When I was first introduced to the internet 10 years ago, it was mostly a way to waste time between classes, look up Simpsons quotes and play Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. It wasn’t until I had fallen ass-backwards into a career in web design that I really started to notice what was going on aesthetically on the Inter-web. Suddenly there was this whole new world of kewl all-Flash sites with their overdose of sound and movement, photography portfolios that thumped the genero-techno oozing Haute Couture and sites that would explode to take full advantage of a 1280×1024 resolution screen.
These things slowly become what I loath most about design on the web. Where was the content? Where was the substance? The Internet was increasingly where I came to get information, find entertainment, get things done and all the style was getting in the way of the substance. Slowly these conventions have slowly disappeared but they’re still out there to varying degrees. A new focus on content, accessibility, standards, and collaboration has emerged in the last few years and one question is starting to creep into the back of my mind, “What’s happened to the style?”
Part of this might by my fault. It’s been ages since I checked the design portals for the random inspiration. The 60 odd blogs I follow are read in the sterile environment of my RSS feed reader. Podcasts are downloaded directly to my iTunes. News headlines are read from my Google Home Page. Rarely am I seeing the sites I’m actually “surfing” on a daily basis. But what happens on the few sites that i actually end up pointing the ol’ FireFox to? [You ARE all using FireFox aren't you??] Most of them are quite nicely designed and do exactly what they need to do BUT by and large it’s some variation of the basic WordPress or Movable Type layouts or one of the default Blogger templates. Now don’t get me wrong, this is a vast improvement of the bad-old-days of GeoCities but it is all a little homogeneous. [Lets not dreg up the 10th circle of design hell that is MySpace. It is what it is and I only have a profile there because I was bored and wanted to hear the early release of the last Nine Inch Nails album ... honest!]
Mostly what I’m saying is that it’s been a long time since I’ve had that “Holy Monkeys!” moment with a web site. But I think the future looks bright. Innovations like AJAX, Ruby on Rails, growing browser support for web standards and other, (increasingly annoying) Web 2.0 buzzwords, and people who know what to do with them have the potential to bring back the style without obscuring the substance. I’m actually more excited with the world of the web now than I was when it first snared me. So lets have it Internets! WOW me!
