The biggest issue is the end user. We as designers cannot discount aesthetics. A poorly designed but aesthetically pleasing site is more likely to be utilized than a well designed but ugly one. People are more willing to put up with bad design if something just looks good. Conversely, it doesn’t matter how well something is designed or how easy it is to use. If it is not aesthetically pleasing so that it draws people in and invites users to use it, the site will be under utilized.

The issue that we, as designers, need to overcome is meshing design and usability with aesthetics.

This post surely makes you think, thanks for that!

Aesthetics on the other hand is all about the way thing looks. The texture or color of something. Does it have clean, sleek lines that flow into each other or is it comprised of various elements and textures? Is it bold? Is it colorful?

But both have to do with creativity.

What I believe is that you are confusing these blogs that focus on aesthetics with design, and they are as well. Though these blogs do make design look or seem easy to those that do not appreciate or understand design it does not matter. These people would not pay for excellent designers to begin with, so let them have their $200 dollar logos and Themeforest templates.

But aesthetics and design are locked together and are inseparable. Something can look amazing aesthetically, but completely fail because it is poorly designed and unusable. Conversely, something can be designed in all the right ways, but have such poor aesthetics no one will want to use it.

These sites do belittle our profession, providing no context to the charge. The “Best of Logo Collection” web sites seem to be the largest culprit of this. Elements of a visual identity valued for their aesthetics with no regard to their context. It’s about what is pretty.

Trends will always be a part of design—there’s no point in opposing this fact. However, it’s how these trends and “best-of collection” web sites are USED that matters. In the hands of an educated designer, these tools can be used to supplement inspiration—never drive it.

They’re nice to have, but too often they fall into the hands of designers without the proper experience to understand their rather insignificant value.

But—that’s ok. It separates the design thinkers from the pretty-makers, making it easier for me to get work.

However this is not the only factor to be changed., I think that people are missunderstanding what design really is. Design is an ART. And what you where trying to say is not DESIGN but WEBDESIGN. it’s kind of different… webdesign is something made to gain money, products, websites, blogs, webapps, and the list goes on.
Sometimes we read the “Top 10 Design Trends for 2010”, or something like that, and then we apply them to webdesign, which is a little goofy

As you said, trends don’t help us in understanding the Webdesign structure and don’t teach us to webdesign!

Thank you very much for this post, I really enjoyed it!

Luís Pereira

Too often rules of physics and reality are tossed out the window because a “designer” doesn’t understand that the object in front should be smaller than the object in back, or that shadows should come from light sources that make sense, not placed wherever. UI logic is another similar casualty…

These rules are not broken because they help tell the story or achieve the project’s goals. No, instead they’re usually broken “because I said so.”