Post 5 - Web Design Research
After watching the video, I gained a better understanding of how CSS is a tool and not literal code. CSS is for documents and apps on a universally accessible web. Suzanne brings up that the web is not “agnostic” and isn’t a fixed screen. This helped me understand that CSS cascade and inheritance aren’t necessarily bugs that need to be fixed, but are actually solutions to a problem.
The article I found to pair with this was “A Dao of Web Design”. Allsopp argues that what designers know about print simply comes from print limitations, and the web shouldn’t be treated the same way. An example he provided was the early television and how a new medium is stuck in the habits of an older one. Instead of fighting the code, we should embrace the web. The overall idea is that the web isn’t meant to be consistent across all platforms, and trying to force that limits our ability to create responsive, personalized design.
The video and the article helped me understand how the web is almost like a philosophy rather than a technical skill. Coming into the course, I thought I’d be creating things that look exactly how I envisioned them. However, CSS is all about designing something that works everywhere. Throughout the quarter, I learned that it’s a tool to help bridge my design intentions and user environment.