Pulp To Pixels

Whether you mea­sure your designs in LPI or DPI, pulp to pix­els the fun­da­ments of design remain the same. Color, form, typography.

As web tech­nolo­gies progress the divide between Web Designer and Devel­oper grows while at the same time the dif­fer­ence between the Web Designer and the Graphic Designer narrows.

I’ve watched the evo­lu­tion of design for the web since 1994 and one thing I can say with cer­tainty is it’s com­ing full cir­cle. In the begin­ning we had Engi­neers design­ing sim­ple pages clad in Netscape gray. Slowly Graphic Design­ers turned onto the web and began to design bet­ter, albeit lim­ited, pages. And ani­mated gifs.

Even­tu­ally, tech­ni­cal lim­i­ta­tions and frag­mented emerg­ing stan­dards drove a wedge into the design com­mu­nity, cre­at­ing the have and have-​​nots. Those who under­stood the nuances of design on the web cast off their paper begin­nings to become a new breed—Web Designer.

Over time the pixel-​​based design tools and stan­dards evolved, allow­ing Web Design­ers to sep­a­rate con­tent from pre­sen­ta­tion just as their print coun­ter­parts had done all along. A new focus on user expe­ri­ence and real-​​word metaphors is dri­ving Web Design­ers ever more to reach into their roots in the print world. With engag­ing lay­outs, con­sis­tent ren­der­ing across browsers, and sophis­ti­cated typog­ra­phy web pages look more and more look like print pages.

On the cusp on becom­ing every­day is the inven­tion of ePa­per. Soon Graphic Design­ers will start to look to Web Design­ers for inspi­ra­tion to tackle a new medium. All the con­cepts born out of neces­sity for the web over the past twenty years will be repur­posed to tackle a new gen­er­a­tion of design considerations.

So here we are in the here and now. As the two dis­ci­plines are on the verge of fold­ing in upon each other the con­cept of deliv­ery medium will fade into the back­ground and once again the design will become the focus.

This point in time is why I cre­ated this blog. Not to talk about the dif­fer­ences forced upon design­ers by our medium of choice or some obscure cod­ing minu­tiae, but to dis­cuss the ground­work being laid for a new com­mon design language.

It’s an excit­ing time to be a Designer. Thanks for tak­ing the time to join me.