Why I won't work on another campaign microsite
Posted by Dan Eastwell
or why I won't, until the money runs out...
Jeffrey Zeldman maintains his position as the spokesman for the progenitors of web design and web development in the latest issue of A List Apart by stating that even in this late stage of the web, that web design is poorly understood.
What's web design?
He mentions that "web design, although it employs elements of graphic design and illustration, does not map to them." We need very good graphic designers on web projects, we also need experience designers (UX), information architects, and front-end developers (like myself) all of whom have a grasp of all three other disciplines.
What I mean by that is that you need to know how to make things work so they are easy to use, you need to make them look good, be stylish and you need to ensure a sound and accessible structure of information within the (as Zeldman has it) "digital environments that facilitate and encourage human activity".
The front-end (interface) developers need to create an extensible, semantic structure upon which to hang these elements, and to allow them to function and look exactly as designed. (Note, I am not even mentioning 'back-end' developers or architects, this is about web design).
What's wrong with campaign microsites?
There's nothing wrong with advertising campaign microsites, as such, but a more long-term view needs to be taken of what they're used for. I've worked on some good looking vehicles for, as Zeldman might put it, "exemplars of game design and video storytelling, not of web design".
I've worked on one particular campaign microsite, that was built with a view to change in the future, user experience, information structure and a quality visual design. They don't all have to be unusable, one-directional TV substitutes. Again, as Zeldman puts it: "sites that behave like TV and look good between covers continue to be created, and a generation of clients and art directors thinks that stuff is the cream of web design."
Is this all in the past?
Occasionally I work on 'accessible alternatives' to TV-style advertising campaign microsites, but there's an increasing understanding, now both clients and agency client management use a two-way web (Zeldman's 'digital environments'), that functional, scalable sites are more the norm, or more importantly in the client-agency equation, yield a greater return for the investment in terms of impressing the punters.
Hopefully agency producers and client directors will aim to impress commissioning clients with a quality of work, and an understanding of the web that they live and breathe rather than how a site will look as a flat page or a uni-directional narrative.
As I always chirpily say, to anyone who'll listen, and who doesn't already-bleedin'-know-thank-you: "we're designing a system here, not a set of pictures".
