Maps.

But that one point above is worth taking away, and something designers should
think long and hard about.

My own personal opinion is that you can't polish a turd. But when you polish a
diamond, it's makes quartz look like shit.

Full disclosure: I'm a designer.

~~~
tptacek
As an entrepreneur, I do not necessarily see it as a win when you imply that
part of your life's goal is to convince otherwise contented users that I need
to spend more money on typography.

~~~
tomelders
no one is saying that, at least, I'm not saying that. If you're happy with
what you have then good for you. If you want to look at ways to increase a
sites performance, then you'd do well (amongst other things) to have a
designer lend you a hand.

But the choice is always yours.

Since you brought it up though; If you understand typography, you understand
why it's important. You could take every other design embellishment out of any
design and Typography would still be able to do most, if not all of the heavy
lifting.

But I'll stress the point lest I be accused of forcing this opinion down your
throat: No one is forcing you to adopt a designers viewpoint, and I'm not
saying you're wrong if you don't.

------
mikeryan
If you think that design is just about making a layout pretty you're missing a
large chunk of what designers do.

Go ask Happy Cog what went into the redesign of Zappos and how much of it was
just making the site "pretty" compared to the amount of time making it easy to
find products and convert customers.

BTW linking to the websites of what are primarily mobile apps is pretty weak
sauce.

~~~
tptacek
Zappos needs Happy Cog. Most YC companies do not.

------
SeoxyS
So let me get this straight... just because good design is not the deciding
factor to success, it makes it OK to settle for mediocrity?

Are you in this to make a quick buck, or to make a truly great product?

