Web Design
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- bigbaby53
Does anyone still build websites from scratch anymore? Are templates being used more often than not?
- ETM0
I almost always do. Pretty much necessary if you are trying to retain the level of clients that actually pay enough to be successful.
Plus we avoid the WP space anyway... too saturated, dime a dozen space, IMO.
- fate1
ETM makes good points, but it's still a matter of finding the right quality vs. quantity balance. Great clients willing to pay for custom design. vs shitty clients that want you to crank out WP crap templates.
Though you might as well be digging your own grave if you focus on the latter.
- ETM2
Shitty template jobs are almost always for people who want a lot for a little, seem extra needy, don't trust you to just do what you are educated and trained to do and always want to be front and center of your attention. They always have problems, ask stupid questions (often unrelated to you or the site) and cost so much time in the long run, it becomes a net loss.
So it's super important to be good at reading and evaluating a client early on, or have some sort of past relationship before doing those kinds of jobs... again IMO.
- utopian0
A vast majority of my clients (big and small alike) do not want to spend money on custom anything. Except for a custom website based on three to four different templates/themes. They cherry pick multiple features from a variety of templates/themes to make their own.
Design is dead....just look at: One Page Love, Site Inspire, CSS Awards, etc... all of the designs, websites and or projects all look the same* for the most part.
*homogenized design
- Your 'big' clients use templates?ETM
- Thye don't care they want cheap!utopian
- disagree - site inspire still has some great stuff that looks nothing like templates...
sick of wordpress themes though - all look the samefadein11 - True, with very few exceptions. i see they truth downvoted youyurimon
- There's good stuff, but since the death of Flash, most things look almost the same.formed
- There may be a broad definition of 'big' clients then.ETM
- Xopher2
I think when people think wp, they just think of using existing themes. It's not at all hard to make your own from nothing.
- yuekit1
Templates are for people who don't have any money, who can't afford custom design or lack the ability to hire a developer.
I don't view it as a bad thing. A huge amount of the world is just getting online, so there need to be solutions for all price ranges.
- formed0
I think there's markets everywhere. Templates will always be templates. Some people will pay for a simple update of a template and adding the content. Sadly, there's plenty of firms that pass off templates as their own, original work. You can't compete with the "designer" that can only add content to templates and, again sadly, there are many clients that are fine with that.
There's a middle ground market where people will pay for a decent custom site. What it's built on doesn't matter so much, as long as there's a CMS system (there's some really nice custom WP sites out there).
The problem with templates is that there are some really nice ones. To make a custom website look as smooth as some templates would cost a lot (smooth animations, etc.). Maybe it's just attention to detail, but that's been my observation.
- formed0
The worst part is that I am seeing some very skilled firms backing off custom design and just having some generic blog-like site, even a Tumblr theme.
HTML5 promised great stuff, but hasn't delivered, so it takes a big chunk out of really nicely designed sites with smooth animation/transitions.
I guess companies are just giving up and going with easy updates over really nice design.
- CygnusZero41
Templates are aimed at small businesses. Mom and pop shops or new start ups. Clients that actually have money and care about their image often won't settle for templates, or require things that templates can't deliver, so custom web design isnt going away anytime soon.
- bort3
Don't confuse design with aesthetics alone. Proclaiming web design is dead just because things look templated is short sighted. Design is more about communication if you're doing the job properly.
That's what (good) clients are paying for. Research, content strategy, IA, and visual design that takes all of these things into account is where the value is. The longer I do this the more I realize how important content strategy and writing are. That's where the value is to clients and that's often where the best design comes from. It's hard work and most designers don't want to touch it but if all you're doing is offering cool looking visual design you're going to struggle in the future.
After all, cool looking design in itself rarely contributes to a companies bottom line (the typical reason for building a website in the first place).
- ETM1
A lot of it comes down to how you position/positioned yourself. If you want the better jobs you have to take less of the small jobs. It's hard when you need the money, but much of the business is referral, so do you want high-end referrals, or low-end?
There is nothing wrong with either spectrum, it just what you want to, or can do. Quick, high volume, low income. Or slow, low volume, high-income. Just different markets, like just about everything on the planet.
- I spent 10 years learning that and more slowly trying to reposition better. Still doing it.ETM
- Going through a rename/rebrand now to shake off the last shackles of legacy.ETM
- it's also not as easy as "choosing". If it were, there'd be a lot more successful companies.formed
- The problem is everyone chases money to the bottom. At the start, it's hard to say no to even a crappy $1k-$2k job.ETM
- bigbaby531
Thx guys.
- fate0
web design is dead.
- ETM2
Mobile has stifled web design greatly.
The whole "start mobile and work out" concept is functional but _sometimes_ cuts design off at the knees.
That said, as we are now getting more comfortable with mobile offerings and identifying the challenges. It frees up the ability to be more creative again, rather than just worrying about the functional issues of mobile and dismissing more creative solution a lot of the time due to time and resource constraints.
- monNom1
^ totally. You take what might have been an ambitious design on desktop, then make it responsive.. you either end up with a really watered down experience, or your complexity is magnified 2-3x... and maybe that becomes much too large of a project.
Another thing to note: the tools you choose impact the end result. A design done in illustrator is going to tend to be different from one done in PhotoShop, purely because of what easy and what's hard in each programme. And when you're talking about development, even beyond templates you have things like bootstrap. Foundation and uikit that add a set of constraints to custom implementations. They save a lot of time, but they make every website that uses them feel similar because nobody is reinventing the wheel. They're just taking what's in the library.
- shapesalad0
No code editors...
This looks good, but pricy
https://www.vev.design/Anyone know of a decent 'free' or low price editor that churns out decent html+css. That's all I need a visual editor for that. I can add the php myself.
- shapesalad2
Is Dreamweaver worth a download? Seeing as I have as part of my Adobe plan.... or is still as clunky as it was back in the early 2000's?
- shapesalad-1
Looks decent, anyone heard of it? Not heard of it before.
- seems to be pretty good.shapesalad
- Looks interesting, ill take a closer look, I wonder how well it integrates with vue, angular etc, and how it goes from xd to this_niko
- I think it’s free so I might just test it out_niko
- It's free, I'm diving into it. seems good.shapesalad
- Spend weekend on it, amazing, really good. presume webflow is similar. good to have a desktop appshapesalad
- shapesalad0
Examples:
https://play.playful.software'Flash' is back! playful animation/microsite/interactive web design without needing to code!
- shapesalad2
Spline 3D now reacts to mouse/scroll events