When I was little, I was not the typical little girly girl. I did not want the fluffy pink froufrou dresses with lace and ribbons. In fact I didn’t like dresses at all. I am still not that girl actually. Although, I love pink now, and I do like dresses! LOL Things change.
I did, however, have the most awesome dress ever, at around 5 or 6 maybe. My mom got me this gorgeous blue dress with a little lace, but the real selling point for me…when I would twirl around…it went straight out to the side!! WOW! I LOVED THAT DRESS! It wasn’t the fact that it was pretty, or lacy, or a pretty color. It was useful for looking awesome while making myself dizzy!! YAY! My mom found my niche, (and got me to wear a dress…actually had a hard time getting it off of me, even when it got so small that my shorts would show under it!) 🙂 Point being, even when designing a site that doesn’t need to be pretty, make it so desirable for the end user they will never want to leave!
[sws_blockquote align=”left” alignment=”alignleft” cite=”Jason Gross, Smashing Magazine” quotestyles=”style04″]Why Designers Hate “Pretty” Design Professional designers don’t make things pretty because it’s beneath us. Your visual acceptance of our work is the result of careful decision-making built around grid systems, perfect ratios, color theory, typography and—no, I won’t make your logo bigger—white space. The practice of simply decorating is something we used to do when we were just getting started down this career path. We used to make pretty things in Photoshop to kill time in class or to tinker with a new tool or technique. We have since moved on to bigger and better things. [/sws_blockquote]
Best quote ever!
Was reading my morning blogs about designing, WordPress, and the latest stuff out there, when I came across this post. It was long but had so much really good information!
I think when I started doing web sites I tried to make them look really cool, used the flashy buttons, had no clue what I was doing, not really. Then, as we all do, progressed into CSS and learning how to layout a page with better typography, visual queues for the users, images that stand out and grab attention, etc. But I still go back and look at things, especially static HTML sites I did just a couple years ago, and think to myself, REALLY? What was I thinking??? Could I not have come up with anything better than that??
I think part of it was just laziness, I was using some templates and easy Project 7 layouts, because I didn’t want to work that hard. My bad. Getting into WordPress has awakened that creative in me for sure! I have been learning so much more about new CSS and HTML5, PHP and how all of it can work together to create a wonderful creative and yes ‘pretty’ websites!
It is really amazing how the brain works and I plan on continuing to learn, so that I can create the best sites possible for my awesome clients.
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