Web Design
A catholic survey of websites yields little in the way of actual variance from earlier versions - people are using the website, still, as a means of communication. However, if you look more carefully you find that people are beginning to see the website as an integral part of their business and less a sort of technological innovation. It's fairly clear that site design and graphics have now translated into the domain of core marketing and away from experimental reach.
There seems to be a trend away from actual functionality and toward a more graphical experience. The first generation of internet users - kids who have utilized the net since they were young - are hitting their sophomore year in college, and they are more than likely driving graphical look and feel. Many site designs seem to echo the theme of a central graphic or flash rotator, centered in the top third, with navigation laid out either across the top or downside.
Many sites are also picking up small icons down at the lower tenth of the screen layout - reserved for the so called social networking site links.
Unlike traditional business card layouts of the earliest days of the net - many of these sites attempt to highlight one or more categories of information and present it in a central fashion. Features than I find attractive are the small image index utilities - the ones that let you step through a slideshow from screen to screen on main page. Layers that change and adjust. In particular, the masters.org site seems to be extremely well designed in this regard.
I'm personally proud of the fact that some of my designs are still up today, after having weathered over seven years of change. However, in my next project I am going to focus on AJAX, XML / HTML5 and learn from sites like masters.org
Mazeltov!
Comments