Web Designer versus Xtreme Pro

**Caseydave** · 20 March 2009, 12:57 PM

Asume I know nothing on either subject of design or web development

I'm usually go about my business as a viewer and not a contributer to the forums but i had to register and ask what this comment means:

Bones stated: that Web design was the arse end of graphic design?

I'd love to hear what he meant by this - Maybe you were trying to say that your web designs were like the arse end of a graphic design - an afterthought, otherwise your comment would be a genralisation

Dave

**Ross Macintosh** · 20 March 2009, 10:33 PM

Hi Dave -- welcome to the Talkgraphic forums.

I think the 'arse' comment was retorical and reflects the fairly common view that website design requires less skill to do a reasonably professional job than is required for other graphic design specialties like, say, logo design or typography. Just as "desktop publishing" has come to imply skills that almost anyone can easily acquire, so to has "web design" become a 'anyone can do it' kind of thing.

Of course doing something well is never that easy and developing skills is important if one is to do any design activity well. What is true is there are very accessible tools for web design (and desktop publishing) that allow anyone so inclined to become "designers". There can often be detected some degree of contempt from "professional" designers for the amateurs. The reality is there really are few barriers for amateurs to be able to develop advanced skills. These forums frequently demonstrate that skills can be developed by anyone motivated to work at improving -- and there are no limits on what level of skills can be achieved. One of the most skilled artists to participate here was a 14-year old kid named Steve Newport. He was a sponge for absorbing techniques, pushed himself hard, and developed an enthusiasm for design & creativity. The boundries of pro and amateur can be blurry. Likewise the boundries between 'high' design and 'low' design aren't as crisp as many want to believe. The 'arse-end' isn't very far away from the 'money-maker'!

Please forgive me for rambling.

Regards, Ross

**Caseydave** · 21 March 2009, 04:55 AM

Hi Ross,

Thanks for the Welcome, point taken. I run a web development studio here in Australia and we have some very talented graphic designers / web developers. That comment hit a nerve here in our office.

I'll go back in hiding again.

Cheers

**Ross Macintosh** · 21 March 2009, 08:36 AM

No - please don't hide. We need contributing folks of all backgrounds to keep this community vibrant. Please contribute where you can. We learn from each other. We inspire each other. We make friends.

Regards, Ross

**w00dy** · 21 March 2009, 10:01 AM

Web design isn't a black art any more, some people have a vested interest in keeping it that way because it means that they can charge ridiculous fees for what are basically a very simple websites. The little one man band sparks or plumber needs a website... he goes to one man band web designer... gets a nice site at the right price... if the web guy uses XWD and doesn't practise black arts if he has any sense. How long to troll out a simple eight page site in XWD from scratch, four or five hours? Time is money, whichever way you look at it.

Hopefully X5 will be XWD on speed once John & Co have incorporated some of the suggestions that have been put forward.

**Big Frank** · 21 March 2009, 10:13 AM

Originally Posted by Caseydave

Bones stated: that Web design was the arse end of graphic design?

I'd love to hear what he meant by this - Maybe you were trying to say that your web designs were like the arse end of a graphic design - an afterthought, otherwise your comment would be a genralisation

Well until he comes out of hiding himself only he can answer that. I'm not going to try to work out what he meant. But as a long-standing and successful web designer myself I can only give you my take on it:

http://i598.photobucket.com/albums/t...phicdesign.png

It's all graphic design. But I've often found that many traditional graphic designers sneer at web designers. I'm sure they have their reasons but I'm not going to explore that here. But I can tell you that I've rarely seen a competent web design created by a traditional web design company. Attractive, yes, maybe. But competent? No. Both encompass graphic design but there the similarity ends. In my experience traditional graphic designers are noobs where it comes to the fundamentals of competent web design. But, each to his own.

For me the bottom line isn't web design or graphic design or design per sé. It's talent over tools. XXP4 is by far the most comprehensive tool kit any desktop designer could ever wish for. Sure, there's room for a few more, and WD has some of them, and they will surely be incorporated into XXP4 sooner or later. But give MS Paint to Michelangelo and he will create a masterpiece. Give XXP4 to an IT Manager and he still won't design any better than my cat.

http://i598.photobucket.com/albums/t...a/mcse_cat.jpg

**covoxer** · 21 March 2009, 10:18 AM

I love that cat!

**BONES** · 24 March 2009, 03:27 AM

Originally Posted by sledger

That is definitely not the expected behavior BONES. Something is wrong for sure.
Could you supply a .xar file with a simple filled shape that exhibits this behavior for you please?

I can supply dozens. But it's not on it's own, it's in a drawing where there might be another object with 8000 vertices. Things are ultra-snappy until you reach a certain point, beyond which everything falls in a heap. And we're talking 4Gb RAM and a 512Mb QuadroFX card, so it's unlikely to be a hardware limitation.

Originally Posted by Caseydave

Bones stated: that Web design was the arse end of graphic design?
I'd love to hear what he meant by this - Maybe you were trying to say that your web designs were like the arse end of a graphic design - an afterthought, otherwise your comment would be a genralisation

Just look at the web, it's full of utter rubbish. Even the good stuff is constrained by the environment. Flash is an excellent example - because of it's considerable limitations a whole look sprang up around it which was copied in other media for a while, until people got bored of it and moved on to something else. Meanwhile, Flash still doesn't do blend/transfer modes and web graphics still look like they did 10 or 12 years ago, only less compressed.
Find a website that looks as good as an average TV commercial. It doesn't exist. You can get away with murder on the web, thanks to bandwidth limitations enforcing compression on everything. Mind you, digital TV doesn't necessarily look a whole lot better but that just proves my point, really.
Every medium has its limitations and sometimes they can be quite inspiring for a designer but the problem with the web is that the limitations affect one's ability to do a good job most of the time. i.e. There are simply too many limitations for it not to affect the outcome.
In my experience, any idiot can do good work by web standards. It's just not that hard. Your people just need to get over it. How many of them have been doing it for more than 10 years? I'll bet it is just a foot in the door for all of them, especially the talented ones, and they'll all move on up when the opportunity arises.

**covoxer** · 24 March 2009, 07:35 AM

Interesting point.
On support of it, there's a plenty of template based web tools. Most of them quite successfull. Have you ever seen popular template based DTP tools for example?
Of course, there is a way to create highly artistic sites, but the point is that generally accepted level for the web design is very low comparing to other medias.

**Big Frank** · 24 March 2009, 08:05 AM

Originally Posted by covoxer

but the point is that generally accepted level for the web design is very low comparing to other medias.

That's why talented web designers stand out from the crowd. There's so much utter rubbish out there that when you see a bright, refreshing, intuitive, easy-to-navigate, simple-to-read design... you linger.

Quod erat demonstrandum.