Why Are Graphic Designers Usually Bad Web Designers

For the sake of simplicity – lets take Jerry – the imaginary graphic designer. Lives and breathes in Photoshop and Illustrator, but uses the Web on a regular basis and also does some work for the Web. He is one of those who think that Web is just a not-printed-out magazine or newspaper and he is wrong. Dead wrong.

Web is a very specific medium, one with so much more restrictions and focus-points than print. On the Web we have browsers that treat the results of our work in a variety of ways – that are to say the least inconsistent, for instance we have accessibility to take into consideration – people accessing information on the Web have to actually be able to access it, thus our designs have to accommodate text and image scaling, different monitor resolutions and browser window dimensions, even our color choices are subject to change and alteration by the users! People can override our specified style rules (css) and make alterations to our design in order to make it more accessible to themselves. So far I haven’t seen a magazine that lets me choose which format I’ll read it in and choose the type size (and even the typeface) to my liking. This list goes on, don’t even think this is it. Not to mention that Web sites actually respond to user’s actions (they are what they call “interactive”) so we have the usability issues – will you users understand your interface and will they know how to use it? What will be the learning curve? Cultural differences – it is not so rare that a single interface has to handle dozens of localizations and internationalizations (culturalizations). Will the interface handle the right-to-left writing languages as well as it does the left-to-right ones?

As I said – there are a lot more of things a Web designer needs to take into consideration before he even makes a single line on a piece of paper when mocking up an interface. Graphic designers in my personal experience rely too much on tools (such as programs) to do their jobs and shape their work. Also they are used to rigidness of their medium – the width and height of the newspaper page, a magazine ad and/or cover. The result of their work is designed for those dimensions specifically – put it in any other context and the design falls apart. On the Web context is everything – context is king. Also information is king – information and content should be in the spotlight – not the design, design should never upstage the information – and a good Web designer knows that and honors the information. A good Web designer also takes a step back from his own perspective and puts himself in his user’s position and views his work from the user’s point of view. Often he has to alter his design so a broader audience can accept it, or more browsers could be supported. A Web designer makes sacrifices.

So people, when choosing the person/company that’s going to design your Web site – you need to make sure he/she is a designer who truly understands the Web as a medium and can design specifically for it. Remember – every Web page is an interface – not a brochure.

Web designer = Interface designer = Experience designer, etc.