Designers should make things: Digital Fabrication

blog.tutorspree.com

11 points·akharris··3 comments

I'll go farther and say that designing in a physical medium will make you a better digital designer.

Physical mediums often have more explicit capabilities and limitations. These are gold in the hands of a talented designer. Learning how to tease out certain capabilities to their fullest, to maneuver around limitations in novel ways, these are skills that physical mediums encourage and reward.

Yet, it's rare to hear something similar from web designers. There always seems to be disappointment that a web page is not fixed and static like its print counterpart, but never elation that the page can be resized, or scroll!

I think there's many hidden capabilities and limitations on the web that designers have yet to truly uncover, and working with some physical mediums might just be the best way to hone their skills of discovery.

It is hard to say what the physical medium for web design may be, but I feel that it starts with the code. I have a hard time designing a webpage without thinking of the underlying code and working with all the layers (html, css, js...) to do more than reproduce a design, but to actually bring it to life. This often means that things will change, evolve and generally result in a better design and more enjoyable experience. The web space is more constrained by standards and protocol, which mirror the physical challenges of material space, than tools like Photoshop or Illustrator.

Thanks for the comment. Robert

These guys have a fantastic blog. Always something fun and exciting. I don't know them.

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