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Answer for your question is "yes". It is dying.
Even though i'm a good web developer, i'm using templates. Because , templates are low cost and easy to built and we can give full satisfaction to our customers. When the starting i was developing the websites $100 to $1000. But now a days, i'm able to built website for even for $20 because of these templates.
As my teacher says "Concept of Re-usability will rule the world soon"
Originally Posted by hdoniv_87
Templates = street market stalls.
Custom designs = high-street shops.
It all depends on your client base.
There is a need for basic functionality in website design, so that total non-programmers can have themselves a presence on the internet. WP, Joomla, etc are wonderful in that they give people who want to participate, for little or no money (!) the ability to do so.
Clearly there will always be a need. esp in the commercial realm, for site design showing originality.
The templates factor certainly does seem to take some market for custom design, but it will never kill it.
I do not know what context your teacher made the statement of "Concept of Re-usability will rule the world soon," but in the context of any kind of design, I believe it to be completely false. In fact, I would say re-usability could almost apply to anything BUT design. Web design is more than about function that does the job, there is also the artistic factor for unique marketing which requires originality -something that re-usability can never touch. As markets and projects and their needs evolves, who is going to build the templates? Designers create designs which become standardized and then much later templates of those kind of designs get created. I believe it generally works this way. But I would be interested to know other's opinions.
Quite true.
To hdoniv_87:
Imagine a calculator.
Imagine 10 million of them.
Imagine all 10 million of them in warm, dull gray, full set of buttons, same design, all of them.
Now imagine a metallic red calculator.
Which one do you think people will want?
That's why unique, beautiful designs will never "die." Apple proved exactly that, and now HP, Dell, and a host of other bland companies are scrambling to introduce designed products.
To hdoniv_87:
I could see reusing the template structure... but the whole template? Hopefully you do more editing than just swapping out the logo.
Design might die the day there's nothing left to improve.
On another note, now that everybody has access to the same tools, and not everybody knows how to use them (e.g. knowing what to do vs. what not to do), there's a whole lotta crap people have to deal with. Fortunately though, for good design, this only means it'll raise in value.
redddvinylene you said :
"Design might die the day there's nothing left to improve."
Sure if everyone was working on the same website project for 50 years, one day it would be perfect. But seeing as thousands of new, different websites are needed to be created each day and each one by a different design person/company, and also each day technologies and markets and standards evolve -you need a good designer just to create something original that does the job. That is the reason there will never be a perfect website.
I'm not sure what point you're trying to make.
My point is that *nothing left to improve* will never come to be true, because design is not about improving, you only get 1 designer/company doing any particular website. And even if there was only 1 website in the world that thousands of designers were working on, it would take a long time before it was made perfect(nothing left to improve) if it ever could. And the fact that there are thousands of new projects each day with new needs, no website will ever be perfect(nothing left to improve).
Hi friends i honestly accept all the facts mentioned above. I know nothing can replace the innovation in design. I'm just trying to say that "templates are becoming big bug for art called design". Again I'm truly acknowledge "nothing can replace like custom design". But, for competitive advantage we are forced to use templates.
I'm from developing country. Here, most of the people don't understand about the art called "custom Design". They will just compare the facts called "money and Time". Our competitors delivering the products even in single day with low cost because of usage of templates. For standing on this market against our competitor, we have to consider the facts "cost", "time", "labor" e.t.c.,
As we all well known about the fact, templates requires no work or less amount of work. It killed the art "design".
Please everyone note, i'm not at all supporting templates at ANY COST. For taking competitive advantage with less human recourse utilization we are forced to use templates. When i came to this web designing field, there were 17 web designing companies in our locality, all of them delivered the custom designed products. But now, only 4 companies including mine is in the market. All because of this templates problem. That's why i called it is dying art.
I know good custom designs will surely get good response. But not in all places. That too in developing nations, it is not possible.We don't need high profit. At least we need the cost to run our company and keep our customers and workmates happy.
Well said buddy.
I think that the demand for custom design will always grow and the demand for template design will also always grow, but template design will never steal enough of the custom market to make a any difference. Both markets will keep growing, who knows at what rate.
I can see the market declining over the next 2 - 5 years but not because of anything fundamentally changing in and around the industry itself. As the struggling economy inevitably results in a full on recession many businesses, particularly smaller ones, simply won't be investing in web sites which are to many small businesses little more than a luxury.
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Nowadays, CMS like joomla, drupal, mambo etc., started dominating the industry. It's another reason for people(not all) to move away from custom designs.
No, sorry, that's not how it works.
What CMS's have created are popular platforms that people can become familiar with - if somebody is familiar with Wordpress for example, he/she would like to have most of his/her sites created in Wordpress.
However, that doesn't mean that they would want a template design - in fact, more often than not, they would pay for a custom wordpress design for each of their sites.
From our own experience, we've had a number of people asking us to redesign a set of sites (at least 3 per client), wherein each client had a preferred CMS, and all their sites used that same CMS.
I can't say that developers get hurt either - because although some people prefer to use the CMS they are familiar with, they still want a few custom features and changes made to their chosen CMS (e.g. a set of pages that give the user a "tour" of the site, and then ending with a registration page for example.)
It really depends on the client base - which is why there is no "sweeping" description such as "custom designs are dying".
Whoever believes something like that is either 1) a noob, 2) completely naive, or 3) a fool.
An interesting theory especially in the type of industry I/we work in where individuality sets you apart from your competitor. Yes there is short term gains from cost saving but at what cost in the long term, when you effectively look like your competitor. Can you imagine a world where all the TV advertising was the same? As with any industry there are those that are purely driven by cost, like wise there are web designer who see their offerings as a product rather than a service. The benefits can not or will not be sold to the client – due to either a lack of knowledge or understanding of the clients business and the industry/medium we work in.
Is 'Web design a dying art?' I would say no, not to those who have the foresight to seeing the benefit from standing out from the competition. If it was a dying art then I’m sure we would be living in a world where everyone was the same, bought the same products…
Si
Unique, imaginative, creative design will never die. Poor, mediocre, uninspired design... well that's a different matter.
i never thought a forum could be as interesant as this one...but i think this is wrong Before we begin the actual artwork for a website, we first build a sitemap for you, and a content pyramid to determine which parts will be given primary-level importance, secondary, and so on.
The sitemap is required to optimize your website for your audience (the end-users), and to allow the possibility of If this is not prepared before we begin any work at all, there is a chance that your website will be very difficult for your audience to use, and could negatively affect your ROI. Industry studies show that if users cannot immediately find what they are looking for, or they cannot make sense of the content on the site, they exit.
Also, if a sitemap is not properly designed beforehand, there is a strong possibility that future changes will require a "start from scratch" approach: we highly discourage this as it creates disorientation among users, which can lead to existing users leaving the website before completing the task they had set out to do.
In that regard, the content pyramid supports the sitemap by providing each section with the appropriate "call-to-action" spots and "focus areas" in order for users to find what they need, and for your party to maximize content exposure.
What a strange first post, without re-reading the entire thread I can't see how it relates to the orginal post?????
Personally I think people will continue to learn how to design web sites from scratch, I believe there will always be a demand from people who want a professional unique design specific to their company needs. I've used templates and I've designed sites myself. Alright I'm not very experienced but I find if I use a template there is always something not quite right. Maybe the way the script has been coded or the layout doesn't quite match what I was after so now if its not a cheap and cheerful basic site I tend to prefer to do the design myself or get someone with experience to do it for me. I certainly wouldn't pay someone to do a template site its just not worth the hassle.
Paul
You just quoted my post and claimed it as your own?
Exactly i acknowledge that buddy.
It all depends on client base.
yes it is. It depends on clients and industry we work in.The benefits can not or will not be sold to the client – due to either a lack of knowledge or understanding of the clients business and the industry/medium we work in.
Si
I'm amazed at two things regarding web site design. First, is the junk that people are willing to put up with - both site owners and site visitors. Second, is how important designers think they and their work are.
A site only has to be mediocre to be reasonably successful (the early Craig's List, for example), and what designers think is attractive usually has little to do with usability and is almost impossible to correlate to sales.
Sitting in a few user focus groups would prove enlightening to both parties.
You're mixing "decoration" with "design".
YouTube isn't a "pretty" site, but it's very well designed for what it intends to do. Craigs list isn't pretty at all, but it's very well designed as well for what it is supposed to be as well. Sitepoint is a well designed site too - there is a bucket load of information on this site, but you can find your way around the site, right?
Design takes planning, analysis, studies, and controlled testing for application. The problem with the web today is that everyone thinks their definition of a word is the true definition.
Good design has suddenly turned into: usability / user-centric approach.
Good design has also become: brand-ability.
Mostly, people think good design = good photoshop skills.
As I've said before, professional design takes a heck of a lot more work than powering up a hooky copy of photoshop. Good design means considering ALL of the factors: the information architecture (and content hierarchy), the usability, how close the site's overall design reflects a brand, improved interaction (via ajax and other technologies, and understanding the limitations and appropriate use of specific technologies), and a modular approach for future expansion.
The problem isn't that designers overestimate their work - the problem are people that don't know what professional design actually means or involves, underestimate the amount of work required, and thus, the importance of the end result. Which leads to people thinking "oh, even I can do that, I just need to learn how the buttons on Photoshop work.", which is why there is an overabundance of 1) people who think they can design and offer their services, and 2) people who think they can design if they wanted to, and thus, underestimate the services of all designers.
Think of it this way: Could you imagine if Amazon never took the time to properly execute their website, especially with all that content? I dare say they wouldn't be close to how successful as they are now.
To quote myself from before: Craig's list HAS a design.
Firstly, one needs to get to a standard definition of what one sees as “Web Design”. I am sure there will be one de-facto definition out there (Wikipedia perhaps?)… but in the real world they will differ, in some cases greatly. In a developing country, Web Design might be the creation of a visually pleasing site that is static in nature and is cobbled together by hand. In a market where the web is firmly established it might be all manner of usability tweaking to comply with legislation and best practices and the design of a site that scales well for a visitor base the developing country can not even begin to consider. Looking within the IT arena, it’s a given that no job description or product remains the same. Everything needs to be faster, better and cheaper. Niche markets might differ… but they are extremely small.
Think back to the dark days of programming machines with punch-cards or on amber/green on black monitor machines – the arrival of RAD development tools would have been seen as a major threat. The harsh reality is that one needs to 1) Know your market and more importantly, 2) Move with it.
In this McD’s generation – we want more “things”. Not only that, each of these must be delivered better, cheaper and faster. Think of yourself as a consumer of the products you supply. If you were hunting for a website for yourself and you were faced with the following options and a limited budget(90% of the case):
Option A:
40% cheaper than Option B
Not radically unique-looking
Fit for use
Fit for purpose
Instantly changeable by yourself(no lock in)
Option B:
Very unique
Not very agile
Not quickly scalable
Which would you choose?
The trick is seeing everything in context. If you are in business, the only context that really matters is your client’s context. If they are happy with a super unique, hand-crafted site and have deep pockets – they you cater for that market. On the other hand, if your client wants a quick fully-feature, adaptable solution on a budget then CMS and template is the way to go.
Common folly amongst most people is to overvalue what you do and undervalue what others do in another arena. Those CMS’ are a godsend and have the same value as a fantastically beautiful design. So too, developers need to understand that the role of the (maybe eccentric) designer is an essential part of the electronic-to-human link that is essential for an efficient and effective web/electronic solution.
My advice for you is, look to broaden… or sharpen your skill-set. “Broader:, would potentially mean a wider set of skills and coverage of complimentary technologies… “Narrower”, would be specialization on the creative skills.
Think Ferrari and Fiat – both take you places… one does so with a higher price tag offset by it’s exclusivity.
Regarding the market for visually pleasing design… templates have created an even larger client-base for you. Change your paradigm and instead of developing a site and it’s “look and feel”, look to creating a design without content… and sell the resulting template.
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