Nowadays presentation often far exceeds content. Just like a Chinese banquet - great to eat but ten minutes later you're hungry again.Not that I want to reduce the gloss and slightly unreal glitz and glamour that somehow seems to belong on the computer screen. What I want, is for that glitz to back up and re-inforce the content, to work with it , to make the message stronger, better, and more enjoyable to take in.
Too often it's two pence of content dressed up in a two hundred pound suit. I see magazine readers CD artwork, stunning quality pictures made with the latest software. What I don't see is any content, direction or meaning, only a pretty picture led by the programme that made it.
It's easy to make visuals that are instantly wonderful, you follow your nose, tweak this and tweak that and it gets better and better. But at the end of the day it has the signature of the software that created it instead of yours. 'Ah yes this magazine was designed in Quark'. 'Oh! another KPT Bryce landscape, very nice'.
I think two things need to happen.
One. The user needs to learn to drive the software so he doesn't have to think or look for the controls.
Two. The user needs to know his objectives, bending the software straining it and pushing it in the desired direction. The end product should then have the creators stamp on it and not the mark of the tool.
Pencil and paper to sort the content and direction is my solution. Perhaps those generations following can free themselves from consciousness of the medium and work freely direct to screen.
For me the pencil (specifically and of prefered kind and sharpness) and paper (blank white and thin) represent the least intrusion between the thought and it's expression. From that point on whatever medium and design work is involved is to strengthen and render more accessible that initial idea.
Decoration Bad. Communication Good.
Having very limited access to a modem I've only found a few so far.