Web Design as a Professional Expression of Art?
09.11.09
At the end of the day, professional web design is all about money. It costs you some, you expect to recover it and maybe make some more. It’s true that Web 2.0 gave an element of individuality and self-expression to site contents. Platforms became more user friendly and allowed newcomers to quickly get the hang of it. Users became producers in no time: software became easier to use and hardware was more affordable and available to anyone. Social networks got smart and now they constantly upgrade their sites to make them as user-friendly as possible.
But companies got smarter.
Every media generates new ways of expression. Once the technology is mastered, the pragmatic set of mind makes way for individual expression. Ever since the dawn of the Commercial Era of the Web, people has been experimenting with the boundaries of the Internet. Now that we have finally managed to trade audio, video and text effectively, is it possible to think there is a space for artistic expression on web design?
Companies, old and new, were able and eager to grab these new exciting tools and use them to promote their products in what was possibly some of the most cost-effective campaings in the history of advertising. They even took some of these Web 2.0 pioneers, hired them and used their talents to create a massive, worldwide-spread form of marketing. Some people just sold out shamelessly while others relentlessly resisted. The money flooding the Internet business was never seen before (not in such a short period of development, at least) and everyone started marching to the same beat: ka-ching$!
A bless and a curse: there were more funds to support individual projects, but these were biased by corporate priorities.
It will never be an easy task to match raw inspiration with the constant demands of the market, but it is definitely not a choice to make between both stances. Marketing agencies, throughout the years, served as a launching platform for artists of all sorts (writers, graphic designers, poets…) and, as we unveil the mysteries of the Internet, both sides will find benefits in this symbiotic relationship.
It might be kind of pretentious, but here are a few ideas that might help pair art and businesses:
- Responsible experiments can create great results: if the message is clear, unorthodox use of a media/technology can create an impact on visitors. In the dawn of the Internet, many artists experimented within the threshold of metatext, crafting innovative ways to share a content.
- Web site design is not bound to physical media: it can’t get more abstract than this. Music, images and text are no longer limited to the organic limitations of traditional media. These contents can be tweaked, multiplied, stretched and spread in no time. Immediacy impacts the perspective of a phenomenon.
- Respect is key: May it be a personal quest or a corporate endeavor, the viewer/customer demands respect. There is nothing wrong about shocking an audience as long as everything is in good taste. There’s a thin line between individual thought and prejudice. There is an ethical side to media and web sites are no exception.
We can finally talk about an Internet culture. It has its own forms of expression, beliefs and motivations. The more the old geographical and political boundaries blur, the more unified this culture becomes. If there is a pattern, the technical distance between art and web design will narrow in the same way architecture or industrial design did.
If you’re looking for professional web design, contact us. We can turn your site into a masterpiece.
