Dave S commented on my previous post that the agencies [I] listed are all obviously masters of the aesthetic minimal. But [he finds] too frequently that CSS design means boring 3 column layouts with flat background colour, and usually GIFless pages.
I do enjoy minimal design, and I also believe that, for the majority of commercial and otherwise meaningful sites on the Web, that is exactly what is required. But minimal design to me, does not mean no graphics, no Flash, etc. If these elements are seen to add to the experience then great.
As I hinted at in the piece, the box model in CSS does not have to mean a design full of boxes. (Yes I know clagnut is a design full of boxes but…). Boxes are rectangles; rectangles make up a grid; grids are the basis of good graphic design.
Consequently I’m also a big fan of Swiss graphic design. I believe it lends itself very well to the Web, and particularly CSS ways of building. Josef Müller-Brockmann is considered to be the pioneer of Swiss graphic design, and if you look at his poster designs you’ll see that they make incredibly bold visual statements but underneath are often minimal to the extreme. In 1981, Müller-Brockmann published a work explaining the underpinnings to his design work. In was called Grid Systems in Graphic Design and is a design classic is it’s own right. See that word again? Grid. They just work.
Simon Willison wrote:
The argument that CSS designs are always boring is an old one, and is unfortunately reinforced by the huge number of non-designers creating functional but not particularly exciting CSS layouts (I count myself as a prime example of this). It’s annoying because the CSS background-image model means that “pretty bits” can be attached to any box on the page. I tend to direct people who say “CSS designs are always dull” to http://www.placenamehere.com/ , which I think is an excellent example of CSS backgrounds in action. It’s still minimalist though, but then that’s what I like.
Pascal wrote:
Here are some of the links I show to please who tell me that CSS positionning is limited or dull :
http://meddle.dzygn.com/weblog/
http://www.anglingadventures.com.au/
http://www.cinnamon.nl/
http://www.xs4all.nl/~peterned/index.html
http://www.cingular.com/
Dave S. wrote:
I should make the point that I believe in, and fully support CSS. I just think I’m an exception, rather than the rule, as far as designers go. (if you view my current site, you’ll no doubt assume otherwise upon viewing the source. See a past version – http://www.mezzoblue.com/default_v2.asp – for nicer code)
Now, to clarify a bit…
Simon, you touched on what I was trying to say in my previous reply. A lot of CSS-based sites have been put together by non-designers, and ‘minimalism’ as a concept is used as compensation for lack of design prowess.
Traditional designers have yet to really embrace it, and if 5, or 10, or even 50 examples of well-done CSS-based sites are enough to convince you otherwise, you’d be wrong. Browse any design portal – http://www.designiskinky.net/,, http://www.k10k.net/,, or http://www.pixelsurgeon.com/news/ to get you started – you’ll see most examples are code soup, or Flash. Generally the latter. Flash has a solid authoring environment, consistent display amongst browsers, and does far more visually than CSS will ever do. Is it any wonder designers embrace it over plain old minimalistic CSS?
No, CSS does not have to be minimalistic. I completely agree that there are some great examples out there of sites that prove this. But as a rule, the people using CSS today are generally the people that aren’t being hired in droves by design agencies. Browse http://www.meryl.net/css/ and tell me how many of those you think would get you on as a senior designer at a larger web firm…
Anyway, after all that rambling, my point boils down to a very succinct statement: CSS has potential to do some amazing things visually, but we haven’t seen much of that potential yet.
Rich wrote:
Dave S. said, Flash has a solid authoring environment, consistent display amongst browsers, and does far more visually than CSS will ever do.
The first two are definitely true but to say that Flash does more visually than CSS is not true for static visuals. It is of course true as soon as you start animating objects. For animation in general, increased interactivity, sound & video, Flash is an ideal tool. For anything static, perhaps not.
Dave S. wrote:
Rich – in theory it’s nice to say that CSS is better than Flash for static display…. but that’s only, in my mind, a structural argument. If we ignore the accessibility problems of Flash and the indexibility/structural advantages of CSS, and focus purely on the visuals…. even then, I’d still have to say Flash comes out on top. When was the last time you didn’t have to dick around for hours on cross-browser support just to position a single element precisely where you want it?
Wow, I really am starting to sound like an ignorant designer here. It’s not my intention, honest. I’ve just gone through a rather sobering debate on my own site – http://www.mezzoblue.com/cgi-bin/mt/mezzo/archives/000077.asp – about why CSS is more a structural language than a visual language, and I find it hard to argue that point.