DESIGNERS
When graphic designers start off,
their first natural assignment is to make a house style for themselves.
To a lot of designers this is a nightmare. I've known seasoned graphic
designers who rather went to the card-o-mat at the supermarket, than design
their own address card...
For graphic designers, making a presentation
for themselves is a confrontation: Every formal detail, every content driven
association will immediately trigger a response: ha, that's what they are
about... But they are about so much more! That's one of the reasons graphic
designers may love the Web; there they can show all the different faces
at the same time. Not only can they present their portfolio of work, and
make pontifications on what design is all about ("We are in the midst of
profound changes in consumer attitudes..."), and how this designer can
help you out. The true attraction of the WWW as a medium to promote designer's
activities and skills are the extras: the experimental pages, the annexes
where the professional can disclose a more personal side, or work as an
artist.
Regular features of designers' sites
are such experimental environments where one is warned not to enter without
a suitcase full of plug-ins. Rather nice things can be seen there - if
you can spare the download time: ingeniously moving alphabets, images and
texts that morph into each other, colors and sounds and 3D spaces that
give a glimpse of a communication space to be.
And there's always room for input
from the outside. An interesting way to interact with colleagues and clients
is the old Surrealists' technique of the cadavre exquis, a drawing
or text or image by one, that is commented by another, etcetera, ad infinitum.
With the added value that the visitor of the site might get curious in
a few days or weeks for what has been done since their last visit. Other
designers will make their site a place for discussion, or share their cultural
interests with you - sometimes transforming part of their Website in an
e-zine on music or visual arts. For the designers' work is not only what
they make for clients. It's also about research and development and cultural
responsibility. There is a world of software out there that yearns for
creative and sensitive application. And an enormous territory of not yet
fully explored communicational tools and possibilities. Designers who take
their role as cultural agents serious, will enhance their self-portrait
on the web by showing to all what they make for themselves. |