Although this was a short article, it had a lot of good information and insight to understanding web design. I believe this was the most important and insightful sentence in the article, especially because it was repeated a second time in italics…
“Web design is the creation of digital environments that facilitate and encourage human activity; reflect or adapt to individual voices and content; and change gracefully over time while always retaining their identity.”
A website is an environment, seeking to create a behavior change in the people who happen to come to the page. Technology is changing every day and it is important that your site is always up to date with the most advanced technology so users don’t get bored and stop coming to your website. At the same time, it is important to always stay loyal to your websites identity or brand or users will get confused. You always want your site to be instantly recognizable by users.
The quote reminded me a lot about my internship this summer where I was a strategic planning analyst intern at a digital marketing agency. Although I didn’t really work with the developers at the agency, I was exposed to what they do.
This article especially reminded me of an internal document one of the developers at the agency gave to me to look over. He had put the report together to help everyone in the office understand web design better, even if they were never going to be making a website themselves. The agency is made up of people with many different educational backgrounds, most with little or none in web design. The document gave brief descriptions of the different methods of web design, and in which conditions each would be used. The document also told each department—account/strategy, production, copywriting, design, development, and user experience—what they needed to know specifically for their job within each specific client project.
The very beginning of the article discusses how most people don’t understand web design even when their job is stuck in the midst of it. At a digital marketing agency you may not be behind the physical development of the web sites, but it is 100% necessary that you still understand the aspects of it.