Web Designers and the Creative Professional…
From an article on A List Apart:
A List Apart: Articles: On Creativity
Creativity is technical and analytical, not expressive (as in self-expression). It is a filter through which perception and output pass, not a receptor or an infusion (as in the case of inspiration). Creativity may require or be enhanced by inspiration, but the two are distinct forces. (These facts are vital in discriminating between appropriate and inappropriate descriptions and applications of creativity.)Creativity is an inborn capacity for thinking differently than most, seeing differently, and making connections and perceiving relationships others miss. But most importantly, it is the ability to then extrapolate contextually useful ways of employing that data: to create something that meets a specific challenge. By this definition, creativity is merely a tool; it does not convey skill.
Leave it to aListApart.com to boil down into a single article a concept that has been bedeviling me for years. There is a deep-seated disparity between what a designer is and someone who is artistically creative. It took me years to recognize this difference on my own, and I am relieved to know that there are others who see things the same way.
I call to mind scenes I have seen in movies and television shows where an artist storms off, cussing under his breathe because the people who hired him are ’stifling his creativity’. Never mind that what he was doing was not meeting the needs of his employer. In his mind whatever he conjured up was more than sufficient, because he created it. It’s situational comedy at best, but I have known more than a few web designers who behave in very much the same fashion.
Artistic vision is all well and good when it comes to individual endeavors. However, to make it as a designer one has to curb that impulse. I have a series of questions I devised to ask a potential client when I am approached to do a website design. Among them are:
- What do they want to do with the site?
- Do they already have a notion of how it should look?
You might be surprised the number of times they say they don’t know the answers to these questions, yet when I start designing, all of the sudden they begin pointing out things that are “wrong”, signifying that they did in fact know all along. The most irritating response I have ever gotten from any of my questions has been: “I don’t know, just make it look good.”
To me this illustrates a fundamental breakdown of understanding what a web designer is, and puts the notion of ‘Design is king’ to center stage. A site doesn’t live and die by its visual style, yet some designers perpetuate this myth, and the clients are more than ready to believe them.
A clear understanding of the site’s purpose, its audience and the challenges of bringing the product/message to that audience is what can make or break a site. A good designer knows this, and uses this information to his advantage before ever opening Photoshop.
Web designers may be creative in the same sense that Van Gogh was creative, but it’s not a prerequisite. A good designer will tell you that very little of their job has to do with that kind of creativity. A good designer can analyze, distill, and produce aesthetically pleasing concepts due to creative thinking to meet the need of the task at hand. As a professional programmer, it’s a truth that I have had to keep my finger on at all times, lest I lose it and begin to fall back into old patterns.
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