The Darkest Evil

I am a designer and I became one out of ethical principles. It’s not about the money (even then, it’s not like I make THAT much anyway) I am a designer because I am an artist. A visionary. An idealist. And most of all, a creative professional. I make my living by creating works of art which make people think. I turn boring, drab business websites into pieces of art that can spring them into a creative set of mind. I am a designer because it is the field which appeals the most to me. And it’s something that I can do ethically.

Words & Pictures - Now, we have the power to integrate words & pictures while making them complement each other. We can use pictures to complement and collaborate our stories. Of course, there will be a few times when some people might accuse you of Photoshopping those photos. And you’ll get hecklers in your comments (I do. Often.) But the good news is that YOU know the truth. YOU know whether you photoshopped those photos or not. And you can revel in the comfort of knowing that those who falsely accuse you are just full of it. It doesn’t matter if other people believe it or not. People will believe what they want to believe. It’s human nature. But YOU know the truth and you are the only one that can (usually).

Putting Words & Pictures together makes your design and your content richer. Look at the about page on Leihu. He puts a picture of himself up on his about page. I find this pretty awesome because you can probably get a better view on who James Mathias is. I mean, sure. We know that he is the creator of the smexy smilies for the Invision Power Board design. But he is also a passionate blogger, a fellow designer, a good father and he is a honest person. At least, this is the impression I get from it.

Art that you can interact with - One of the things about art that I’ve always hated is that it was kept behind a velvet rope that you cannot cross. There are security guards, thieves, old museum directors that look at you like you are a criminal just because you are a little kid. You could not interact with the art, you could not have fun with the art, essentially - you could not truly enjoy it. In case you don’t know what I am talking about - I was 8 (I think) and it was a free museum day. You could go to the museum for free on that day so I went to the museum with my sister and my mother. We went to the Children’s Museum, the Fine Arts Museum, the Contemporary Art Museum and the Natural Science Museum. Take a look at Leihu for an example of what I mean. He integrates his design and there is a certain level of interactivity in it. Hell, you can even change the design to a darker version or a pink version. I like this and Blackthorne (when it is released) takes design interactivity to a new level.

The thing I hate about formal art is that you can’t touch it. You can only look at it. This is fine in most respects, but I want to create artistic pieces that people can touch without fear of breaking, smudging or otherwise fucking it up for everyone else. And this is what the web allows. A medium in which to allow numerous people to create artistic pieces and share them with the world. In fact, I am proud to be a web designer because I have the tools and the medium to create awesome pieces which can be readily viewed by an audience of millions.

Does this mean that I don’t like going to art museums? That couldn’t be further from the truth! My girlfriend is also an artist. A pretty damn good artist at that. But she isn’t yet proficient in web design and while I believe that she can move into that field, it’s ultimately her decision to do so. I won’t force her into anything but she creates art pieces in the traditional means (on paper). However, I will still go to art museums for inspiration for both of us, for her gallery showings (because I know for a fact that her talent will definitely be noticed) or something else. And most importantly, it’s vital to look at the works of artists before us. These can really make us think…

Tags: Design

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 11th, 2007 at 9:35 am and is filed under Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.