Arts Portfolio

We have a few contributors to the site now, all from different professional and creative areas. Although I have spent much of my life studying Art and Design and hold an Illustration degree, I would no longer consider myself an artist. I prefer the term “creative person”. I work primarily in web design and development so there’s a mixture of visual designing, Photoshopping and programming. I would say that although there is a delicate balance for a web designer between creative and technical, as far as most artists are concerned I am more technical than anything else.

The reason I say all of this is because I am going to talk about something that may at first sound like a technical matter, after all the title has got numbers in it. The internet is not only a tool for artists allowing them to communicate with other creatives and show their work off, but it is quickly becoming an important part of life. Creative people especially benefit from learning about the things around them which they can then harness and use within their work.

Web 2.0 is in fact a movement, just as was Impressionism in the 19th Century, Bauhaus in the early 20th Century and all of the other important creative movements throughout history. Many people, myself included struggle with the definition of Web 2.0 but in general, Web 2.0 sites are websites and web applications designed around community, interaction and usability.

My initial thoughts about Web 2.0 were that it was just a buzz word or a marketing term. In fact I do hear of web designers claiming that all of their websites are Web 2.0 when in fact they, like most people don’t fully understand the concept. (I am not sure if there really is a full definition) It does after all help sell websites.

A Classic example of a 2.0 site would be YouTube. Through ease of use, people collaborate together to create a user experience which is something that couldn’t have been done a few years back. This is partly due to technical advances such as faster internet connections and a higher computer literacy rate, but it is also influenced by the time we live in.

Web 2.0 is very “now”.

As well as the philosophical aspects of web 2.0, there is a distinctive visual trend going on. Web 2.0 sites tend to be bright and freshly coloured and there is an abundance of curved reflections among other visual clues that the site is claiming to be web 2.0. This can be seen particularly clearly on the following images:

You will notice lots of strong colours, particularly, oranges, bright blues and lime greens. You will also see that many of the logos have the word “beta” next to them which indicate that the designers are claiming that the site is more of a web application or tool rather than simply a website. The beta text is nearly always in a neutral grey meaning that although it is beta, this information is secondary to the logo itself. Websites now also seem to pay more attention to white space, finally realising that sometimes less really is more.

As a web designer, all of this interests me greatly. I think it is very important to keep a cautious eye on trends. I am all in favour of the Web 2.0 movement, but part of me wonders how long this will continue before it evolves into something else. I remember when tracksuits were all the rage as not only were they cool (apparently) but they were practical, gave you freedom to run about, and were maybe even seen as liberating. Now they are worn exclusively by what us British term as “chavs”. Before that we had the 60’s and 70’s, with its brown floral wall paper and William Shatner.

William Shatner is still here, but my point is that amazing things are going on all around us, however we should be aware that influences change and so does the design. Just because something seems fantastic today doesn’t mean that it will tomorrow.