Lately, everyone talks about changes. The way the field of web design has gone through a cumulative change. Designers all over the world have embraced what has become so common in fashion. The growing taste for “trends”. An unspoken reality, a fact no one admits, is that a trend is nothing more than lifting what someone else has done before you, tweaking it, fixing it, and labeling it as your own for that calendar year. It’s forgotten soon after, of course, the world moves on to a new set of “in” ideas. But doesn’t that challenge the very point of design?
Defy the laws of creativity. Following trends does not make a creative individual. It just turns an individual into an escapist. Someone who does not have the ability to conceptualize, design, experiment, create and then try to perfect their creation. Trends are what the world follows today in a frantic attempt to keep up with the rest of the herd. But isn’t following trends the antithesis of creating?
A quote from the 2007 movie “The Bucket List” comes to mind when a mechanic in the garage where Morgan Freeman’s character worked in the movie “Carter Chambers” asks “Who invented radio?” Carter Chambers says “Ah. That’s hard.” The visibly excited mechanic says, “What do you know, I finally got you. – No?” to which Carter replies, “I don’t know if you want to know who they think invented radio or who actually invented it.” The stunned mechanic holding the quiz book says “Well, it says here…” when Carter cuts him off by saying “Marconi, right?” By now the mechanic is completely confused and asks “Yeah, isn’t that him?” To which Chambers replies, “He’s the one who’s generally believed to have invented radio. In fact, he got a Nobel Prize for it in 1909. The truth is, a guy named Nikola Tesla patented the basic idea of radio in 1896. The same idea Marconi used for his patent several years later, Tesla fought Marconi until the day he died in 1943. The same year, the Supreme Court ruled that Marconi’s patent was invalid recognizing Tesla as the inventor of the radio.
Clean design is great. It’s simple, elegant, and clutter-free. Yes. But where is the regard for individualism? A particular design company presenting designs with similar themes can be justified to some extent. But when all the other designers get “inspired” by that work, they have a problem. The thing is that young people are easily influenced. But in many cases, they lack the maturity to create something from that “inspiration”. They take the easy way out and make quick money. That’s fine as far as your individual needs are concerned, but what about the impact ten thousand people doing the same thing will have on the industry? They price themselves low enough to pocket a few projects and then move on in life after a while. But the impact remains. The end user or business owner is left without the knowledge that they would get from an experienced consultant in the same sense, a website riddled with errors in most cases, and a company with insufficient branding regarding its online presence. . They end up expecting lower prices from anyone they work with and thus inadvertently suffer in the long run.
Simple fact. Nobody can go to a hospital and negotiate with the doctor the price of what they need to overcome their ailment. It doesn’t work that way. Anyone with a health problem will need a proper consultation, checkups to determine their specific problem, and then a consultative solution to follow. You’ll see? Same principle. Just a different industry vertical.
Today, even having an attractive website will not work for businesses. With the advent of new age techniques, having a properly executed online presence is imperative for businesses. The design must be supported by SEO, SEM, coding, market research, and much more. News, which until a few years ago was restricted to television and newspapers, is making a quantum leap onto the World Wide Web. In a few years, newspapers will disappear completely. Internet is the future.
So the future will clearly not belong to those who eke out a living on the shoulders and labor of creators. The future will be theirs, who will have to persevere, invent, set the standards and create the foundations for the world to follow. The future will belong to those who pioneer the act of cleansing.