A friend and I were recently discussing what format to use for her website. We came across this article ‘Using Templates to Design Killer Blogs’ from Feast (istock photo), which I thought was worth posting up for a think.
It has some good comments from:
• Jina Bolton , Designer at Crush + Lovely
• Dan Mall, Interactive Art Director for Big Spaceship
• Brendan Dawes, Creative Director at Magnetic North
Jina, when being asked what the most common problem with designing with CMS, I think nails it. “Usually problems that arise have to do with letting yourself be restricted by the perceived constraints of the CMS’s templating system”
As with a lot of these type of articles I’ve read, there is always the question of ‘Are designers being lazy?’ when using templates from blogging sites to create websites. The article discusses a more complacent aspect of that discussion. The same goes for designers who use very simple portfolio cms like indexhibit, which has been very popular amongst young designers who want to update their sites as quickly as flicking a button but are not versatile in the coding or programming department (one of these designers would be me).
From my point of view, if it’s a designer who is using these sites to create his/her own on-line portfolio, what matters is the content because what you want is to showcase your work. So the cleanest the layout, the better. However, if it’s a client based site that should be completely customised to it’s own identity, look and feel…well I would say that’s a different story. If you use a template you really need to know and completely understand HTML and CSS to be able to fully customise it- that is if the client wants to update it quickly in-house.
Daniel, on this side of things is clear: “To customize templates, it’s important to hold high the sacred tenets of graphic design: typography, white space, grids, movement and hierarchy. Most blog templates are also created with HTML and CSS, so a firm understanding of them is crucial”
But that’s always the case. Understanding and knowing visual language in order to communicate effectively….isn’t it?
That is way at the end it is always done to the need and the best tools to address it.
By the way, another link mentioned worth a view is the SXSW interactive conference, with leading creatives on the panel “Is WordPress killing web design?”
