Art Direction on the Web

The newest trend in the graphic design world is "Art Direction" on blog entries/web sites. Unlike, say, this blog, where the entire blog is cohesively designed and every entry follows suit... Each entry gets a unique design that corresponds to the content, like a magazine article would.

This can be observed on Jason Santa Maria's site where each article often receives a completely different color, font and graphic treatment. He brings up good points about how sites can easily mimic print design to add visual interest. Personally, I wondered why it took web designers so long to reach this point. I think that, for a long time, web designers and graphic designers were different creatures. Finally, you are starting to see more people wearing both hats.

My first thought is that, perhaps, web surfers are more fickle and have shorter attention spans. Instead of pretty graphics they want straight information, easily laid out with links clearly visible. However, I then realized that attractive design could easily draw in a reader and keep him there. Unfortunately, from what I've witnessed so far, I think that "Art Directors" are often more concerned with the design aspect of each entry and less about delivery of information. I see big and bold and to the point, but I have yet to really linger on what the text is actually trying to convey. "Okay, this entry's about pencils aaand what is it trying to tell me about pencils? Okay just one paragraph." Why spend all that time designing a page around such a minimal amount of information? I think that design and information need to be married more closely.

I also have a problem with the lack of cohesiveness. With every page being different, there is often little to link a person back to the originating page. I feel that there has to be at least a certain amount of similar elements to keep the entire site and the designer's vision in one place. In most magazines you will often see radical headlines and graphics, but the body text, treatment of columns, etc. still remains the same. You can open a copy of Wired to any page and know that you are reading Wired. With some of these blogs, each page is radically different and the only thing tying you back to the designer is his logo, tucked away in a corner somewhere.

In other words, I feel that this is a promising new direction that needs to be further refined until it becomes as efficient as what we were doing before.