Simplicity, Abstraction, and the Modern Website: 10 Years Later

Reality of Visual and Functional Design

  • Visual and functional design must work in harmony - one cannot forcibly dictate the other

    • Visual design needs to leverage capabilities of back end without overtaxing it

    • Back end needs to properly support visual design flexibly without hacks

  • Visual forcing bad functional designs = brittle, fragile site that can't be updated (content or code)

  • Functional forcing bad visual designs = unsatisfactory site that doesn't support unit's needs