Re:Why have today's designers stopped dreaming?
by Silhouette on Sunday April 13, 2014 @08:36AM
(#7581133)
Perhaps the essential question we should be asking ourselves each time we approach a new site design project is: why would we not choose to be different?
Isn't this an obvious, if unfortunate, commercial reality? The fact is that cheap, mass-produced products have a large market that is willing to pay for them.
If you can make such products with less time and money than you would need to create original, thoughtful, customised work for every job, then you have a viable business model. Moreover, your business model can be implemented by people who don't have the skill and creativity required to do bespoke work.
Fortunately, there will always be a market for premium sites, with original designs that are carefully planned with the site's goals in mind, and with a look and feel that are matched to the client's brand. There will always be clients who need a completely custom web app to fit their particular needs. And these kinds of client will always be willing to pay a premium for good work.
For better or worse, there are simply a lot more clients who don't have that kind of budget, and for whom a site that is built from a decent template with a basic CMS in half a day does the job well enough. And there are even more who don't want a template that is exactly like everyone else, but can settle for the work of a newbie web developer who doesn't know much but can manage to fire up Yeoman and throw together some HTML5 Boilerplate and Bootstrap and a couple of jQuery plug-ins.
Isn't this an obvious, if unfortunate, commercial reality? The fact is that cheap, mass-produced products have a large market that is willing to pay for them.
If you can make such products with less time and money than you would need to create original, thoughtful, customised work for every job, then you have a viable business model. Moreover, your business model can be implemented by people who don't have the skill and creativity required to do bespoke work.
Fortunately, there will always be a market for premium sites, with original designs that are carefully planned with the site's goals in mind, and with a look and feel that are matched to the client's brand. There will always be clients who need a completely custom web app to fit their particular needs. And these kinds of client will always be willing to pay a premium for good work.
For better or worse, there are simply a lot more clients who don't have that kind of budget, and for whom a site that is built from a decent template with a basic CMS in half a day does the job well enough. And there are even more who don't want a template that is exactly like everyone else, but can settle for the work of a newbie web developer who doesn't know much but can manage to fire up Yeoman and throw together some HTML5 Boilerplate and Bootstrap and a couple of jQuery plug-ins.