Web design is still a relatively new discipline. As with many developing fields, the fringes of web design tend to be inhabited by various self-declared and untrained ‘designers’. Such people have normally taught themselves a bit of HTML and Dreamweaver and then branded themselves as web designers or developers, yet they cannot design.
In the past this didn’t matter much to agencies or clients, as the quality of work of an experienced and talented web designer always shone through. You couldn’t disguise this, and the reasons for employing a proper web designer were clear: you needed the quality and experience in order to get a design that really worked. The main effect this had on web design agencies was a bit of minor irritation caused by the chore of sorting the wheat from the chaff when going through CVs. Or, rather, this was true until now.
A short-cut never hurt anyone… did it?
Recently there’s been a proliferation of websites offering thousands of design ‘themes’. These are available to download and use for free or perhaps for a very modest fee. They offer customisable web design themes, professionally produced, which plug directly into a range of CMS systems: WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Silverstripe and others. (See themeforest.net or templatemonster.com to see what I mean). These sites allow you to browse thousands of templates, find the one you like, and then customise it for your brand.
These are more of an overt extension of the design review websites that have existed for years, where you can review the work of peers and for those, perhaps suffering a little creative block find… er… inspiration. But copying sites wholesale is rare and obviously discouraged.
These theme sites, however, are not a collection of designs for review, but a collection of designs for use. Downloading and adapting these themes is now a valid means of getting your site designed. So developers have all the design resource they need. They can produce professional-looking websites by using these themes. No need to involve a designer, then.
There are some very compelling reasons to use themes. Developers have to hand libraries such as Jquery and MooTools, which offer a huge range of off-the-shelf interactive code, and they are widely acknowledged as helping to raise the overall standard in website interactions, enabling us to offer far richer functionality for the same budgets. So why not do the same with the interface design?
There’s also the cost to think about: with a bespoke new site design coming in at a four or five figure sum, that $4 per theme is very tempting. And for the client, why pay someone else to have to actually design a website from scratch, with all the time and cost that takes, when your web developer can do it all?
These themes generally follow similar layouts and conventions. You can safely assume that they generally offer a decent level of usability. Why re-invent the wheel with a clean-sheet design? This all begs me to question what the proliferation of theme libraries mean for digital agencies and the craft of the web designer.
Two related questions then:
1. Do you need a web design agency any more?
2. Do ‘themes’ spell the death of bespoke web design?
I think the answers are: 1. yes you do, and 2. not at all.
While I don’t advocate the use of themes if you want to build your brand online, I think themes have had a positive effect.
First off, I think the theme-world has raised the overall bar of site layouts and design. The general baseline is now better. But themes give a genericisation and ubiquity which is both good and bad. Good, as the overall quality is better and this does on balance come with better conventions and usability standards. But also bad, as everything is starting to look the same. Using one of these themes means becoming one of the masses. There may be thousands of themes but they all seem to look similar. It becomes harder to distinguish sites. These themes are not built around a sound understanding of your business and your users.
Demand the best
The overall bar-raising has another positive effect: it forces web designers and agencies to raise their game. Now web designers must really know their craft, and make sure that they are producing a design that works for your brand, with measurable results.
They need to know how the brand works online, how to maximise the effectiveness and impact of the site and which triggers push users through the purchase funnel. They also need to be able to craft the overall ‘fixtures and fittings’ of the site to be a level above the theme libraries. Designers need to create sites that visually have impact, and also work effectively for the customer journey. And if they are doing this, their fees will be more than justified, and clients will get value.
This is what marketers should demand from their digital agencies. They should challenge their agencies to show how they are adding value, to ask why the designs are so and why they will work. In effect, the discipline and industry are maturing.
