Why have today's designers stopped dreaming?

The more "different" and "creative" and "unique" your site's design is, the more trouble and friction a user encounters trying to learn how it functions. So every site on the net looking similar might piss off designers but for users it's a joy.

Um, because we've figured out what works for landing pages, in an overall sense. Being different probably means forgoing conversions, which can translate into failure.

This isn't to say there isn't still room for improvement, of course. But improvement is now more incremental, with lots of A/B testing and whatnot. And for good reason.

If designers still want to be wild and creative, there are still plenty of places to do it, like personal blogs or personal projects or working on specific projects that value cutting-edge design because it fits their unique market.

But for most websites struggling to turn a profit or just gain traction period, "dreaming" is not a luxury they have. And it's disingenuous of the author to suggest that this is somehow a failure, no matter how faux-inspirational it may sound.

I was really dismayed when MS came up with Metro/Modern and suddenly most vocal designers flipped switch and started to produce designs inspired by the new MS's design language. No creativity there at all, just plain boring simplistic uniformly colored boxes.

I guess even Apple caught the metroitis with iOS 7. No idea what went on over there, from UI that was appreciated as the most beautiful, polished and envied it just borrowed approach from the most controversial that many find disgusting (hey, was the default color palette chosen by color blind people?).

We had the same problem when hiring designers for our creative product - most designers just flat out copied all sorts of ugly trendy flat designs. I really don't want my app to look like it was designed by the 5-year old Miró that just discovered boxes in MS Paint.

What is happening in design? Is it the same thing that happened with classical music when modernists completely broke historic standards and started to produce "intellectual" music that maybe 5% of population can appreciate, the rest just suffers through?

I can automate creation of ugly boxes/flat stuff myself, I don't need designers to do that. From a designer I would expect something original, expression of craftmanship that will discern my work from the others. Not uniformity.

But if you look at sites, personal or otherwise, of actual designers, you will find creativity. Creativity—the act of creative design—is what defines a person as a designer in the first place.

You could say the same of photographers these days. Anyone seems to be a photographer; but there are still a scant few who are artists.

"Not everyone can become a great artist; but a great artist can come from anywhere." Give them a chance. Copying is but the first step.

Elliot was hands down one of my favorites for his use of type and textures. I even recall sitting up late one night (4 or 5 am since he lives in England) to see his personal site get a revamp.

Nowadays, I pay little attention, seemingly because of things like Dribbble. This excessive desire to share removes any anticipation from the work and in essence, makes it less exciting to see. I don't think I'm the only one that feels this way.

Speaking for my own work, it's just not as fun to spend time crafting a really cool design when you know that it will be seen and tossed aside in a few days. I'd argue this is mostly subconscious, but I do find it belittling my work before it even finds a solid focus.

One thought on this struck me not too long ago while reading The Art of Worldly Wisdom by Balthasar Gracián:

“Never show half-finished things to others. Let them be enjoyed in their perfection. All beginnings are formless, and what lingers is the image of that deformity. The memory of having seen something imperfect spoils our enjoyment when it is finished. To take in a large object at a single glance keeps us from appreciating the parts, but it satisfies our taste. Before it is, everything it is not, and when it begins to be, it is still very close to nonbeing. It is revolting to watch even the most succulent dish being cooked. Great teachers are careful not to let their works be seen in embryo. Learn from nature, and don’t show them until they look good.”

Sharing is great, but I think it's become more of an addiction to feed than a process for improving the craft at large.

I agree that cookie cutter sites are becoming more common, but that's because most designers are following the trend. Flat is fresh after years of skeuomorphic design literally everywhere. It's simple, it's clean, and yes, there isn't much you can do within those parameters. That doesn't make it bad design.

Look at any arbitrary modernist building. 90% of the time, it's terrible: boring, simple shapes; uninspired color choices; too much concrete. At the time it was a breath of fresh air. Moreover, when it's done right, it's beautiful forever:

http://www.fallingwater.org/img/home_assets/new_first.jpg

http://www.theconservationcenter.com/Farnsworth%20House.jpg

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/--ru1VYyd8Dw/TrdHRcLZrrI/AAAAAAAAAa...

Despite web design being a visual medium, not everybody working in the industry is a visual web designer. There are print designers struggling to make transition, there are developers doing designs out of necessity, and there are people who are learning everything from scratch. And the nature of the Web makes it's easy to lift and 'borrow' things from other people, so you will see a lot of convincingly good designs that are not necessarily produced by designers with design training.

Most web work can be copied with basic use of Photoshop, access to stock photos and portfolio sites, and some attention to details. But there is only so much you can do when you don't know how to draw, use and mix colors, lay-out types. This will contribute to sites looking the same. A trained designer has much bigger set of tools and skill-set at his or her disposal. Simply knowing how to draw well, opens up all sorts of creative possibility, but it's a skill that takes a long time to develop.

So in a nutshell, I don't think it's that designers have completely given up dreaming. It's just become harder to find great designer's work because the denominator of non-designers has grown so large.

There are other contributing factors, such as increasing number of stakeholders now driving designs in the name of semantic design, usability, accessibility, codeability and maintainability, but I'm sure others will touch on those issues.

Maybe Facebook's buy of Occulus Rift will ignite an arms race in 3D design that leads to something really new, if the daunting literalism of 3D can be overcome.

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.

And once created, and people get accustomed to that language, it makes it easier for them to use (everybody knows what an x in the corner of a window does)

How many times have you been to a site with a different design and have to spend a few minutes trying to figure out the navigation? If you are trying to get your users to do something, familiarity is what wins.

Maybe our common definition of creativity is wrong. Good design isn't always "new and cool." Often the best design simply achieves a goal within given parameters.

Unsurprisingly, I agree with the conclusion, that services which happen to be delivered over networks actually have little place doing much branding at all, and users should be in a position to take more control of the look and feel. CSS etc. simply isn't enough, and simultaneously isn't accessible enough to normal people.

As it stands the incentives for design innovation are getting wiped out by a need to not offend anyone.

See: this is a web page.

http://justinjackson.ca/words.html

Since the comeback of flat design everybody is becoming a designer because all they need to do is put big pictures and 1 or 2 colors and bordered boxes and vola! you are a designer