Nidha - article - design - Endorsement of bad design practices

I was recently reading an article about why one nation doesn’t have any good web designers. The writer at the end of the article wrote,

“…..And by “over here” I mean India too, despite their reputation for everything software. They are worse than us”.

Let’s face it, no one in India care’s a damn about a good design, iam talking about designers not the clients.

I had started this website to showcase some good designs done by Indians, or designs that are inspired by India. I wanted to put in some great websites that are coming out of India done with cascading style sheets and with some web standards sprinkled on them. That led me to go online and put in every possible search word combination possible, that I had hoped to take me to few well designed websites. But to my vain, I found nada. Few of them which I thought were good designs, but after looking into the code which revealed the mess of table strangling each other, I had to look else where. So what is the problem here, is it just bad designer who needs to take the blame, or the companies were so into the back end programming or that they had no time or resources to hire a good designer who can churn out decent pages which are pleasant to look at and not giving a feeling that you are still in early 90’s, where designers were trying to figure out how to make a page look similar in Netscape 4.0 and I.E 3.0 browsers.

So why is this aversion for the Indian companies to look for a designer? Is it in the Indian mind set. Don’t ask me iam not a Socioanalyst. Indians are not new to good design. Take for example their textile, architecture, print, even in television the design scenario is pretty respectable. But I think the basic problem here is, design in web is having deprivation of genuine skill. There are no institutes that teach you how to design a well formed page that is visually appealing. You have to be your own judge in this case.

Here are few points that may help you in trying to develop a visually appealing website.

• The most important aspect of design for web is the “concept.” Sure, talent might be an issue when it comes to thinking up great concepts, but you can develop good ideas when working on those concepts.
• Put your thinking cap up, try to come up with some theme’s when you are working on off the road projects. These kind of projects give you the maximum freedom to artistically express your self. The words to remember here is “think out of box”.
• Try to know who your audience is. What kind of people are going to use your website? The design need to be done with them in mind. Do you know there was a research done to know what women and men like in a page design, one of the conclusions was that, women like designs with some curves in them, while men are more inclined towards having boxes.
• Try to get inspiration from other mediums. Take for example print design, try to see how they are aligning the page, try to visualize having those kind of alignments in your next design.
• Working with Indian clients sometimes take away lot of energy trying to convince them of having a minimalist approach, or to have a design that doesn’t look like your usual run of the mill product. Sit down with them, go online show them few of the elegantly designed websites and try to convince them for having a fresh design, even if it takes few more weeks to develop. It’s a proven fact that people remember a well designed website.
• Brainstorm with you client, your colleagues, your partners, even your friends. Show them your work while it is in the different stages of development, ask them to critique your work. Take their suggestions with open mind, and it’s up to you afterwards that you take them or leave them. But this process will make easier for you to make the changes necessary while under development.
• Make your client a member of this process. Ask them if they have any theme in mind, what kind of color scheme, typography, and design they have in mind. This improves mutual confidence level between you and your client.
• Try to keep in touch with latest changes in your field. Try to learn new technologies, as there a new things that’s coming up each day. Keep in touch with online design community.

This is a creative process, so I think it’s better to be done by an expert. A company who wants a website to be done should go to a designer, not a expert in backend design and a greenhorn in web design, after all you don’t go to a Podiatrist if you have a pain in your tooth.

design