On Saturday, March 13 of the 2010, leading creatives from the world of web design debated whether CMS tools have made designers lazy, and created a new set of design conventions that designers feel obliged to follow in “Is WordPress Killing Web Design.”
The world of the web from the viewpoint of a creative is a world full of resources that help make your life easier as a designer. We have access to more and more tools that enable us to do more for our clients. The requirement to have an extensive working knowledge of the many languages required for robust and engaging websites has changed a bit. It isn’t as strong a necessity when provided a tool such as wordpress. What CMS tools provide you is the ability to learn the programming involved, while at the same time not requiring full proficiency in it. The only problem with that according to Mielke is people are still afraid to jump in and get their hands dirty. However with that said, there are many designers out there that do take the plunge and create some down right amazing sites with these CMS platforms.
I agree it is very easy to become very reliant on a particular tool and design around how it functions rather than decide how the site should function and build the tool around it. Dan Mall from Big Spaceship says it well when he says, “The constraints are there, but you can still create within the parameters. CMS tools make life easier and the designers are running out of problems to solve. People are spending too much time on headers and not enough time on the important things like layout, tone, etc. Its all a matter of perspective. We are problem solvers. We do work that relays to people how you solve problems. Do not let the CMS dictate and make the CMS transparent.”
As the American architect Louis Sullivan said: “Form Follows Function” and we as creatives should remind ourselves of this for every project we take on.
