Saturday, December 8, 2012

Understanding The Web Design-Content Life Cycle


It really seems as if web design has come a full circle - no longer are bold Flash and artistic features at the forefront of our websites; instead content is the main feature. What many people do not seem to realize is that this is how many of the earlier websites looked. This has led to the belief that design will continue to move in a cycle - sometime in the future, we will see a return to artistically designed websites with content bringing up the background. To understand this whole idea much better, let's take a look at the design-content life cycle:

Early websites

At the dawn of the internet, there was actually very little design occurring in regards to the creation of websites - all pages were filled with text and perhaps an image or two just to illustrate a point. Web design was a career that hadn't even been thought of yet and content was allowed to reign supreme. A number of trends emerged out of this early design period, however, but none of them were really any good. This is because any creative notion that was injected into a website was added by a software enthusiasts - people who aren't generally noted for their creative flair. Two of these trends included the starry night sky background and blinking text.

The peak of design

With the amount of experimentation on the rise as more and more people were granted access to the internet, it wasn't long before people began to figure out that they could begin formatting websites and making them look more decorative using HTML. Whilst this resulted in some pretty awful websites, the modern day career in web design was slowly beginning to blossom. Around the same time, Flash was also coming into being as a way to create fully interactive sites. This was helped along by the fact that more and more households were signing up for broadband internet, so load times became less of an issue.

Modern websites

Over the last few years, the focus of web design has shifted back towards the clean, simply creations of the early days - content is, once again, king. Many people believe that this has been a direct result of the rise of the smart phone and other tablet devices - the technology used in your Android phone or iPad is still too primitive to support Flash and all of the other artsy features that we have grown accustomed to, so we have had to shift back to a time when websites were ruled by content and design was something that blended into the background.

Who knows how long it will be before we are back at the stage when web design can let us spread our wings once more.

Building Your Own Unique Website   Website Design Tips: Creating Easy Navigation   Web Designer Jobs - Train For Your Future   What Do You Want To Know About How To Make A Website?   



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