Function before Form

I’ve been browsing around A List Apart lately for some inspiration, and I found this article: A Dao of Web Design. Extremely well written and carefully crafted, this article gave me one of my new favorite quotes:

Firstly, think about what your pages do, not what they look like. Let your design flow from the services which they will provide to your users, rather than from some overarching idea of what you want pages to look like. Let form follow function, rather than trying to take a particular design and make it “work”.

This states much more elegantly what I’ve been trying to put into words for sometime, and it has a very nurturing language. Instead of forcing your content into a design that’s all about flashy graphics and effects, instead ask yourself “how is this information asking to be presented? What is the best way to showcase it’s most important points?” After all, being a designer is about taking the path that leads to a fufilled user and client- not fulfilling your own desire to create a design that looks amazing but is difficult to use.

Sometimes we get lost in the visuals and forget to ask “Why?” Why does the page have a side nav instead of a top nav? Why is it a three column layout instead of two? These are all valid questions and you might find yourself scrambling for an answer if you didn’t take the time to analyze the information first, and let the design grow out of the function.

But as they always said on Reading Rainbow, don’t take my word for it- go and check out the excellent article by John Allsopp