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warning: long rant ahead, so be thankful that someone invented the scrollbutton. perhaps it's because it's late, perhaps it's because i'm tired & feel that i've seen enough airports to last me a lifetime (just back from 2 more busy days in Sweden & i can still taste the horrible airline food at the back of my mouth)... - but i actually find myself staying more & more clear of "real" design sites, and instead spend my online hours visiting sites that are more focused on content, than on flashy glamour (flashy as in sparkly, not the technology). you know what i mean: the brilliantly-written zeldman.com, the intelligent simplicity of 37 signals the overwhelmingly personal harrumph these are the sites that bring me joy, and which keep me coming back for more... they're not particularly fancy, nor overly "designed", they don't use all the latest technologies - they're just interesting, in a plain ol' "this is very good"-sort of way so... what's wrong with me? am i getting too old, am i over the hill at 25? am i getting, shudder, boring? or is the reason behind my jadedness simply that there is too much CRAP out there, that there are too many design sites that have no decent content, no idea, no form, no goals? have we all become a community of complacent wannabies, with 20 second attention spans & an unnatural obsession with the latest & greatest internet technology, but lacking in even the most rudimentary design theory & skills? people who steal, sorry, are "inspired", by other peoples' works so much that all websites look alike? where's the Miika Saksi, David Carson, Neville Brody, insert name here, of the new century? where's the people that'll help shape the web, help define the future, show us what we've done wrong & how to fix it where is the fucking content? i'll rephrase that: what's the fucking point? but, then again, perhaps it's just me - wallowing in self-pity, feeling that i needed to waste your valuable time bitching & whining like an old man. ----- mschmidt / K10k |
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Wow. I don't know what to say. Thanks for kicking me in the pants. ----- six |
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you're not getting old, dude, you're growing up. i'm 28 and agree with you wholeheartedly. despite the fact that were all creative in nature, the fact is, if you don't SAY anything with that creativity, then you're wasting your time. in my case, i use my creativity to sell my web site design services. why? because i simply don't have the time to sit around and make stuff up, or to play around with flash actionscripting all day. when responsibility becomes more a part of your life, some things take a back seat, and, unfortunately, one of those things is "free" time. quite often i sit at the computer and stare at wonderful things that people have created. and i wonder how in the world they have the time. then i remember that they're probably still in college and don't have to mow the grass or fix the leaky gutter on the front of the house. do i have some things to say with my creativity though? you bet. but like i said, free time is limited, and it may be a LONG time until some of those things make their way onto the screen. so, what happens then? well, if you're like me, you really enjoy taking a look at sites that DO have great content. sites this this one and praystation. that feeds the business side of my brain. but i still always follow the links that are posted here. links to those elaborate "art" sites, because it is those sites that show keep me excited about the web, and about where we're going with all of this. ----- randal rust |
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I agree with your rant about content. I probably visit most "pure design" sites only once or twice, then I just forget. I visit designgraphik and submethod a lot of times, but thats because he's one of the people who most inspires me. Thats why I try to blend my site with design AND content. The web needs more fucking content! :-) ----- Skizz... |
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You're dead on. I'm just coming out of school, well actually dropping out of a 4 year institution to hit a new media school, and am in the process of conceptualizing my own webpage. Looking at your links, I am always impressed by the 'pretty' things I see...I really am. But I've always had this nagging feeling going away from the page. "Was that from somebody's soul...or was it a advertisement for macromedia?" I too have noticed some BEAUTIFULLY technical, complicated things that in itself must of taken many long nights of headaches to produce...but for what? Are they really expressing anything...or are they doing it just to prove it can be done...like cloning sheep. *sigh* It's all a bit disheartening to think about. But you're not the only one feeling this way (you know that now), and now *I* know that *I'm* not the only one feeling this. So there must be others. :) Content will prevail...this feeling only motivates me more to provide real emotion not just 'eye candy'...which may provide some interesting, fucked-up content that isn't just jagged vectors and opacity filled layers. ----- Brian Reynard |
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I am seeing some things happen: here's my two cents.. what's happening you say? you are being inundated by a load of shit. Someone figures out a way to do something, and then the entire industry has to rape it for the next three months. Take example: The opening graphics for Saturday Night Live. The classic, horizontally moving color bars, from fade to fade, revealing what's underneath. I am not really sure if this is wehere the trend began, but you see this crap on every friggin site that contains flash. All this flash shit is going to drive me fucking nuts soon. Are these same flashscripts ever going to end? There has to be a functional use for them. somehow...maybe I am just babbling. It runs the same chapter of the rounded corner box that flooded design in years past. Once pronounced into light, the rounded box was a slave to everyone calling themselves a designer, I mean...come on... Don't expect that if you put that fuckin thing in the design that it is going to make it good The same goes for flash, same shit different day. praise the supafamous for finally saying it - where is the fuckin content? It's like modern movies of the past 10 years, a flood through hollywood, the rise of digital effects in movies. It's like an excuse, they get 40 billion to do the film, and they spend a DOLLAR AND TWENTY FIVE CENTS on the script!!!!!!!!!!! what the fuck?!!!! YOU ARE NOT GETTING BORING my friend, you are getting older and far wiser past your years. You are becoming a perfectionist in your trade, and you can spot crap from a mile away. I understand your problem, that everyone is doing the same fucking thing - and it's scary.. > have we all become a community of complacent > wannabies, with 20 second attention spans & > an unnatural obsession with the latest & greatest > internet technology, but lacking in even the most > rudimentary design theory & skills? no - just some of them, not us...there are always going to be the people that make those sites, those shows, those ads, those books and those movies and there are all those sites - they are all looking the same - it is true - we don't have to do it..some people will if someone jumps off the bridge, someone will always follow. the smart ones - build a new one (with a built in PS2, sound system, hot tub, dancing ladies, and a communal hooka) there are people - REPEAT THERE ARE PEOPLE who thrive to make difference in induct change throughout. Us (being design folk) see it constantly because it is so fuckin accesible nowadays. It's like going to a museum where everone from picasso to my dog could display their work. change, always change - new faces - all the time keep em guessing, never the same black one day - white the next offend them and then swing them around with your love never known - known now change - force it enforce it ----- Peter Reid |
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You know, here I am sailing through the summer with hopes of taking part in some sort of personal design exploratorium. But what happened? I didn't want to make shit. And consequently I've been filled with this unsatiable desire to create, but haven't "sploogied" yet because I haven't found a click who'll let me do it on her fa... err I mean a good enough, solid enough, idea to fly with. I completely hear your side, your point, your... view. It's frustrating to say the least that so much crap gets put out there. So many sites with not a damn thing supporting them, claiming an entire existence on hip design. And that's where the split lies. The dichotimy between those sites who have design fuled by solid content and those fuled by "fame" very neatly organizes indviduals into categories of creative people, and thoughtless people. To create a site with no content foundation, unless of course, it's purpose is to display design, is rediculous. Essential, it comes down to the egotistical boost fostered by having your link on other "underground" peeps sites and getting fan mail from equally boring and creativity-lacking followers who want to create a site of an equally pathedic and worthless nature to have your pathedic ass link back to them (and yes, this is a run-on-sentence). God bless K10k for building around the content. God bless kiiroi for building around something solid. God bless and give a few hookers to all the sites who have the content, even if centers around turbin wearing, red sox fan, lesbian bookshop owners from cambridge. ----- craig mod |
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don't worry it's not you... it's the web... it's growing so fast and so quickly that only the strong will survive .. cliche cliche cliche.. we're all doomed to a decade of half ass work that is artsy because it can be... ----- mike pasquale |
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Har også selv undret mig over om jeg er ved at blive for voksen til den følelseskolde, indholdsløse designscene i en alder af 21. Dit indslag giver mig grund til at tro at det ikke er sådan. "Designscenen" er en stor familie, hvor inderkredsen dyrker incest med de mindre kendte onkler og afkommet bliver så en tons af lort man har set 20 gange før. Som det issue i har oppe nu hvor designeren skriver at det tog 2 uger at indse at konceptet ikke var noget koncept. Hvor kvikt, vi har både set det før og undskyldningen virker glimrende til at lave det samme uigennemtænkte, men stil-baserede vås som giver designeren credit for at være "med på moden". "Talk the talk, walk the walk" - men det bliver ikke til andet end talk the talk. Det er tankevækkende at den MTV-generation vi hadede så meget, er ved at overrumple os bagfra fordi man åbenbart har stirret sig blind i dette had. Hvad var idéen - hvis der nogensinde var nogen? Teknologien bevæger sig med flash'ens fremskridt til at gøre computeren og internettet til endnu et sted hvor man kan se TV. Et overfladisk sted der blot vil underholde, et stort ulykkeligt bæst der kun viser os det man tror vi vil se. Design handler ikke om 'motion' - det handler ligesom alle andre håndværk om at forstå sin historie, tilegne sig viden og blive bedre til at forvandle design til et sigende virkemiddel. Omslaget på en bog skal ikke blot være "kick ass" men netop illustrere historien, fange målgruppen, være et stillestående mesterværk. Måske er grunden til at vi ikke har set særlig meget af denne symbiose mellem indhold og design, at designere simpelthen er for intetsigende, ikke tør tage stilling, ikke aner hvorledes de skal omforme ord til grafik. Ingen ved endnu hvad internettet er og hvad dets hovedformål skal være, men personligt ønsker jeg stadig at det skal være et stort bibliotek hvor man kan finde sin historieopgave, sin porno, folk fra andre kulturer end ens egen, finde mere end man i grunden ledte efter. Design må så være den indbydende indpakning, der ikke længere skal være aktuel eller trendy, men være smuk i sin funktionalitet. Og det er vel netop essensen; vi laver indpakning. Men det holder sgu ikke at pakke en fisk ind i en smart t-shirt fra Kangol. Ville ønske jeg kunne slutte med "indse det eller dø" men så konsekvent kan jeg desværre ikke være overfor den hær af lort der hænger i min browser. dag ud og dag ind. ----- Anders Hornstrup |
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Your are not getting 'boring' etc.... I would say you are recieving insight, the truth. Content IS (/SHOULD BE) king. Content FIRST t-h-e-n Design. Design should help to Communicate and 'frame' the content. Design is after all, a mode of communication. 'true' design is sooooo much much more than the 'eye candy' that tries to pass itsel off as 'design' > where's the Miika Saksi, David Carson, > Neville Brody, insert name here, of the new > century? where's the people that'll help > shape the web, help define the future, show > us what we've done wrong & how to fix it think Paul Rand, Tibor Kalman. > people who steal, sorry, are "inspired", by > other peoples' works so much that all > websites look alike? the key to doing that is taking the inspiration, and bringing it to another level. adding your own voice. > or is the reason behind my jadedness > simply that there is too much CRAP out > there, that there are too many design sites > that have no decent content, no idea, no > form, no goals? unfortunately there are tooo many 'design' oriented sites whose only content (psuedo-content) is them showing us " hey look what I can do with PhotoShop!! " ----- EMG |
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i've got some down my sleeve :) ----- Johan Raes |
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you know, i feel you when you say everything looks the same.. i try and change things up daily... it brings more joy to people including myself when they know what the heck is going on... keep it up.. ) ----- mark arcenal |
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I understand the point you made about pointless design. Sounds to me like you're getting burnt out. I used to work at a game site. You get to see the latest and greatest games, yes, but you also have to go through a lot of crap. Don't let the stink of all the shit you have to go through dull your senses to the future directions of design. Remember, the more junk that people throw out there, the better the chance of there being more gems in the pile. It's like Darwin's theory of evolution. There's no master plan. There's just a lot of monkey's, and apes, and ants, and other critters running around, and the best of breed will survive and move on. There are dumb monkey's and gifted monkey's. Unlike the rest of us, you probably get exposed to many more gifted monkeys than any of the rest of us. :-) Building a business is the same way. The faster you fail, the faster you learn. In every failure (or bad design) there's a lesson to be learned. If you learn more lessons than everyone else, that makes YOU smarter. If you're smarter than your competition, your chances of winning or increased. Or, for design, the likelihood that your designs will excel will be much higher. Revel in the blandness and mediocrity of the sites you receive, even if one happens to comes from me someday :-). Keep sifting through and finding the gems and talented monkeys. It'll be worth it. ----- maurice wright |
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I, too, am feeling the same way. Maybe you should remind people . . . "You are not your fucking website" ok, thanx. Back to Mac Diablo2. WOOT ----- c!nder |
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it's ironic to hear you say these things given that james and i are on the cusp of realising the •••••••• project - which has been in gestation for over a year now. it's also particularly ironic because we are about to launch a new and revitalising section on THREE.OH that deals explicitly and entirely with the subject of content on the web. so i guess i'm saying: welcome to shoreditch give us a little time and i know how you feel (i think) ----- stanley |
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I work for my own technically oriented design firm, and I'm building a giant, information-heavy website that's based on innovative backend, not presentation technology. I'm the creative director (and a fairly good and experienced web designer), and what I find overwhelmingly is that there are simply _no_ good sites out there that are about content or information. I read k10k and threeoh and designiskinky and all the other avant-garde design sites daily, but I have never seen a lot of information presented elegantly. Every week Communications Arts presents another site serving up a paragraph per page while we're stuck with the awful aesthetic of sites like eBay or the arguably worse non-aesthetic of sites like Yahoo! Everybody bitches about corporate sites being poorly designed - but nobody's yet designed an elegant, information-driven site anywhere on the web. When people start building those sites (as I'm trying [unsuccessfully] to do right now), we'll see a design community which has some relevance to the web at large. I'd like to see someone rebuild Amazon with usability, information architecture and design all in mind at once; not yet another extruded-until-the-end-of-the-world designed-site clone. Thanks for saying what needed to be said! ----- Josh Rothman |
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I've been visiting design sites for the past 7 months, compiling an astronomical amount of links and such, getting a feel for what's on the net. But I find myself never going back to these great sites. Why? Well, like you said, we need good content. Which is why K10K, Three.Oh, H73, Kiiroi, Zeldman.com, and DIK is on my Favorites Bar. I wanted to take a sec to explain to you what I'm working on. I wanted to keep much of it a secret, but today, when I read your rant, I find it necessary to explain my project because I want to secure your feelings that there is a great website coming. Not to get on my high horse or anything, but I guess you could say I'm working on a •••••••• type online site. That's the closest comparison I can think of. Take a look at ••••••••. I've got some kickass ideas for a great mix of design and content. I've never been so excited about something in years and years of being on the web working on my animation portal, staytooned. But I gotta tell ya, it's your site that has really given me that "inspirational launchpad" (that everyone touts as their header) to want to change my major to design and put together a site that I hope will someday gain your approval. STATIC IS KING, keep your head up Michael. Maybe you should try putting K10K on avantgo.com. That's where my site will be going. Palm shite, that is. ----- Moggy (Evan) |
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Your not getting boring man your just starting to see past the lovely 3d shapes, clever use of colour and type and see what the first focus of a great website should be, content. I can apreciate a really nice looking site and I know I am influenced by what I see out there these days but I would choose something like theletters.org over the next great piece of flash work anyday. ----- Scott Brown |
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old man!?!?! at 25? HA. these phases of thought will come and go and come and go and come and go. nothing to do with age. you will be loving what's next. and there always IS a "next." this stuff's just stagnant for now. don't sink toooo low.....(i believe airline food has a chemical effect on the brain, which you are experiencing) maybe the content is missing because the web has become a big forum for designers / artists / programmers...who can self-publish any bit of crap they feel like putting out there. imagine if a city was overrun in a matter of a year or two by lots and lots and lots of art galleries because the spaces were suddenly "free" to any artist who knew how to sign the papers...you might see a tiny bit more great or smart art, but mostly you would see crap. that's what the web is like. thank the gods for jeffrey z. (i remember the day he left work 5 years ago with "HTML for Dummies" and came back the next morning and told us all to look at his website....blew us all away with essentially the same website that you see now, and it kicked ass against any art director sites....and he wasn't even a designer. he was a writer/creative director!) we are just experiencing growing pains. (thanks for your crazy ramblings....keep chowin' on that airline food!) ----- Suzanne Terhorst |
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per your rant on k10k: I couldn't have fucking said it better myself... You have always had my respect, and what you wrote, well hell, you gained even more of my respect.. or maybe it's because we are both 25 or whatever, ah hell, I dunno.. =P I can see all the little web design groupies saying it now... "complacent wannabies? is he talking about me?" haha ----- bryan |
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I read your rant today... very interesting points. As you no doubt know, I work along side of one of the content kings, Zeldman... I have recently been talking to Zeldman, Gabe (Born Mag), Kris (Spark Online), Carol (NetDiver) and others about an idea... Gabe, Kris and I are going to be meeting up in Portland this next week to talk about.. well.. a lot of stuff.. one thing I am going to bring to the dinner table is an idea that has been stirring in my head... it's about collaboratively building something that everyone can use and has "valuable" content and design. The thing it will NOT be is about just us, it will not be an elitist thing, it will not be a "exclusionary" group or network, it will not be a money making machine.. it WILL be about bringing "value" back into the (for the lack of a better word) scene... it will be about bring people from all walks of life together, not unlike what we saw at Project40... it will be about actually making a mark in the world today... I am talking about something that will be there many years after we have left these lives we live... something for the future generations of web designers and graphical designers so they can share our experiences by learning about them first hand.. so we can, so to speak, pass the torch. I have no idea what will come of the conversation around the dinner table between me Gabe and Kris... Right now it's only fragments in my mind.. bits and pieces of ideas floating around... I am hoping something will fuse together at this meeting... something brilliant... I am hoping something that we all can be proud of and something we and others can see as a great accompaniment, even several years after we have passed on. THAT, to me, is something meaningful. I know I probably got you thinking and if you have questions I am not 100% sure I can answer them at this time. All I know is that something will come of this and hopefully it will be something good and very meaningful ...for the better of the scene... for the better of us... for the better of tomorrow's designer. Thoughts? Questions? No need to send money, the brain works without a dime. ----- nick finck |
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PREACH IT! Sincerely (and hoping form ALWAYS follows function), Over The Hill at 29 ----- robert |
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...and cut with the old man crap, dude - I just turned 26 and you're not helping with my late-twenties angst. as for your k10k post, me and my good pal sarah work together at this mammothly gargantuan corporation in australia. we started on the same day and we've stuck together pretty fiercely ever since. just yesterday we were having a good laugh about being in a meeting and having to put up with a client (another woman colleague) describing what we do as interface/web designers as "prettying up the site". another man in the meeting labelled us "the revlon ladies" - and i can't remember the exact words he said now (i'm traumatised...i'm blocking it out) but it was something to the effect of what god gives women, revlon makes up for - comparing this overtly sexually opressive and capitalist statement to our technical team providing a blank but functional site, and us web designers then making it aesthetically pleasing. where cindy crawford fits in here I am not sure. as you can imagine we waxed lyrical to this dickhead for a fair while after this comment - but he was probably not listening but studying our lips tryin now i'm moaning and whingeing to you like an old crow. sorry dude. k10k is my web saviour. i don't know how I found the site in my travels but it has injected some much needed inspiration into my life. but check out the new wallpaper site, gee i love that publication but i am really disappointed with how distinctly their site lacks gripping content. it is so pretty that a few pages in you just know that the site is like this thinly disguised balsar wood movie set, and just a little finger prod would tip the facade in all of one second revealing little more than a cloud of dust and a few bashful, disbelieving crew members. anyway thanks for k10k. it just...rocks my world, really. don't be disheartened and don't let the lack of content out there poison your own admirable content efforts. there are a few really excellent creators down here in australia and sooner or later they are going to be unleashed. i'll let you know when they are. ----- georgie |
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let me guess -- too much too soon? yeah... hang on, you'll make it through. btw, zeldman sucks. biggest whiner out there and he can't design or conceptualize his way out of a paper bag. ps: go out get drunk and get laid -- do you good :-) ----- randall |
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Just read your 'rant' on k10k... havta say, i've been feeling the same things lately to the point that sometimes i feel that i might take 'timeout' from the internet and come back when at least the methods of idea implementation are standardised. I'm sick of having to focus on gadgetry and gimmicks to get the attention of an audience but unfortunately it's what clients want and what seems to work with audiences now. it's early days though. everyone's still vying for VC and when the technology becomes transparent again, the content will shine. Don't let it get ya down. ----- andrew knott |
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following your rant, i do tend to agree but after a very long night working on a very ugly content heavy, but still fuckin ugly site i see the point that everything has its place. i do however agrea that i some times feal like i have seen it all before. ----- Rich McCoy |
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i agree with everything you say in your 'rant' but i can't help thinking that k10k has helped encourage the type of vapid empty 'decoration' that passes for design on the web. as you know, k10k was a huge inspiration for me to start ::dplanet:: and i have great respect for both yourself and token as designers and thinkers. however, in your (laudable) attempt to create a strong and friendly design community, k10k has neglected to foster an intellectual, critical environment. like you, i have increasingly turned my attention to the kind of critique and debate encouraged by zeldman, kottke and others. the whole focus of ::dplanet:: has moved away from attempting to foster a design community (partly because there was no way i could compete with k10k!) towards a more critical approach. I am much more interested in the views of hans_extrem, david hofmeyr, zeldman, kris from *spark-online, Reinhold Grether etc... i am sick to death with the undisciplined 'super-cool' often talentless, self-satisfied and self-referential online design community. this kind of anti-'decoration' backlash is long overdue! i am very happy that you have used k10k to make this protest. young web designers have an enormous amount of respect for you and k10k carries a lot of weight. i am always amazed when i see guys like final.nu saying shit like, "fuck zeldman, he's a loser" simply because he stands for intellectual creativity. as someone who has studied both fine art and philosophy, i was especially impressed by what mike (method) said at project40. the problem with most young web designers is that they have no design methodology, no foundation and no substance. all of us who believe in these ideals need to practice what we preach. i really look forward to seeing the kind of reaction you get. ----- Damian Stephens |
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[well since you ranted you get to hear my thoughts out loud..] I think that your rant is a reflection of a couple of things: :: sensory overload :: the generally superficial nature of design (remember josh ulm's eye candy..that is what it was all about.) :: the lack of quality behind the content. last summer while in Hamburg working with Fork I was really feeling the overload and started thing about the possibility of developing optic cancer. Cancer in the eye caused by looking at too much design. It really doesn't matter, good design, bad design... to much perfume will make you sick. That hand painted sign for gas on a wind blasted board in the middle of Utah can be so relaxing to the eye. Find yourself looking at signage as you walk around criticizing the use of typography, color, layout? It isn't healthy, but can't really be turned off now... the price of being a professional. The web as entertainment needs a lot of work. What I really don't understand is the number of people flocking to the web to be entertained. Look at heavy.com. The games and movies on heavy.com are so inferior to what you see on bad tv or what you would play on your Playstation. A lot of it has to do with the novelty. Look at very early movies had how excited people would get at watching a train move. But I suppose a certain amount of it has to do with the user feeling like a master over a medium. But eventually this will wear out. I suspect that someday you will see more and more subscription based services appearing on the web. I don't see how you are going to be able to get much mass "quality" content otherwise. Ultimately it comes down to what you look at. If you look at everything you are going to see mostly crap. Go to any "open" art festival or fair. But once in a while something true and brilliant comes along, like Sissyfight. ----- John Weir |
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long time listener, first time caller RE: your last post on k10k: > warning: long rant ahead, so be thankful that > someone invented the scrollbutton. > perhaps it's because it's late, perhaps it's > because i'm tired & feel... HOLY F#@K! you just summed up exactly how I feel at the moment. ----- Brett Greay |
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Having just read your notice, don't get the feeling you're on your own! I too spend(t) hours examining the design sites - many of which are linked from your site - and when I have finished end up feeling empty and (time) wasted. There do seem to be more and more of the same and less and less of the different - but I also put it down to experience - the more you see the more you've seen so you're bound to come across things which reference other stuff or which are just ripping ideas off. I think there's also this need to deconstruct web sites, from a design point of view, so there's a lot of "wonder how they did that." followed by (a few weeks and many hours spent developing / designing, later) "oh, that's easy, I know how they did that - even though I didn't do it first, I could have done if I'd thought about it." and yes, all this does distract from content and you're right where is the content on the design sites - is it in the designs itself? How many more company portfolios does one have to endure to find something which is really worth the time? Maybe then, it's about design and content and a synergy between the two. Perhaps it's about being in the right place at the right time and being able to influence things or nudge them in the direction you feel they should go. K10k has the essence of that doesn't it? Design and content in harmony (not like a choir more like the dischordant harmonics of punk, a kind of "it shouldn't really work, but it does"). At twenty five you're not old - at least I hope not, since I'm thirty five and let me tell you sometimes that feels old. You've got plenty more years to feel like shit in the morning and better by lunch - my recovery time is so long I measure it in days. I'd been meaning to mail you to say that I enjoy k10k and find much of it's content very . . . (. . .inspiring - seems like a grown up word). Am quitting my job soon (designer at •••••••• in UK) to be designer in smaller agency - hopefully I've negotiated a position which will give me some design scope outside of the constraints of single corporations like this one. Or maybe not. ----- John Hillman |
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I totally agree. I used to surf from designed site to designed site, but the whole look and feel of them seemed like colour variations on a theme. Now I enjoy the likes of the misanthropic bitch - totally undesigned basically text site, but no shortage of cynical - and addictive - humour. It's brilliant. ----- olivia w |
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i've seen too many sites such as 23dreams, who recently said "i love design" in 30 combinations. i think great design is only great when it includes (one) something new or (two) something intelligent. otherwise there's no dynamic/without dynamics, there's no - as you said - point. ----- olle dierks |
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It isn't just you. I tend to visit the "flashy design sites" only on occasion, while the sites I visit on a semi-daily basis are those with interesting content. In fact, the three sites you mentioned are all on my list of daily reads. My own site is severely lacking in both good design and real content at the moment. But I rarely worry about the design, whereas I constantly beat myself up for not putting more effort into the content. And if you're over the hill at 25, then I'm over the hill at 22. ----- Gerald Stanley |
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editor's note: yes, this is the person we named our mascot after. it seemed fitting, seeing that barney the beagle is quite a nasty little bitch too. ohhhhhh poor, poor man, what a horrible little vacuum we must live in, seen enough airports to last a lifetime....sick of airline food...stay at fucking home then,you certainly don´t need to travel, boring the pants off all and sundry with that inane banter of yours,and another thing quit spouting from yer soapbox in that god awful grey portal. what the hell are you hashing on about anyway, mister`burnin-bush???, is this a cry to relinquish the trappings of `the lastest technolgies` boo-hoo, Hark!!!! let´s have a return to `s-i-m-pw-i-city´ on the web now, a form of good ole´wholesome campfire chuckwagon coding from the days of yore..ping... ´but i actually find myself staying more & more clear of "real" design sites´ ACTUALLY!!!who gives a flying fuck ???!!!Keep that pish to yerself. On guard!!, you´ve been one of the patrons of this shite rememba!! don´t bite the sweaty hand that feeds ya brother, go to a library, pick up a book if thats whatcha be lookin´ fur. i´ll meet you at the returns desk, bring the rest of yer grey hairs.....patter merchants. but hey!!!.. no fucking noise mind!!! SILENCE. ----- Barnaby Penhaligon |
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nah, you're not getting old, you're getting wise. i totally agree with your rant. as much as i love 'design for design's sake'-style sites and am duly impressed by the latest flash masturbations, i agree that at the end of the day you can find yourself a little starved for content surfing those sites. it's great weblogs, including your news section on k10k, that keeps me coming back for more ideas, diatribes, opinions and hey, even rants. keep up the ranting, it's food for thought for a starving web community ----- jarin tabata |
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Just to say, I read your 'rant' and I agree 100% with what you say there. I work as a designer at •••••••• in Brixton as my dayjob (but I'm leaving next week...) and in my spare time I do spinemagazine.com with a few others. I wanted to make a site that does its job graphically without needing to be flashy and over-the-top - but had the CONTENT behind it to back everything up. The amount of sites I look at just once, think, 'Yeah, that looks nice', and then never return to... Every day another huge batch of links come through for me to look at... I don't see the point of all these sites that encapsulate meaningless rubbish in an attractive shell... If I go to a music site, I don't want to sit and wait nine years for a meaningless 45Mb Flash intro to unfold. I want to read the information that I came there for. Alos, why do certain people think they need a web-presence? I mean, I'm leaving •••••••• because the company's ethics have changed so much since I started there... Peperami, Domestos, Jif... no-one really gives a shit about looking at their websites, do they? A cleaning detergent website? C'mon... be serious... I want content! Not 32Mb GIF animations with no real function... ----- Chris Aylen |
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No really, your comments were spot on. No content = pointless, meaningless waste of time... but a *pretty* waste of time! Heh. All these things that must take so long to make and I look at them for about 30 seconds "thats nice, what does it do? nothing? Oh, wonder what else is out there [close window]". So, nice rant ;P hehe ----- Luke |
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It's the shudderman, my dear! Today is rant day!! I can't stand it when people moan, moaning is my turf! Stay off... I agree that not much is supafresh on the web, but hey, wait till the brains get over their web-o-phobia and get in the ring... what we need is more brains, no, we need more old people. I wouldn't worry too much at present; give people their time to get up and get down. The whole thing is coming together, I think, but it needs LOADS of time to grow.. Like K10k - we haven't seen anything yet, really?? I am worried about people talking about "content", the word is being as misunderstood as "flash" and "web-design". Don't talk to me about content. I like the word "stuff" more... Don't talk about "story-telling" either - it is much more basic... do your thing. That's it. I see all these dead design-glitsy hollow sites and I think "great, I have a nice opportunity too look into people's sketchbooks here", that's all it is. Zeldman, sort us out! :-) ----- token / K10k |
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I wouldn't take the whole content thing to hard. I can't speak for real, but I believe that the people behind a site like k10k do get to see only a true, *that's good stuff* 2% of all the information that needs sifting thru on a day. I mean - where you and toke have created that certain -place of unity - for most of the creative people in this area, it's likely you get to see a lot of crap as well. It's what you make of it - most of the young designkids now would kill for a mentioning at k10. And often they get mentioned - if only for the way their piece on the net is simply a show-off on photoshop filters. Like this term I read, think t was kottke.org - flashturbation. Using flash to see how good you can do flash. It must be some kind of new trend nobody knows the real deal on. Haha - without doubt, 2000 can be seen as the ye | ||||