Design Philosophy

Well, I know this is a little pretentious, but I feel a need to explainwhy my pages don't sport Flash animations, animated GIFs, or even fancy graphics,as my design brethren who are pure graphic designers are apt to include. It's becauseI am interested in information (and thus into information design rather than graphic design) and the transfer of meaning from my site to yourmind. Most graphic designers I know are more interested in looking good.I am a designer for information transfer. I want my user interface to be reasonably invisible; many graphic designers make their work too visible. Too many of them are visual candy designers and the heck with content.

Many graphic designers would be happy with a creative graphic background for their webpage, even if it made reading the type on the page difficult or impossible.Or they wouldn't care if some poor soul connected at 56K has to wait andwait for a snazzy Flash presentation that probably doesn't add anythingto the content of the page. For instance, after the Sept. 11 attacks, I saw a Flash animation of the planes hitting the World Trade Center towers. Why would you animate something for which you have video? Instead use Flash for showing how volcanoes or an internal combustion engine work.

My goal is to make the page load fast to make the informationquickly and easily available. It's simple stuff, but I think most peoplewho visit my site are interested in the information anyway, not in entertainment. On entertainment-oriented sites, the bells and whistles often (though not always) make sense.

This approach carries over to my newspaper design consultations. Although I want the finalpackage to be attractive, people don't buy newspapers to display on theircoffee tables. They want to find and read. Quickly. Easily. And I havewon awards with this approach. If you are interested in more information,contact me at rbohle@unf.edu

My old design web site was titled "Design Morphogenesis." That $2 word means basically that the design or shape of something must flowfreely from the purpose, content and audience of the piece. Newspapers and my website are to be read, not printed out and framed on a wall.

So that's why my pages are simple. Thanks for listening.