For the next several posts we are going to be focusing on The 10 Principles of Design manufactured by the amazing designer Dieter Rams. Mr. Rams was perhaps the one who spearheaded the idea of “good design” and is likely one of the only human’s successful in accurately describing what “good design” is. We see design before us in many different ways: whether it’s a common household item, an advertisement, a magazine layout or, you guessed it– a website, design is presented through us in everything we take in as a consumer.
We wanted to do this series on design to let you in as our readers and members as to what we are going though as a sort of “checklist” when it comes to designing your websites. We hope this series will allow you as a reader to open up your mind to more “designed” thinking as you navigate through life. We also hope it’ll help you partner with us in making your websites the best they can be. Let’s get started!
Okay so lets break this down a little bit. What in the world does it mean to be “innovative” and what exactly is Mr. Rams saying here?
Innovative can be defined as the featuring of new methods; advanced and original when it comes to a product, idea, etc.
We all know about technology and how it almost seems like there’s a technological advancement everyday. I was listening to a podcast the other day and the old school Disney Channel Original Movie Smart House was brought up. Now if you aren’t in your mid to late 20s DCOM’s may be before or after your time, but anyways this movie centers around this SUPER technologically advanced house that this family gets to live in. For an example, they could tell the house to play a certain song and it would play the song for them just from them asking. Remind you of anything? (Hint: Alexa, play the song Can’t Stop the Feeling by Justin Timberlake.)
Basically what I’m getting at is we are living in the future NOW. That movie came out 1999 – the directors were probably thinking the stuff they were putting into this film wouldn’t be possible anytime soon, but here we are in almost 20 years later and we have so much of what they though was futuristic.
Dieter Rams makes the point that “technological development is always offering new opportunities for innovative design.” Every time someone learns something new about technology the more doors that are opened for us as designers.
What does this mean?
It means there’s never an end to new creations when it comes to design.
As long as technology continues to advance so must our designs. Lets just think about the sphere that we’re mainly focusing on: websites. Websites even 5 years ago weren’t capable of what modern web design is able to achieve now. In fact the theme we use for all your websites, the Divi Theme, is amazing at making sure the templates and modules they’re offering their customers are in tandem with current technology. In fact it almost seems like every month Divi developers continue to break the boundaries of what they have to offer web designers.
So we can’t become complacent in our design!
It would be a waste of knowledge if we allowed ourselves to stay in our comfort zones when it comes to design. Also, we would be doing our customers a great disservice if we continued designing websites the exact same way as when we started 3 years ago. Why? Because technology provides a more streamlined user experience for a consumer, not adjusting your designs in tandem with technology is only complicating the experience for a user.
Think about iPhones for a second. If you have smart phone, then there’s a HIGH chance you have an iPhone. We all get annoyed that they roll out new models all the time and take up space on our phones with new software updates– but it’s all in good reason. I’ve been the stubborn user before who refused to update my software on my iPhone. The result? My phone was stupid slow, my apps would crash, it would get really hot if I used it for too long, etc.
If we don’t update our design techniques so that they go hand-in-hand with modern technology then we are only turning consumers away and tarnishing their experience with our product.
So as long as technology continues to advance we must continue to be innovative when it comes to design! In our next post we’ll discuss Dieter Rams second principle of design: how good design makes a product useful!
