[Sigia-l] the lesser importance of home pages -> moresplashpagefun?

[Listera]

Christopher Fahey:

> You seem to have mistaken me for a designer-basher. Allow me to correct you.

Not so. My comments weren't address to you personally.
 
> It's like you're saying that design equals usability, but
> design does NOT include graphic design (maybe this is going a little far,

Way, way too far, as I've said nothing of the sort at all.

> but it's the same kind of (il)logical leap you made with the "beautician"
> crack).

Who among us but the most gorgeous doesn't need a bit of cosmetic help from
time to time to bring out the inner beauty in all of us.:-) But cosmetics
ALONE is not design.

In other words, to bring it back to the original problem, it wouldn't take a
very skilled graphic designer to improve the *visual* quality of the
McMasters-Carr site, but that may OR MAY NOT solve its fundamental *design*
challenge, which I suspect goes much deeper.
 
> One can *conceptually* separate graphic design from strategy, structure,
> architecture and (even selection of) content without *actually* denying a
> graphic designer a role in those tasks.

Design is a holistic process, I flatly refuse to cannibalize it in any shape
or form with what are silly titles to me. Design is problem solving
(balanced between the client and the user): it's strategy AND structure AND
architecture AND interaction AND interface AND graphics AND usability. In my
book, there's no OR. So your pitting "graphic designer" against the rest is
not something I share at all.
 
> The side effect of removing the "graphic", I fear, is that it lets Ziya go so
> far out there in empowering "designers" that he neglects to give due respect
> to the as-important "graphic" part.

That's your concoction entirely. I never said or implied anything of the
sort.

Your own words belie the problem with your formulation: "'graphic' part".
Yes, it is A PART. Part of something larger than visual treatment. Part of
solving a problem. It is and should always be subservient to the totality of
a solution. 

Some design challenges may be solved without any (significant) graphical
alterations at all. Some may be heavily visual reformulations. I'm not going
to play the silly game of which "part" is more important. What's important
is solving the design challenge in its totality, in a given context.
 
----
Ziya

"Innovate as a last resort."