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Cookie Cutter Creations
By: Art Javid
The great 18th century American novelist Herman Melville once said, “it is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation” – a statement which personifies the entire mission statement of the American Design Awards.
Graphic and web designers are a rare breed of individuals who possess the ability to envision what is beyond the mundane, allow their creativity to flourish, and conceptualize methods of creativity, that connect the ordinary with a tangible solution that is both beautiful and marketable. A graphical representation of ideas meshed together out of sometimes-ordinary colors, photographs, illustrations, and text situated in a harmonious marriage of form and function, that allows no room for improvement.
That is why it is incomprehensible when brilliant designers who possess such arsenal of talent and ingenuity, are sometimes tempted to veer off the fulfilling path of creativity and hard work by means of customizing an existing (and often generic) web or blog template, and passing it off as their own work. The same cookie-cutter template that a blogger has to use (because that is the tool of their trade), has become the same template that a web designer modifies and passes off as his or her own work – which has unfortunately started to gain acceptance and momentum in the design industry – at least judging by how many of them are popping up nowadays.
It is a disgrace that the once-proud design community that was built on ethical design guidelines and the self-proclamation that its products and services lay within the heart and soul - rather than on a store shelf - has begun adopting a less-than-graceful means of conducting everyday dealings.
In May of 2008 I sat in as one of the judges for American Design Awards’ Monthly Design Contest, and as always I was looking forward to being overwhelmed with an assortment of unique and inspirational web creations by a worldwide pool of talented web designers. Instead, I realized that the problem of blog-template-based designs has become an epidemic throughout the world; burning like wildfire and consuming more and more borderline “designers” to take the easy way out, and ultimately shelving whatever was left of their creativity.
What a shame - the same blog software which revolutionized the web by giving bloggers the means to communicate to the masses, is now being tweaked to serve the needs of an ever-growing segment of self-proclaimed graphic and web designers – which in itself is nothing short of misleading and inexcusable, especially when they are passed off as one’s own creation.
Functionality, design, and usability are by far the most important aspects of any website - and CSS as well as other web development tools are why the industry has progressed so impressively. However, our design awards judges have seen an alarming trend in cookie-cutter type blog and template sites blossoming everywhere, and it is our moral and ethical responsibility to weed those out by giving them a failing grade and eliminating them from at least gaining notoriety through our organization.
NOTE: The original article posted July 13, 2008 was removed and edited after inaccuracies and misunderstandings regarding CSS prompted complaints from designers worldwide; my apologies to the CSS community.
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Art Javid is one of the co-founders of the American Design Awards, an international design awards organization with over 30,000 active annual participants based in San Diego, California.
Art is also the co-owner of Graphicwise, Inc. (with his twin brother Kevin) an Orange County, California-based creative design firm specializing in attractive and effective web design, corporate identity and packaging art since 1997.
Besides graphic design, Art has been responsible for co-illustrating 5 published children’s books for a Los Angeles area television personality, and enjoys playing basketball whenever time permits.
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