Question: Web Design History?
I am currently teaching introduction to graphic design at CDIA Boston University. The class is an exploration of basic design fundamentals reinforced by corresponding examples of revolutionary works of Design. It also happens to be the first class in an extensive design program, so it is very important to expose the students to a wide variety of design disciplines including environmental graphics, poster design, typography, book, branding, package design and even web design.
Skimming the history of design, there are works that have revolutionized the industry 
created by un-refuted masters of the craft. They have won awards, been published in textbooks, and are internationally recognized as being hands down the most Bad Ass works of visual communication in existence. There are pieces that effortlessly jump from the pages of design history books to use as reference in my class. There is Milton Glaser’s 1967 Bob Dylan poster which is now part of the collection at the Museum of Modern art in New York, Paula’s Scher’s “Bring in ’Da Noise, Bring in ’Da Funk” series which changed the way designers approached typography in the late 90s, and Landor & Associates famous arrow in the FedEx logo design which still gets gasps of pure genius when examined ( still blows my mind ).
But when I sat down to pull out sites from the history of web design, I found myself a little stumped. While the history advancements regarding technical limitations is documented in books such as “Designing with Standards” by Jeffery Zeldman, it is difficult to determine specific sites that serve as icons of that particular movement. What are the revolutionary pieces of undeniable web design genius?
I have my personal preferences, the pieces that are benchmarks in the evolution of web design, but how do they stand up to the actual un-biased history of web design?
Searching Amazon for he term “history of web design” The first book that pops up is “Meggs History of Graphic Design” and the titles that follow all address either history of all design or just topics in web design… but not the history of web design. Under Wikipedia’s definition of Web Design the only site referenced is “CSS Zen Garden“, which is a fantastic example… but is it the only one? Under Wikipedia’s definition of Graphic Design web design is mentioned throughout, but no actual web designers or websites are ever referenced, though several designers in other disciplines are, including Paul Rand and Milton Glaser.
So where is the formal documentation of the evolution of web design? Is it too early to even document it? What sites have revolutionized the industry and how have they effected the progression of visual design on the web? Who are the Milton Glasers and Paul Rand’s of this discipline?
I have my opinions but I want to hear yours.
In the comments, please reference specific sites that should go down in history as defining the evolution of web design. Make sure to include an e-mail address or a link back to your site and if I get more than 10 awesome examples, I will put all of the names of commenters in a hat and draw one to send a paperback copy of Graphic Design, the New Basics by Ellen Lupton. Why? Because it is a damn fine explanation of the elements and principles, and I love spreading the good word of web design. I have no real affiliation with Ms Lupton (Though it would be awesome if we were BFFs). So have at it, I look forward to your responses.
September 24th, 2008 at 8:08 pm
Can a web design really stand the test of time? Is it against its nature; isn’t the beauty of web design its ability to be quickly re-designed?
Unlike print or traditional mediums, the limitations set forth that impacted early web designs are not that elegant — there was not a lot of beauty in the early limitations.
I also wonder, re we too early in the web industry (less than 15 years) for there to be a history? Movable type has been around since about 1450; is this question like asking the history of print design around 1465?
I feel like we are still setting the tone for the future more so than evolving from the past.
September 24th, 2008 at 8:20 pm
http://www.archive.org :)
September 24th, 2008 at 10:04 pm
I cant say about Global thinking, but here ( in India), a lot of my graphic designer friends always tend to keep distance from web-project-they say that its more of technical stuff rather than of art and aesthetics. Only few are using their type, art and usability understanding to make it beautiful.
This kind of approach towards web and apps. is making it an extremely segmented department and thats why it lags it terms of documentation and history-making projects.
September 24th, 2008 at 10:20 pm
You won’t see names attached to websites, this is the internet… everyone is faceless. You can’t really pick out any one person or thing, it’s far to vast and diverse.
When I think of website design, I think of more than just the look… I think of the look and the functionality. Very few sites combine the two into perfection and even when they do, it’s an ever changing space.
Currently, I find Barack Obamas website to be very attractive and functional, this is not a plug for him, just a plug for how he has embraced what is current. Tomorrow, it will be something different and his site will be outdated.
I think the internet has changed many things, even design… it’s becoming more difficult to define things.
September 24th, 2008 at 11:29 pm
I’m afraid that it’s too early.
There’s been improvements over time both technically and visually, but our industry is just beginning to overcome that “getting started” feeling.
From time-to-time I’ll look for the latest version of http://2advancedstudios.com
September 25th, 2008 at 5:35 am
@Martin Ringlein & @Nick Whitmoyer
When approaching this topic I did consider “Is it too early?” or “Maybe there hasn’t been enough to happened to consider there to be a history”? But then my question is, do we just completely leave works of the web out of the history of Design? When students who are fresh to the field get their introduction to the industry, does web design just not have any key pieces to contribute? (Especially when the web is a key contributor to them pursuing a career in the design industry)
I find that hard to swallow, because while it is still early I do feel like there are designers out there doing sites that are contributing to the advancement of the industry. There has been a very traceable evolution. Just go to the link that Dan left in his comment, and search for A List Apart and see the changes from year to year. What sites brought us down that visual road? Someone was the first to make every major advancement.
September 25th, 2008 at 7:26 am
This is kind of like a band that been around for a few years and all of a sudden they decide to put out a greatest hits album. Sure, the band’s got some good tracks; but they also have a few good years left in them. They’ll produce more albums, more hits and continue touring. Is it too soon to have a greatest hits album? Probably. Will that greatest hits album be an inaccurate portrayal of the bands best work? Kind of.
There have been small progressive improvements over the years with individual websites and web design as a whole. It’s not a thorough history, but it’s what we have to look back on for now.
September 25th, 2008 at 7:56 am
I’ll agree with most here. It’s a bit early to be making a list. The reason being a web design is great for different reasons than print design. Technology, usability, and unique design all play a part in what makes a site great and memorable.
Apple was great because it ushered in simplicity of design.
2advanced, EGO Media and Juxt Interactive were great because they ushered in different forms of maximalism.
Flickr is great because of it’s ease of use.
The future of great sites will be on how well they play across multiple devices and how they translate into actual, usable desktop applications (Evernote is a fine example).
Comm Arts put out a “10 years of Interactivity” issue a couple years back where they mapped out some of the major players throughout the years. Adobe also payed tribute in their Flash Tenth Anniversary minisite (http://www.adobe.com/products/flash/special/flashanniversary/microsite/).
Great question. Eager to see what other sites your readers toss up and to hear their rationale for why they’re great.
September 25th, 2008 at 8:01 am
jasonsantamaria.com for its kick ass design over the years.. and most recently the “redesign” for each article.. apple.com because it represents the brand extremely well.. it simply feels apple (and always has). Those two came to mind immediately. Another you could make a strong case for is google.com. Enjoy the class.. looking forward to hearing what you come up with.
September 25th, 2008 at 8:29 am
I’m not a designer, so grains of salt may be required here…
In the offline world, you can point to a poster as an example of a finished product. With the web, not only is the product never finished, but the medium itself is in constant flux. Because the poster is usually on paper, the focus is what’s *on* the poster. With the web the most important design is in the medium itself. Perhaps a direction to include the web might be to focus on smaller chunks where design moved forward, rather than entire sites.
CSS, AJAX, etc. Of course, those are hard to see, so what if you showed great implementations of their capabilities as a way of showing great design? csszengarden, etc.
September 25th, 2008 at 10:26 am
This is a tremendous question you pose and I’m flummoxed as how to answer it. There must be some paragons that we designers can point to in the history of web design. Yet, when I consider what those prime examples would be, I have trouble speaking to their long-term influence to the industry. I’ve heard others cite Yahoo’s homepage in the early 2000’s as one of these highly influential sites. Back then, plenty of other sites used that Section / Sub-section listing that Yahoo popularized. But I’m hard-pressed to find any site which continues to use this convention today. So how does one propose that this development was revolutionary, when its effects are missing in today’s environment?
Given the flexibility and capacity for development of the medium, I can’t think of any web design solutions that could possibly stand the test of time. Instead, maybe we should approach this subject in another manner. We can certainly talk about the history of the web in terms of trends and how they coincided with technology available at their time of popularity. Flash-based sites, the rise of CSS, drop-down menus, proliferation of various CMS’s, social networking, AJAX. There’s a clear procession when you line all these trends up.
Maybe it’s just too early. The rockstars of webdesign haven’t quite been crowned yet. 5 years from now, we could be looking at various sites and recognizing how certain design groups (Happy Cog, Barbarian Group, Viget) have changed the landscape of web design.
September 25th, 2008 at 12:43 pm
Ok, the serious answer this time… I’d posit that just like Web design, you don’t see a lot of books dedicated to fantastic, groundbreaking after-effects design, film credit design, theater set and lighting design etc. etc. we discuss them online or in film, but they don’t translate well to books… Seems that the ones writing, designing and printing the design history books are *somewhat* invested in the print medium, and their bias shows.
Also, I feel as though the web is still half playing catch up to print, in terms of applying principles of design which have been evolved and fine-tuned over time in that medium, to a whole new set of constraints and possibilities, while also diverging in such a way that it’s breaking new ground.
Finally, when/if such a book does get written, I hope it comes out on e-paper, ’cause it’s gonna look gnar in 72-dpi.
September 25th, 2008 at 1:10 pm
@Dan
Interesting. Maybe I should phrase it differently then. Ignore the idea that history has to be in the form of a book… that it has to be written at all… If I asked YOU or another Designer to give 5 sites that have changed the face of web design, what would they be? Though there may not be books on ” the history of lighting design” I know they have to be teaching some sort of background and history to those who are studying it. It has been devised and documented. Where a history may lives is not really the question. Defining the pieces of it is. Maybe History is a bad term. Maybe the question is more:
“What sites benchmark the progression of visual design on the web?”
Regarding your comment on web catching up to print… there are lots of places in design and art history that in no way exemplify the application of the elements and principles of design, but they are still documented, and revered as building blocks in the overall history. Though the web may have not have been as pretty as it is today, at the time there were sites that people went to and were like “damn, that is hot”. I am looking more to gather those insights into perception over the course of an industry rather than just basing the pieces I pick out on my personal perception.
September 25th, 2008 at 1:48 pm
@Sam, I sort of feel like the web only became self-aware a few years ago. I’d certainly have to echo Nick’s notion of 2advanced as being one of the first sites that made me think of the web as capable of being beautiful, but I think from there, I’d have to compartmentalize into movements and pick a few that exemplify each. Often, as has been in other media, the site or work that epitomizes a movement may not be the one that started it, and may not even look good anymore in the wake of all those that came after and drove the idea into the ground. I’d point to A list apart and Jason Santa Maria as leaders in the information-driven format, Facebook as the first site to effectively and elegantly wrangle a metric crap-ton of information, regardless of how horrible it looks now, and so on.
However, none of these ideas was new to the design world. I think a real history of web design would be seen through a lens of usability and creativity, not aesthetics, because web design is more than balance, contrast, flow, emphasis, etc. — it is more dimensional than traditional design, so to me the aha! moments were the first time I saw form validation done via ajax, the first time I saw a file uploader with a progress bar and inline editing capabilities, the first time I saw muxtape give a flash audio player a javascript api so screen readers could play along, etc. WEB design is so much more than what a user perceives with his/her eyes-it is about designing the process of getting something done, whatever that something may be.
As for who’s keeping tabs, maybe the world of web design is so much more open than other media that it’s harder to follow. What percentage of design books just talk about the usual suspects-the Sutnars, Rands and Basses, all of whom made a career out of a hugely contributory body of work, vs. a web landscape where relative unknowns create miracles every day… I think every web designer out there can name the Paul Rands of our industry while being chased by a pack of rabid wolves without breaking a sweat, so nobody who actually cares needs any documentation to follow along. Once we get to the point where there’s someting to say, I’m sure it’ll be said- the rest of the world is just glad they don’t have to put on clothes to go shoe shopping anymore :)
September 25th, 2008 at 3:43 pm
Samantha,
How are you? I saw Jim today and he told be about your blog post. Then I saw your reference in your facebook page. Finally, I decided I will post my 2 cents although you know I am far from being an expert in regards to design, history or both for that matter! But, hey, that is the beauty of social networking, right? Anybody can express their opinion. Even me!
Honestly, I did no read all the entries posted so if I am duplicating someone’s ideas, I apologize.
As most people, I think that it will be hard to put actual names to the history of web design, since it is pretty much faceless. What we can put next to the milestones is, probably, company names (or website names).
Going back in the history of the internet (and you can probably use the Way Back Machine for documentation) I immediately think of the ugly FrontPage-GeoCities designs of the mid 90s, which immediately confirms that there were companies that were trendsetters and that everybody else followed.
Search engines had their styled more as a directory listing or a portal. Yahoo set a trend with the bulleted category listings and the ugly round-iconed first level navigation bar. http://www7.yahoo.com
I remember this influenced my approach to User Experience and IA at the time as I thought it was a great idea to categorize things and allow for easy drill-down searches.
Talking about FrontPage style, well what a great example but Altavista.com, one of the big search engine players of the late 90s. Prominent left menu bar with ugly pictures as menu items, a long scrollable list of things and information and the always annoying animated gifs! http://www.altavista.com/
And then it came Google. I remember the first time somebody suggested me to use google.com to search, and when I got to the page I was like… Is that it? Just a text box and a button? I think they did set a trend to go from the overpopulated site with millions of links in tables and columns all over the home page to a simple, non-overwhelming approach. From the Portal to the Search engine, from the “drill down and filter your results” to “just type it we’ll get it in a couple of pages”.
More milestones I can think of are the introduction of Flash sites and how they started getting more professionally designed and the Web 2.0 trend, you know, white backgrounds, rounded-edges boxes, pastel colors (shh, I’m colorblind, remember?), and so on…
A great resource for further research is the webbyawards.com page (http://www.webbyawards.com/webbys/current.php?season=1), where they have the nominees and winners for many categories all from 1997 to the present with a special ART / DESGIN category. For instance these guys won the award the first time around in 1997: http://entropy8.com/
Hey, this was fun. Hopefully we can see a coffee table book on the shelves with the history of website design (I have 2 of guitars!) and one of your designs is in it!
I certainly toast for that.
Best,
G
September 26th, 2008 at 6:46 am
Perhaps you should look up sites of past web design conferences and take a look at the lists of speakers. And don’t forget that apart from the web standards movement there’ve been many influential designers who used Flash. I remember being very impressed by Joshua Davis (www.praystation.com/www.once-upon-a-forest.com).
Other influential sites from the late 90’s would be www.superbad.com, www.theremediproject.com and www.jodi.org.
Good luck with your list :-)
September 26th, 2008 at 11:16 am
I don’t think it’s too early to document Web design history. I’ve done in the past- and you can see history of evolving web design in the screencaptures at http://www.flickr.com/photos/teleject/sets/72157600490344231/
I included Zeldman, Lynda.com, Powazek and Yahoo.
September 27th, 2008 at 12:11 pm
Good to see you’re passing on knowledge, opinion and freedom of expression through design. You might want to check out Saul Bass. He designed everything from movie posters to seats in an airplane, until his passing in 1996. Enjoy.
October 1st, 2008 at 8:58 am
I feel more comfortable answering this question : What sites benchmark the progression of visual design on the web?
I think news sites especially NY Times and CNN really revolutionize the use of grids on the web. They’re good examples of bridging the principles use both in print and web.
Someone already mentioned www.once-upon-a-forest.com but I’m going to second that one too - it’s the first website I saw back in the day that uses the web as a medium to create atmosphere as well as presenting information. It was like stumbling into another beautiful world and I didn’t want to leave. It was the side of the web that I’ve never experienced before. Talking about user experience that is completely different than that of Flickr. For me, that site changed my view of what the web could be back in the day ;-)
October 2nd, 2008 at 9:37 am
This is just my opinion …, but I feel that “web design” as a concept is still fairly new. The internet was developed as a data-driven technology medium, not necessarily a design-driven or presentation-driven medium. For this reason, I believe that only now are companies and individuals realizing how important design aesthetics really are. Think about the resurgence of the internet after the dot com crash: companies felt the medium was vastly unexplored and the cutting-edge companies began to see the need for designers, not just to make the site pretty, but educated designers who could understand the psychology behind design. The psychology behind why to use what colors, what typefaces, etc. I think the field as a whole is still in the process of design exploration. In your class, you speak of designers who are still alive, and design has been around for centuries… It has taken up to the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s for us as a people to identify and understand the building blocks behind what makes good print design. The web is still very much in its infancy. Good design is on the way, but we must be willing to be the pioneers who lay the foundation for what is to be considered great design years down the road.
With all that said, there are individuals, and more numerous, collaborations of individuals that have made good design. Consider the Mercedes Benz websites. Redesign after redesign, they are hammering out some of the best design. And their use of multimedia elements has always been ahead of the curve and demonstrated well-thought-out and careful use of design elements on the web. Hovie Hawk at hovie.com is another designer who has remained a bit ahead of the curve, until recently. There is a timeline on the site of their previous site designs. He was using Flash back when we were up on dial-up and it never got in the way of the design or speed of the site, nor the functionality.
I am sure there are tons more designers who have made and broken some of the rules to help the web progress to where it is today. Another thing to consider is that just now, the web is being standardized. I am sure there were designs from back in the day that were great, but they couldn’t be viewed by the masses due to browser incompatibility issues. Give the web some time. I am sure your students appreciate the information you can give. And considering the class you are teaching is a fundamentals class, be sure they have that down and understand it in print medium before moving on to something as ever-changing as the world wide web. … again, just my opinion.
October 5th, 2008 at 9:04 am
I think a revolution is needed regarding the boring layouts of most websites - I won’t say that my solution was the best but I’ve tried at least! And be sure I’m improving ;) Shouldn’t navigation become a little adventure and shouldn’t websites entertain (& inform) their visitors?
October 7th, 2008 at 6:29 am
To Everyone who Commented on this:
Thanks for all of your input it is greatly appreciated.
I drew a name out of a hat for the book give-away and it goes to Dave at http://nemoorange.com/, who ironically graduated from the same college as me (JMU) but I have never met. Check out his site it is super rad. Thanks again to everyone who contributed.
November 9th, 2008 at 9:41 am
Samantha,
I know the contest may be over, but I wanted to let you know that you should search through Design Observer for an article on basically the exact same thing. There were literally hundreds of responses and they may be of help to you.