As an industrial designer and not a "graphic designer" pardon my ignorance, but
isn't graphic design about communication and isn't web design about
communication and wouldn't effective graphic design consider the needs of the
web user and isn't it quite probable since anyone can now "design" web pages
whether they are able to communicate or not, that we can't blame it on the
graphic designers as scapegoats for this kind of innefective foolishness?
Jan
Jan Coker
C3-10 Underdale Campus
University of South Australia
Underdale, South Australia 5032
Phone +61 8 8302 6919
fax +61 8 8302 6239
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"We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment
of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly." Martin
Luther King, Jnr.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: R. Allan Reese [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Saturday, 5 January 2002 2:09 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Gerry McGovern on information architecture design
>
>
> JG wrote:
> > Graphic designers are not the only ones who fail to fully
> understand the
> > causal and contextual relationships of their creation.
> Designers in other
> > disciplines are equally fascinated by, if not obsessed
> with, the cause at
> > the expense of the effect. For these people, design becomes
> an end in
> > itself and not a means to an end.
>
> For example, London's Millennium Bridge.
>
> Having read the McGovern article, I'm grateful for having it
> drawn to my
> attention but puzzled at the nit-picking analysis. It looks,
> and reads,
> as a polemical column making one plain point that web pages should be
> designed round information delivery rather than aesthetics
> *that do not
> take information into account.* As someone who tries to
> teach the design
> and analysis of *data graphics*, I am happy with that point.
> Graphics can
> be very effective at delivering a message, but are often "designed" by
> artists who lack a knowledge or understanding of the message. Hence
> graph(ic)s can be trite, misleading or downright wrong.
> Sometimes a graphic
> will directly contradict the text it was purported to
> support. Like the
> Millennium Bridge, the designer went for looks rather than fitness for
> purpose.
>
> R. Allan Reese Email: [log in to unmask]
>
>
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