The Tao of Web Design - Part 1
October 26th, 2006
I love martial arts and last night whilst walking to the shop I realised that being a good web designer is like being a good martial artist. On that note I have decided to write a few articles that will take concepts from Bruce Lee (I love the concepts involved in Jeet Kune Do) and bind them to web design, I hope you enjoy them and feel free to engage me with any thoughts you have…
Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water my friend. - Bruce Lee
How many times have you nudged a design into shape via the beauty of CSS only to find it has popped out of place in another browser? Web design is a fluid medium, everything you do has a knock on affect on other elements on your page, nothing can be pixel perfect and you can never guarantee how your user is going to be viewing your site.
One of the most crucial aspects of designing a good web site is being able to read these reactions and incorporate these fluctuations into your design. Do not think in resolution for the screen only, anticipate all of them and how your different elements will flow in each environment, be flexible and you should be just fine.
This philosophy does not only apply to the front end, the back end of your site must also be able to agile, are you thinking of the bigger picture? Will your site scale? Is your database architecture well done? Could you take parts of your database and easily reuse the data without having to do any extra work to move it to a new format?
In my past experience I have worked on projects that have contained one set of data but grown to contain more and more data, in turn this has had a knock on effect on the structure of the front end of the site and also the design.
Planning at the beginning of a site is paramount, you should analyze everything you would like to have before you even start to build and then look at how you can do this. Understand that at a later date your site may change to incorporate one of the things you want and prepare for this before hand, be flexible before you need to be!
Roan Lavery Author Comment
October 30th, 2006
Excellent article Alan.
As you might expect, this sort of thing is right up my alley. It was when I started Jeet Kune Do that my interest in Zen philosophy and Taoism began.
The fascinating thing for me, is how it is applicable to every aspect of your life, and in particular, for us, design.
I’ll look forward to the series of articles mate.
Alan Author Comment
October 30th, 2006
Glad you enjoyed it Roan, I was tempted to add a Yoda twist but then Bruce could kick Yoda’s micro ass any day.
I am looking forward to writing part 2 so am glad at least one person will be back to read it