I am breaking my accidental year long hiatus with a post about doing nothing, my favorite pastime.
The reason for my absence is almost exclusively due to the fact that I am in a two-year graphic design program at Seattle Central and am just about to start my second year. Many times my fellow classmates and I will go out to eat and drink at neighboring eateries and drinkeries and jokingly kid about the crappy logos or bad kerning that surround us. Being back in school makes one more aware about the visual communication around town. Though said comments are made in jest, I wonder, is it sometimes better if something is crappily designed or not purposely designed at all? Many times our job is to rebrand companies and websites but I think it is more important to distinguish when it is necessary and when it is arbitrary. For instance, when logos for corporations are redesigned.
Sometimes I think, wait which one is the before again? Is that a really good use of their resources? Probably not, but maybe yes. But honestly, what the hell is the difference? (These were taken from the Brand New site that reviews logos.)
One of the UI/UX instructors at Seattle Central, Erik Fadiman, is the one who made me not only think about design but also the necessity of design. He often says that companies will approach him for what they think is the need of a website. But in some cases do they need a website? Sure he can take their $8,000 and make them a responsive website, but will it really benefit them? Will simply using social media suffice? In some cases like food trucks, yes. E Fad started out more concerned with design and slowly moved to the other side of the spectrum, focusing almost solely on functionality and leaving the appearance to visual designers. I feel myself doing to same sort of leaning, but don’t want to let go of design. Can’t I have both?
So I started thinking about the need (or rather un-need) for design more. But how far can you go with that? For instance, I noticed restaurant websites are always really shit-ily designed and have nothing on them. And you are usually only going on there for the hours, phone number, and/or menu. So isn’t yelp a much better way to access this information instead of being sent to an external website that probably is not responsive? I understand wanting to have cohesive branding so if you could personalize your restaurant’s yelp page a little more, that would be ideal.
My fantasies on how to redesign something has changed to excitement over what does not need to be redesigned. Instead of my first question being “what would I do to change this?” it is now “does this need to be changed?” For example, there is this super cheap taco truck near us:
Is this menu aesthetically pleasing? No. Does it need to be redesigned? No. It is functional. In fact, it’s lack of design is its design. Besides, is there anything more beautiful than four tacos for $5.49?