“The bottom line is that art in the traditional sense appeals to very few people, and it doesn’t really serve any purpose in my experience. Making art feels like pissing into the sea. Design, on the other hand, solves problems or enhances experience, and web design just feels more gratifying, more useful, and less elitist. More like pissing into a teacup than into the sea.”
- Simon Collison
This is a great quote from a not-so-great interview of Simon Collison from www.digital-web.com. An artist turned self-taught web designer, Collison is know for his ‘You Are Here: Visual Arts’ Event Listing website.
But while he is an entertaining writer and interview-ee, I seriously question his thoughts in regard to the design process and design in general, its all a bit loose, ambigious and, well, random… I didn’t want to say this but it is kind of what you would expect from an fine artist… turned web developer.
He was interviewed as he has written an apparently very easy to read book and light-hearted book ‘Beginning CSS Web Development‘ that explains in laymans terms his personal account of one man’s battle to wrestle CSS into submission – which you can read about on the website www.csswebdevelopment.com.
Come round for tea and I’ll talk you through my design process in a technical, serious, methodical… but not very fun way, if you like.
I don’t seek to “impress” people, and I just say it the way I think it. I’d rather not alienate less knowledgeable readers by getting too technical. And besides, just because my process is very organic does not mean that I don’t know what I’m doing.
Never mind…