Frank Chimero, who is the author from “The Web’s Grain”, he says that “the closer I get to it all, the more I become confused and overwhelmed. A thing I knew so well has reached out wider and wider, only to make less and less sense. So last year, instead of being stubborn, complaining, or feeling powerless, I went searching for a different perspective. I wanted to take something big and make it small again. This was urgent: I needed a way to re-engage with my craft on a foundational level. Otherwise, I’d also be looking for a second career.” It suggests that with the development of technology, developers and designers are agile to find spectacular and extraordinary coding effects. However, the meaning behind web pages seems to lose its backgrounds and identities because of too many unnecessary decorations of the sites. Thy key to design web pages successfully is finding the initial purpose of creating websites.
I found these paragraphs intriguing as they are lively and ironically explain how learning too many effects or “tricks” for the web pages design may also be so unnecessary. “‘it is very impressive that you can teach a bear to ride a bicycle, and it is fascinating and novel. But perhaps it’s cruel? Because that’s not what bears are supposed to do. And look, pal, that bear will never actually be good at riding a bicycle.’ This is how I feel about so many of the fancy websites I see. ‘It is fascinating that you can do that, but it’s really not what a website is supposed to do.’” It states that creators should always make sure to remember who the main audience for the websites is. What they want to learn or get out of information from the sites. Whether if the web pages helpful for those audiences in the long-term. How it will affect them in real life, or how the sites are going to help them in any way.
The article also discussed about people developed the design of websites to have certain templates or formates for others who don’t know how to code. It is such a shame that even though some people who do know how to codes, their style became stick to the template or samples because it is often easier, faster, and they won’t “go wrong”. The downside for the developers who depend on the examples, is limiting their room for creativity. A quote from the article, it says, “the web is forcing our hands. And this is fine! Many sites will share design solutions, because we’re using the same materials. The consistencies establish best practices; they are proof of design patterns that play off of the needs of a common medium, and not evidence of a visual monoculture.”
After reading the article, I acknowledged that the web page is just a platform for people to express themselves. It is a platform for different field users, which depend on what they need at that time, communicating with each other. It is a device to advocate their declaration, position, and ideas. However, some people design web pages to wrong results by adding too much unrelated styles or contents for the page. Many people make the “mistakes” by using a grid system or example template to create a website. Though it is aesthetically pleasing, it might not serve the purpose of the sites directly. The template can be certainly functional, but it loses many identity and personality.
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