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NIVEK Inspiration, collaboration, experimentation and community are the good things about Web Design. Some of the good experiences have come from personal collaborative projects and client jobs where an open canvas was presented to create. Recently, one of the best things to happen was that Fresh Conference in Hong Kong, it was where everyone got together to experience and see how the "masters" went about with their designs. Its events like these that the Web Design Industry needs. The Bad There needs to be credebility, Take this example I read a while back. Why is it that a client feels the need to tell a Web Designer how a site should look like, when he should leave the designer alone ? Because there are so many Joes and Bobs out there who claim to be Web Designers that there is no perceived professional credebility ( this does not however apply to a certain handful who are true Web Designers ) Whereas say if you are an electrician, your client, is not going to tell you how you should go about fixing or designing his house wiring plan. Why? because Electricians are part of an established Industry that has credebility. Another thing is the issue of compatibility, browsers, platforms and technology, why can't their be a standard? So The Web used to be a place where you can find useful information, now its a place filled with too much watered down sites that are trying ot sell you something. The process needs to move towards making the web a more cohesive whole, adopting one single standard where the designer and user experience is more enjoyable, this will surely get things on a roll again! -Nivek
HOLGER I didn't want to believe, that this binary-data, arranged in different file-types and moving in front of my nutty mien, should represent the sum of all i had lived and worked hard for within the last 5 years. This strange experience prompted me to start thinking about all the good and bad stuff happened with me and the Web Design Industry (WDI). Years ago, during my years of study, i had one of those inspiring dreams you won't forget for your whole fucking life! This dream was about me and a warm, young, relaxing, open minded, easy-living, inspiring, exciting, honest and straight-forward-moving industry, that was based on simple rules to ensure that things can happen within a minute. 1995, my first year in this industry. Wow, that was cool! Everything was so new and exciting, like having your first real good sex! 8)˜ Just plug in a computer and let make things happen in your own way! I started immediately experimenting and playing with this new medium and this new level of communication and interaction. People from all around the world started to play around and got a lot of money for making their dreams come true. Yes, of course also me! The idea of getting good money for doing what you love, enjoy and already live for was too seductive not to join. So i jumped on this speedy trip and experienced a lot of exciting, strange and serious fun!". A rapid growing biotop full of creative and smart individuals playing and experimenting with a new and fascinating toy called WWW, yes, that was this WDI supposed to be about. A biotop full of fancy-looking-and-often-strange-talking-people, cool-and-strange-ideas, super-expensive-and-excellent-designed-locations, excellent-Asian-and-Italian-food flavoured with-a-lots-of-Champaign-and-Caipirinhas, super-artificial-pseudo-tech-blabla-and-abbreviations no one had a clue about (a new kind of artificial communication has already started! 8)˜ ), (pseudo)-serious-and-(pseudo)-fun-businesses, m(b)illion-dollar-deals while experimenting with the idea of „global-company-strategies, -alliances and -structures", a lot of superfit-and-gorgeous-ladies, wearing fancy and sexy dresses, eating sushi and drinking cocktails at those super-stylish „Do you wanna join our company?"- or „We want your money, let's do a project!"-parties and all the other-wicked-stuff that pushed and influenced the worldwide Economy and Society in a new dimension no one couldn't have imagined before! Everything was just fine and cool! Ahhhh, this was really a great time, wasn't it?! All those fancy people, having those fancy cell-phones connected to those fancy tiny small computers, using a lot of fancy words for telling you fancy stories about their fancy business. But the wicked thing about was, that not only the New Economy was enjoying this new kind of doing business more in a „cool-artificial-chillish" way, also some parts of the Old Economy started to act more cool while trying to be more innovative and open minded. Be cool, act global and have a direct connection to your client's awareness! PR & Marketing, yes, i need that! Wow, a lot of money had to be on the International Markets. And the Economy (= Clients of WDI) paid often so much money for getting delivered such a ultra-poor-and-bad-quality-buggy-pseudo-innovative-and-unusable-small-piece-of-web-shit, while supporting them (WDI) at the same time to conquer almost the whole fucking world just like a big fat hurricane! Really bad and ugly, isn't it?! Yes, MONEY, finally that was all about! Money = AudiTT = Sex = Power! Wow, that's amazing, isn't it?! Anyway, there were a lot of smart, funny, nice, inspiring, busy and honest people out there! They understood what this new medium was (should be) about! Just start to experiment a lot with the given possibilites of this new and exciting medium (or define your own ones!) and try hard to sell your ideas, fictions, dreams and failures (nothing bad about, often excellent stuff comes up of failures)! All of them really made things happen, no one couldn't have imagined before! Excellent works, done by excellent people! MAXIMUM RESPECT goes out to all of them! Maybe we will get in touch in the near future! Feel free to ping me to init() a new process! At this time i also wanna pass a big shout out to all my buddies that i've already met out there, you are all unique, great people tryin' hard to follow constantly their own special way, On- AND Off-line! I love that excellent shit you are doing! Ok, back to my dream! While the first companies in the New Economy crashed, everything changed again, but with lots more speed then it happened first. Crash! Boom! 404! Error! Game over! Already too many bad people were moving from one of those fancy places to the next one, contaminating the whole biotop and getting too much money for doing only bullshit! But unfortunately also the "good" or "dazzled" ones had to pay for the failures of these craps. A lot of them got used to live in their own cool new world, consuming all those expensive and fancy modern lifestyle-stuff, enjoying all those fat and exciting cities all around the world, but often without taking care of themselves and the more-and-more- lousy-and-double-dealer-getting-industry they worked hard for! Strange deals, done by strange people in a really strange time! Everything was just too obvious and collusive by now! Unfortunately also a serious part of the global Web-Designer's-Scene moved into the wrong direction (at least in my dream). Too many projects, without having any concept or idea behind, were already online, getting you the feeling that the only reason for these wasted domains were to show other craps how cool and original they all were while copying and modifying ideas/styles/technologies/contents of others in their own „original" copy-modify-paste-style, flavoured with copy-paste-technologies and without having any message behind or useful information inside! Ah, sorry, i've missed something, it seems that the definition of "Inspiration" has changed a bit! Isn't it?! That's why i already try not to stay that often at one of those „pseudo-inspiring" places, telling you where „cool" but „meaningless" stuff can be found online (Uups, that was not for the public!). Of course, i know also a lot of excellent and original places are out there too, where really excellent stuff and fresh information is going on! Hey, come on, but we have already too many fancy interfaces, often based on those fancy and cool actionscripts, but having no idea or concept behind and/or any useful information inside! Hey dudes, don't be that „selfish" or „scene-dazzled", just shutdown computers, stay some serious time offline, read a nice book and think about what you are currently doing! Maybe you come up with something more sophisticated afterwards! By the way, NO, i'm not the bad ass, that you are maybe thinking of just now! These are serious thoughts based on serious discussions flavoured with personal experiences and interpretation! And NO, i don't try to diss' someone out there, but some of them should wake up to realize and accept the circumstance that too many similarities in design, contents, animation and interaction unluckely happend (knowingly or unknowingly)! Too many Instant-Projects featuring Instant-Content done by Instant-Designers using Instant-Software-Products serving Instant-Audiences! Sad but true! So wake up and don't be that slavish! Try your own special thing (On- and Off-Line!), based on your personal environment-ideas-dreams-thoughts- discussions-interpretations-experiments-experiences-aims and be prepared of failing sometimes, but nothing bad about failing, failures are often a important step to invent something new and sophisticated. It seems that almost no one really wants to try being more innovative and/or maybe thinking a little bit further! First 1+1=2, then 3=2+1, that's logical but trivial and often confused with "Innovation". Innovation is a non continuously process, and if you know that, then you also maybe can imagine that 1+1=3, nothing new but certainly NOT trivial; inasmuch the human being itself is a kind of "non trivial object" (‚Hient von Foerster', thanks Michi) 8)˜ 2001. Yep, finally a lot of us are already „back to earth". All others are welcome! Game over?! NO, i don't think so! It's certainly not that bad and i'm sure that a lot of really inspiring stuff done by inspiring people will come up soon! Often a lot of good stuff happens when people are really pissed like me! So stay tuned and be aware! Anyway, let's try all hard to find new and good ideas to define the requirements of the "Play-Again-Button"! Let me know if you've already started! Respect, may-the-source-be-with-ya-all. Holger / init() delisting procedures / logout / un:
demlhosc / pwd: ooooooo / shutdown -h now / executing... / delisting procedures
completed / account "demlhosc" terminated / system halted / end 8)˜ -
NIKOLA TOSIC Then I wrote a really bad empiric overview of the industry based on stock market reports. I really don't know what kind of concrete thoughts I can lay out that everybody doesn't know already. Everybody knows that web industry hasn't even been an industry. It was a big scam to make people invest. Now its going trough its purgatory. Maybe it will start with bullshit again or maybe people will actually start to take it seriously and it will be a REAL industry one day [ so even my mom and dad can consider it as WORK and not quake or icq 8 hours a day ]. As for web design I think it's in the same shit as the entire industry. There was none or very little real web design. It was mostly brochures or book like e-commerce with poor jerk off attempts here and there. Its shit and probably will be shit for a long time. It will take decades before websites reach production quality of cars, refrigerators or toasters. I don't care what others do anyways. Nikola Tosic
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